To trust or not to trust? Interpretations in qualitative research

• Authors: Aleš Neusar
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Interpretations of data in qualitative research may be biased for many reasons. This paper explores three commonly overlooked problems from a rather positivist point of view and deals with them mainly through the lens of cognitive psychology and survey methodology. The first problem is that researchers and readers of the research tend to trust retrospective data too much even though it is known that our memory is highly reconstructive. The second problem is that we often create interpretations too quickly and do not ground them in data well. The third problem is inappropriately generalising our findings because we underrate the variability of the phenomena studied. The aim is not to employ quantitative criteria in qualitative research but to show that especially in cases where we seek more objectivity (e.g., factual information about events) and less about the subjective phenomenal world (e.g., how people perceive these events from today’s perspective), cognitive psychology or survey methodology can offer valuable insights. Recommendations about what researchers should be careful of and how to increase the objectivity of the interpretations are offered.

Keywords

EN

interpretation; bias; objectivity; generalisation; qualitative research; cognition

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Human Affairs
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 178-188

Dates

published

2014-04-01

online

2014-03-29

Contributors

author

Aleš Neusar

• Palacký University in Olomouc

References

• [1] American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
• [2] Anginer, D., Fisher, K. L., Statman, M. (2007). Stocks of admired companies and despised ones. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=962168 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.962168 (February). [Crossref]
• [3] Asch S. E. (1946). Forming impressions of personality. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 41, 258–290. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0055756[Crossref]
• [4] Bahrick, H. P. (1983). The cognitive map of a city: Fifty years of learning and memory. In G. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and theory (pp. 125–163). New York: Academic Press.
• [5] Bahrick, H. P., Bahrick, P. O., & Wittlinger, R. P. (1975). Fifty years of memory for names and faces: A cross-sectional approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 104(1), 54–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.104.1.54[Crossref]
• [6] Baron, J. (2008). Thinking and deciding (4th ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• [7] Bradburn, N., Sudman, S., & Wansink, B. (2004). Asking questions. Rev. ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• [8] Brenner, L. A., Koehler, D. J., & Tversky, A. (1996). On the evaluation of one-sided evidence. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 9(1), 59–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-0771(199603)9:1<59::AID-BDM216>3.0.CO;2-V[Crossref]
• [9] Cassel, E., Bernstein, D. A. (2007). Criminal behavior (2nd ed.). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• [10] Carey, B. (2011, November 3). Fraud case seen as a red flag for psychology research. New York Times, p. 3.
• [11] Cialdiny, R. B. (2009). Influence: science and practice (5th ed.) Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.
• [12] Conway, M. A., Meares, K., & Standart, S. (2004). Images and goals. Memory, 12(4), 525–531. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658210444000151[Crossref]
• [13] Creswell, J. W. (2013). Qualitative inquiry & research design (3rd ed). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
• [14] Cumming, G. (2012). Understanding the new statistics: Effect sizes, confidence intervals, and metaanalysis. Hove: Routledge.
• [15] Davies, M. F. (2003). Confirmatory bias in the evaluation of personality descriptions: Positive test strategies and output interference. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(4), 736–744. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.4.736[Crossref]
• [16] Ericsson, K. A. (Ed.). (2009). Development of professional expertise: Toward measurement of expert performance and design of optimal learning environments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• [17] Fowler, F. J. (2014). Survey research methods (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
• [18] Friese, S. (2014). Qualitative data analysis with ATLAS.ti. (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
• [19] Guillebeau, C. (2012). The $100 startup: Reinvent the way you make a living, do what you love, and create a new future. New York: Crown Business.
• [20] Heath, C. & Heath, D. (2007). Made to stick. Why some ideas survive and others die. New York: Random House.
• [21] Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• [22] Kline, R. B. (2013). Beyond significance testing: Statistics reform in the behavioral sciences (2nd ed). Washington, DC: APA. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/14136-000[Crossref]
• [23] Klayman, J., & Ha, Y.-W. (1987). Confirmation, disconfirmation, and information in hypothesis testing. Psychological Review, 94, 211–228. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.94.2.211[Crossref]
• [24] Loftus, E. F., & Palmer, J. C. (1974). Reconstruction of auto-mobile destruction: An example of the interaction between language and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 13, 585–589. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(74)80011-3[Crossref]
