Quantitative Unease
A column dedicated to demystifying psychotherapy research – love it, hate it, or both…at least try to know what it’s all about!
Wandering into the World of Ethnography
Group analysts have become more familiar with quantitative research, which is commonly associated with experiments, randomized controlled trials and observation. Structured observation requires investigators to unobtrusively and objectively record people’s physical and verbal actions from a distance. It certainly has value. However, so does pluralism. Other methodologies, procedures using a different research design and methods to investigate a topic, can be equally useful. Hence, I am not suggesting that we should only stick to the quantitative paradigm. Paradigms are positions about epistemology (how do you know), and ontology (what things exist). They are the conceptual lens through which researchers view research and determine which methodology, methods and data analysis will be used.
A “pure” quantitative approach makes sense if you value boundaries. Wandering into the world of ethnography, you will notice that its boundaries are not rigid. Ethnography is a methodology concerned with studying people in their cultural contexts. Classic ethnography assumes an objectivity whereby the researcher is able to put aside preconceived ideas or prejudices. “Facts” about a culture are described in a supposedly unbiased manner by analyzing cultural structures and processes in depth. Mead’s (1928) description of youth on Samoa is an exemplar of a classic realist ethnographic text. In classic ethnography, the researcher enters a foreign, often exotic culture, remains in this culture for some time, observes natives and takes field notes, before returning home. Then the researcher shares her knowledge and observations (folk descriptions) with readers from her home country. This approach assumes objectivity. The ethnographer’s previous experience and motivations are ignored and considered irrelevant. We find a strong flavour of realism in classic ethnography and focus on the scientific approach. Of course, it is not that simple.
The idea of any researcher being able to give an objective account of a culture has been contested. If you think about it, many traditional ethnographers actively engaged in the native rituals. Malinowski (1922) went to the Trobriand Island off Papua New Guinea to grasp the native’s point of view, his relations to life, to realise his vision of the world. Such participant observation contrasts with the aloof, structured observation of the quantitative paradigm. Hence, we are actually in the realm of qualitative research. This has been openly acknowledged by the many different forms of ethnography, which have emerged over the past decades (urban, critical, reflexive, cyber, institutional and autoethnography). Rooted in the hermeneutic paradigm, these ethnographies assume that there is neither one single reality nor a universal, ultimate truth. While classic ethnography is situated within (social) anthropology and is characterised by describing far away cultures, contemporary ethnography focuses on less exotic communities than indigenous populations on pacific islands.
Somehow, ethnography and its derivatives blur the boundary between the qualitative and quantitative realm. They use methods from both paradigms. For example, institutional ethnography, which is rooted in sociology, makes links between everyday life and its specific social organization. It focuses on the actual material things people can be seen doing, the words they use and texts they interact with. Un/structured observation or interviews, surveys, focus groups, numeric and thematic text analyses and the researcher’s reflexive self, are the techniques employed to access people’s lived actualities. The goal is to explicate marginalised people’s political, social, historical, gendered and economic worlds.
Traditional ethnographies attempt to produce true, credible accounts of experiences, often using people’s own words. To achieve this, the researcher is overtly immersed in the social world of participants and has to learn their language. Texts (knowledge) are viewed as objective, on par with scientific research. Postmodern critics have argued that the resulting knowledge is always tentative, partial and culturally generated in relation to the specific circumstances. How can it be otherwise? It does not make ethnography merely relativist, even though ethnography is more subjective than objective and more interpretivist than positivist.
Positivism holds that an external, physical world exists. It claims ultimate jurisdiction over forms of knowledge, such as doctor’s expert medical knowledge. Quantitative methods aim to eliminate bias and disregard researchers’ influence on participants. The ontology underlying positivism is realism and the epistemology objectivity. Knowledge corresponds to the world and reality, we produce knowledge in objective ways.
Postmodernism is in stark contrast to positivism, claiming that knowledge, the world and reality are socially constructed. Research in the hermeneutic paradigm tries to reveal tacit, insider knowledge. Interpretivists and social constructionists adopt a relativist ontology, where an event can have multiple meaning instead of insisting on an absolute truth, which is determined through the process of measurement. Context is vital for knowledge and knowing. The interpretivist paradigm embraces the researcher as part of the community that is being studied. Researchers have an effect on others just as much as participants affect them. They acknowledge their role in the research process. That is, how their particular cultural beliefs, attitudes and assumptions shape their approach towards the design, execution and interpretation of research.
I am not dismissing this approach. Undoubtedly, participant observation, interviews with open-ended questions and thematic analysis yield insight into people’s worlds. However, these qualitative methods inevitably produce knowledge that differs from experiments. Ethnography relies on a detailed observation to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of a cultural group or native population. But illumination of lived experiences does not give us insight into causal effects, that is, why people behave in the way they do. Nor does it produce generalizable results. Hence, ethnography is more aligned with the postmodern paradigm than positivism. However, quantitative data collection and analyses also form part of this tradition. An ethnographer may use census data as part of the investigation, or prior survey results to link the local community with its larger population. Additionally, the researcher might statistically establish correlations amongst variables by using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient.
Is such “mix and match” acceptable, considering that ethnography rests on a different epistemology and ontology than positivism? Well, this question is at the core of the mixed method research debate. Can methods, data and forms of analyses from different underlying philosophical perspectives be combined? When you read the literature, you find divergent views.
Some researchers highlight the incompatible assumptions, which underpin paradigms, rejecting the claim that opposed principles can be integrated. Would you mix the more positivist CBT with the more interpretivist Group Analysis? No, unless you are a postmodernist. While positivists argue against integration, postmodern scholars advocate combining principles from positivism and interpretivism.
Both positions are problematic. Realists ignore that researchers interpret findings and assume that their reports are a true and accurate representation of a knowable and independent world. Relativists conclude that nothing can ever be definitely known. No reality or findings have precedence over others to represent the truth about social phenomena. The meaning of reality is socially constructed.
Relativism and realism represent two polarised ontological perspectives. One objective reality that can be known with certainty contrasts with multiple realities. On this positivist-subjectivist continuum is a philosophical position, which occupies a middle ground: critical realism. It holds that a physical reality exists, social structures are real, but knowledge production is also influenced by context. While meaning, narratives about and from people are important, there is more to it. We need to find causes and establish why communities act how they do. Critical realism is an alternative to positivism and postmodernism. It allows us to use mixed methods without ending up in contradictions or a stalemate.
Wishing you a peaceful Christmas.
Seasonal greetings.
References
Malinowski B (1922) Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Mead M (1928) Coming of age in Samoa. New York: William Morrow.