84 MEANING AND METHODOLOGY
NOTESAn earlier version of this chapter was presented at the 2004 American Political Science Association conference
(September 2–5). My thanks to Tim Pachirat and Robert Adcock for readings of an earlier draft, that made
better sense than I of my woolly thinking and that pushed me to make explicit my tacit knowledge. I cannot
imagine better readers. Neither of them, however, should be held to account for faults and flaws that remain.- I am indebted to Tim Pachirat for helping me see more clearly the intertwining of substantive and
rhetorical arguments. - Robert Adcock’s influence is reflected in the formulation of this point. My thanks to him and to Tim
Pachirat for pushing my thinking on its significance. - This may, in fact, be the problem that Steven Maynard-Moody and Michael Musheno ran into in their
initial proposal to the National Science Foundation for the research that resulted in their 2003 book and
other publications. See chapter 18, this volume, on page 318. - All dictionary definitions quoted here were accessed online through the spring and summer of 2004
at http://dictionary.reference.com, which compiles entries from various dictionaries. - One seemingly common understanding is that the methodological meaning of rigor comes from rigor
mortis, “the need to render events lifeless so that they can be studied ‘scientifically’” (Harold Orlans, in a
post to the Interpretation & Method listserv, February 28, 2004, http://listserv.cddc.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/
interpretationandmethods, quoted with permission). As far as I can tell, this is not the etymology of the
methodological meaning. The fact that many understand it in such a context, however, speaks volumes for
the vitality of methodological positivism. - There are different variations on the labels for these steps. One of the interesting ones, for interpretive
methodological purposes, separates “data processing” from “data analysis” and joins the latter with “inter-
pretation” (Singleton and Straits 1999, 92). Some more recent “qualitative” methods textbooks present
research design in a more complex fashion, with internal feedback loops and attention to the fact that hy-
potheses do not emerge de novo (see, e.g., Marshall and Rossman 1995 or Berg 2001). Some quantitative
and general methods textbooks are also demurring from this traditional model. Singleton and Straits (1988,
29; 1999, 28), for example, noting that the “characteristic mode of inquiry that distinguishes scientific
research from other forms of research” is referred to by some people as “the scientific method,” comment:
“But this unfortunate phrase implies a definitive, orderly procedure that simply does not exist in science.”
Their subsequent treatment of the stages of social research (1999, 92), however, presents a staged sequence
much like the one here (albeit with the caveat that it is an idealized model), as do discussions in other texts. - “Abduction” was introduced by the pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce to refer to a type
of reasoning he saw as distinct from both deduction and induction. - The difference, however, between research improv and theatrical improv is that field researchers
typically learn on the job while engaged in their first research project, whereas theater improv performers
have been actually practicing their craft for some time before going out on stage in a formal engagement. If
there is any similarity here, it lies in the fact that neophyte improv performers meet their first real audience
members at their first performance, and so they are learning on the job, too, much as field researchers are.
And there is no doubt that field researchers’ responses (to situations, people, and texts) improve with prac-
tice. Researchers’ prior preparation consists of extensive reading, coursework, paper writing, talking with
faculty and student colleagues who have done field research, and so on. It is more an apprenticeship of the
mind than of act. I suspect that it is this improvisational character with its ambiguities, openness, and relative
lack of control(s) that leads both some persons to engage in interpretive research and others to denigrate it.
I find similar implications for administrative and classroom practices (Yanow 2001). - The sense-making process entails matching one’s interpretive data with the conceptual boxes pro-
vided by one’s provisional theorizing. As I discuss in the concluding section, it is akin to the pattern match-
ing described by Kuhn (1970).
It does seem, in fact, that something in the physical act of writing observational notes, transcribing
interview tapes and notes, shuffling cards and flip charts, and correlating data with an outline in coding is
key to the analytic process. Much as one often discovers one’s argument in the physical process of writing or
typing, interpretive researchers “discover” their analyses in and through various forms of note making. It is
this attribute, perhaps, that makes computer programs for “qualitative” data useful, rather than any computer-
based operations per se. Louis Agassiz apparently perceived something similar when, commenting on a