• [25] Law, J. (2004). After method: Mess in social science research. Oxon: Routledge.
• [26] Loftus, E. F. (1996). Eyewitness testimony. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• [27] Mason, J. (2002). Qualitative researching (2nd ed.). London: Sage Publications.
• [28] Mason, M. (2010). Sample size and saturation in PhD studies using qualitative interviews. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 11(3). Retrieved from http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1428
• [29] Miles, M. B., Huberman, A.M., & Saldaña, J. (2014). Qualitative data analysis: A methods sourcebook. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
• [30] Morewedge, C. K., & Kahneman, D. (2010). Associative processes in intuitive judgment. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(10), 435–440. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2010.07.004[WoS][Crossref]
• [31] Neusar, A. (2009). Jaké zdroje informací používáme při usuzování o příčinách vlastního chování [Sources of information we use when reasoning about the causes of our behaviour]. E-psychologie, 3(2). Available at: http://e-psycholog.eu/pdf/neusar.pdf
• [32] Neusar, A. (2011). Kdy se to jenom stalo? (Ne)dokonalost paměti na osobní a veřejné události [When did it happen? (Im)perfection of memory for personal and public events]. Brno: MSD. Or dissertation in English available at: http://is.muni.cz/th/195480/fss_d
• [33] Neusar, A., Hoferková, J., & Ježek, S. (2011). Přesnost datace mediálně známých veřejných událostí [Dating accuracy of well-known public events]. Mediální studia, 02, 120–151.
• [34] Peräkyl, A. (2004). Reliability and validity in research based upon transcripts. In D. Silverman (Ed.), Qualitative research: Theory, method and practice (2nd ed., pp. 282–303).
• [35] Ptčáková, K. (2012) Professional curiosity engaged in policy sociology. Human Affairs, 22(4), 475–491. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/s13374-012-0039-7[Crossref]
• [36] Schacter, D. L. (1999). The seven sins of memory: Insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience. American Psychologist, 54(3), 182–203. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.54.3.182[Crossref]
• [37] Schwarz, N. (2007). Retrospective and concurrent self-reports: The rationale for real-time data capture. In A. A. Stone, S. S. Shiffman, A. Atienza, & L. Nebeling (Eds.), The science of real-time data capture: Self-reports in health research (pp. 11–26). New York: Oxford University Press.
• [38] Schwarz, N., Strack, F., & Mai, H. (1991). Assimilation and contrast effects in part-whole question sequences: A conversational logic analysis. Public Opinion Quarterly, 55(1), 3–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/269239[Crossref]
• [39] Sedlmeier, P., & Betsch, T. (2002) (Eds.). Etc. Frequency processing and cognition. Oxford: OUP.
• [40] Skowronski, J. J., Betz, A. L., Thompson, C. P., Walker, R. W., & Shannon, L. (1994). The impact of differing memory domains on event-dating processes in self and proxy reports. In N. Schwarz & S. Sudman (Eds.), Autobiographical memory and the validity of retrospective reports (pp. 217–231). New York: Springer-Verlag. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2624-6_15[Crossref]
• [41] Spry, Y. (2011). Performative autoethnography: critical embodiments and possibilities. In N. K. Denzin, Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (4th ed., pp. 497–512). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
• [42] Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (2002). Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate? In T. Gilovich, D. Griffin, & D. Kahneman (Eds.), Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment (pp. 421–440). New York, NY US: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511808098.026[Crossref]
• [43] Sternberg, R. J., & Sternberg, K. (2010). The psychologist’s companion: A guide to writing scientific papers for students and researchers (5th ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511762024[Crossref]
• [44] Stoklasa, J., Talášek, T., & Musilová, J. (2014). Fuzzy approach - a new chapter in the methodology of psychology? Human affairs, 24(2), 189–203.
• [45] Rosenzweig, P. (2007). The halo effect: … and the eight other business delusions that deceive managers. New York: Simon & Schuster.
• [46] Taleb, N. N. (2010). The black swan: The impact of the highly improbable (2nd ed). New York: Random House.
• [47] Tourangeau, R., Rips, L. J., & Rasinski, K. (2000). The psychology of survey response. Oxford: OUP. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511819322[Crossref]
• [48] Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1971). Belief in the law of small numbers. Psychological Bulletin, 76(2), 105–110. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0031322[Crossref]
• [49] Vranka, M. (2013). Bariéry kritického myšlení v psychotherapy. In A. Neusar, M. Charvát, M. Dolejš, D. Janečková, R. Procházka (Eds.), PhD Existence III. Olomouc: Palacký University. Available at: http://www.ff.upol.cz/fileadmin/user_upload/FFkatedry/psychologie/Konference/PhD_existence_III/sbornik_odbornych_prispevku_tisk.pdf
• [50] Whitten, W. B., & Leonard, J. M. (1981). Directed search through autobiographical memory. Memory & Cognition, 9(6), 566–579. http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/BF03202351[Crossref]

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/s13374-014-0218-9