Interpretation and Method Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn

346 ANALYZING DATA

mation to the conclusions through arguments unstated in the EISs. Readers also can make differ-

ent arguments and arrive at different conclusions because the technical analyses alone are insuf-

ficient to support a single conclusion.

Analysis of the EISs in terms of structure, content, and arguments demonstrates the limits of

defining and treating technical analysis as separate from normative positions and politics. Exam-

ining the EISs using interpretive content analysis provides a way to describe how the technical

reports serve as a mechanism for debating and, possibly, contributing to a change in the agenda

for public lands policy, through technical assessments. The content analysis makes clear the value

differences that lie at the core of policy debates over wilderness designation and how these value

differences are reflected in the technical assessments in the EISs. It emphasizes the critical impor-

tance of examining arguments to understand how policy-relevant publics use the same scenarios

to draw opposite conclusions. Such an examination shows precisely and clearly how protagonists

in contentious policy debates can talk past each other because of the failure to acknowledge value

differences directly.^6

CHECKING IN WITH THE BLM

I constructed the core components of this analysis after I completed my research activities as a

participant-observer in the BLM. It became one piece of my dissertation. I described how imple-

mentation of wilderness policy in the agency evolved through the phases of the wilderness review

and analyzed how agency personnel made sense of this policy as they implemented it. At the same

time that I was writing the dissertation to meet requirements for an academic degree, I also felt a

responsibility to report my findings to BLM personnel. With respect to the EISs more specifically,

I wanted to check back in with people who had read and responded to the statistical analysis. I had

personal motives in doing so: I wanted closure on this topic, given my earlier experience with the

reception of the statistical analysis.

This time, a positive response from informants who reviewed the findings of my interpretive

analysis of the EISs indicated that I had gotten the story “right” from their perspective as agency

members and actors in the setting of my study. The affirmation was important because I hoped to

describe and interpret the experience of these informants as a topic of my research. My interac-

tions in seeking this review of my analysis emphasized the recursive nature of my research. I

gathered a range of perspectives from inside the agency, analyzed them using interpretive meth-

ods, and then returned to the research setting to gain input on my analysis. Because I was inter-

preting the ways in which people inside the setting make sense of policy, this approach provided

an appropriate check on the trustworthiness of my analysis.^7

SUMMARIZING QUESTIONS IN AN INTERPRETIVE APPROACH TO

TECHNICAL DOCUMENTS

In analyzing the EISs, I examined the documents themselves and the context in which they were

produced. To transfer this approach to other documents and settings that involve multiple goals

and interpretations of a policy issue, it is useful to summarize some key questions that a re-

searcher or policy analyst conducting such an analysis might ask. Although in practice analysis of

documents and analysis of process intertwine, they are separated here for the sake of clarity:

Analyzing documents

• What story line(s) is (are) evident in the structure of a document? Who are the subjects and
  what are the objects, and what relationships between or among them does the story line