Interpretation and Method Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn

INTERPRETIVE CONTENT ANALYSIS 347

convey? What dominant and subordinate themes appear?

• What information is present in and, as important, absent from the documents? What are the
  grounds for establishing the relevance of information? How might selected information be
  related to the story line and to normative positions reflecting program (or other) interests?


• What arguments and normative positions serve to connect technical information to policy
  decisions? What patterns exist in argumentation?


• In what ways does the framing of the issue in the documents’ technical analyses highlight or
  deemphasize particular normative, political positions?


• How are stories and arguments in the document related to broader policy contexts?

Analyzing process

• Who made decisions about the documents (e.g., to include certain information and exclude
  other elements)?


• Do participants draw on similar or different logical premises, normative assessments, and
  policy purposes relative to the issue?


• Who produced the document, and what is the nature of their roles and relationships in the
  context of the document and the more general policy context?


• How was the document produced, and how does this process fit into the stream of activities
  in which people are engaged?

In approaching this kind of analysis, my experience suggests other things to keep in mind:

• ••••It is important to listen to the people who are the “subject” of the research. That the statistical
  analysis was not fully relevant to agency experience with the EISs was readily apparent to
  me in light of my firsthand familiarity with the agency. In pursuing an interpretive approach,
  I had multiple people from whom I could hear policy- and agency-relevant stories. I also
  could draw on the structure of the process they used to produce the EIS documents and of
  the organization more generally (i.e., resource programs; field and Washington, D.C., of-
  fices) to categorize agency perspectives on these documents.


• The structure of the research question has an important influence in directing analysis. Be-
  cause the research focus strongly affects what one sees in documents, it is important to
  consider alternative ways to interpret them. It is possible to ask oneself directly about alter-
  natives. However, it can be difficult to step outside of one’s own framing of the research.
  Therefore, it is important to ask others to review one’s analysis. Such review can come from
  those who are members of the context under study, as well as from those who are outside of
  it. I submitted portions of this research project for review in an academic journal context,
  but, as important, I returned to BLM personnel with my analysis of the EISs for their review.

My experience in using an interpretive approach to analyze the wilderness EISs shows some
ways to take account of multiple and potentially shifting stories that people tell to frame policy
issues. The changes between the draft and final EISs can be “read” in terms of the politics and
negotiations of a shifting policy agenda. This approach to analyzing technical documents illus-
trates how seemingly “apolitical” documents are very political, in that seemingly subtle shifts in
frame can fundamentally affect the story line and information reported in the documents. It em-
phasizes that escape from value judgments through technical analyses is not possible.
This approach also suggests that, as researchers, our purposes and audiences may vary and that