Abstract
Throughout this book I have forwarded suggestions for those involved in research endeavors to responsibly take into consideration the immersion of the research in the “becoming” of social and ecological existence (of which it is a part). I now suggest that when researchers post facto generate methodological stories around how the design of the research became ongoingly accomplished, these responsibilities should be foregrounded, with ethical considerations concerning the exercise of responsibility and co-responsibility included in the storying . Instead of focusing on trying to label research work with respect to designs as given in the (much cited) literature on strategies of inquiry, I propose that the doing, and writing up, of research should become differently geared. That is, we should pay attention to practices of active involvement with others (as selves-in-relation) in trying to exercise (co)-responsibility for the future-forming potential of research. I suggest that to highlight the quality of such activity, the word “active” can preface the labels commonly used to characterise research designs.
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Notes
- 1.
Taylor (2013) outlines her view of the differentiation between methodologies, methods and processes in qualitative research, but the same considerations (definitions) could apply in quantitative research.
- 2.
Merriam too refers to these common designs (2002, p. 7). But she includes in her account of designs what she calls “critical qualitative research” (2002, p. 9) and “postmodern research” (2002, p. 10), which offer challenges to “traditional” qualitative research. She suggests that when the intention is, as in critical qualitative research, to “bring about change” there are no “guidelines about how to do this type of study” (2002, p. 10). That is, there are no recipes for conducting research with this purpose.
- 3.
As an example of a transformative mixed methods design Creswell (2014, p. 237) cites Hodgkin (2008, p. 297) who stated her purpose of the research as being to demonstrate the existence of different social capital profiles for men and women (via quantitative data) and to provide a picture of gender inequality and expectation (via qualitative stories). Creswell remarks that unlike many feminist researchers, she does not create in her conclusion a “call for action to change the inequality [that is portrayed as a result of the research]” (2014, p. 238). He points out that for many researchers using a transformative perspective a “call for action” arising from the research would be included (2014, p. 64).
- 4.
When discussing emergence in qualitative designs Creswell states that:
For example, the questions may change, the forms of data collection may shift, and the individuals studied and the sites visited may be modified. The key idea behind qualitative research is to learn about the problem or issue from participants and to address the research to obtain that information. (2014, p. 186, my italics)
As will become clearer in my discussion in this chapter, his focus is still on obtaining information via the research.
- 5.
Likewise, as an example of qualitative methods being used with a positivistically-oriented underpinning, he cites how “narrative stories, associated with qualitative research, are being linked to quantitative event history modeling (Elliot, 2005)” (Creswell, 2003, p. 7).
- 6.
This dual function of phenomenology also has been noted by Merriam (2002, p. 7).
- 7.
In offering key terms for their chapter, Ngulube and Ngulube summarize the “natural attitude” as: “Habitual habits of thinking of things including taking things for granted and having preconceived ideas about phenomena” (2017, p. 154).
- 8.
He cites authors such as Heidegger (1962), Moustakas (1994), Landsman (2002). In keeping with the notion that phenomenology need not purport to offer an interpretation-free account of preconceptions held by people in the natural attitude, or what Landsman calls their “implicit ways of structuring experience”, Landsman notes (2002) that phenomenological work “can never be completed, because for every experience there are myriad horizons”.
- 9.
Beyer (2016) underscores that one of the main themes of transcendental phenomenology is intersubjectivity, which includes feelings of empathy: “From a first-person point of view, “intersubjective experience is empathic experience; it occurs in the course of our conscious attribution of intentional acts to other subjects, in the course of which we put ourselves into the other one’s shoes”. Also seen from a first-person point of view, “a given subject’s lifeworld consists of the beliefs against which his everyday [natural] attitude toward himself, the objective world [as perceived] and others receive their ultimate justification”. Beyer confirms that Husserl must not be regarded as an epistemological foundationalist”. He notes that for Husserl, “even the objective spatio-temporal world, which represents a significant part of our everyday lifeworld, is constituted intersubjectively” (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/husserl/).
- 10.
When encouraging him to write up the work for the special issue of South African Review of Sociology entitled “research processes directed toward social development” (2016), I suggested to him to draw out some of these aspects more strongly.
- 11.
Kuntz suggests that the term “methodological activism” can also appropriately be applied to signal the intent of inquiry to “make newly possible, to expose cracks and interstices that otherwise escape processes of meaning-making so that we might live differently” (2015, pp. 26–27).
- 12.
Romm and Hsu (2002) also applied the label active case study research to the research undertaken in a Taiwanese harbor to explore shifting experiences of “power distance”.
- 13.
As noted in footnote 2 above, Merriam adds some additionals, but does not name them as being as popular. Mertens and McLaughlin, with reference to Merriam (1998) concentrate on four forms of qualitative research: ethnography, phenomenology, grounded theory, and case study (2004, p. 97).
- 14.
Mertens and McLaughlin state that “typically, qualitative researchers use three main methods for collecting data: observation, interviews, and document and records review” (2004, p. 101).
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Romm, N.R.A. (2018). Conclusion to the Book: Storying Our Co-responsibilities as Part of Methodological Write-up. In: Responsible Research Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74386-8_10
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