Interpretation and Method Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn

xx INTRODUCTION

the world of research methodology, and along with it the effort to argue for the standing of such

methodologies and methods in the world of science, began much more recently than that. The

internal debates and intellectual arguments are still unfolding. Indeed, one might array the analytic

methods listed here along a continuum, from more descriptive to more critical-theoretical (the latter

being more explicit in considering the effects of institutional structures and power on individual

meaning making). Case study, grounded theory, life and oral histories, and participant-observation

analyses—to make a gross generalization—might more commonly be found at the descriptive end;

action research, critical theory, deconstruction, discourse, and post-structural analyses might be at

the other end; frame and value-critical analyses might be more toward the center on the critical

side; and so forth. But the inadequacy of such a distinction is highlighted when one notes that

interpretive work of all kinds, in rendering tacit knowledge explicit, makes silenced discourses

speak, thereby engaging questions of power. Any interpretive analytic method, in other words,

has the capacity to move fully across the descriptive-critical continuum.^23

Table I-1: Varities of Interpretive Research Methods

action research (participatory action research)

case study analysis

category analysis

(social) constructionist/constructivist analysis

content analysis^1

conversational analysis

critical theoretical analysis (including critical legal studies, critical race theory^2 )

deconstruction

discourse analysis

dramaturgical analysis

ethnographic semantics

ethnography

ethnomethodology

ethnoscience

feminist analysis

frame (-reflective) analysis

genealogy

grounded theory

hermeneutics

life history

metaphor analysis

myth analysis

narrative analysis

oral history

participant-observation

phenomenological research^3

poststructural analysis

science studies

semiotics

space analysis

storytelling analysis

symbolic interaction

textual analyses (of various sorts)

value-critical analysis

1. This refers to word-based content analysis, not incidence rate counts.


2. On critical race theory, see the special issue of Qualitative Inquiry on “Critical Race Theory and
   Qualitative Research” (Lynn et al. 2002).


3. Meaning empirical, not theoretical or philosophical, research.