The only problem with that is it falls foul of what I would call the "Rashomon" effect, in that
human memory is fallible, and particularly open to reconstructing experience in the light of current
experience and knowledge, suggestion, confabulation, false perception etc.
Very few people are blessed with a non semantic/episodic memory and a non semantic memory in itself
a problem as it needs some external mileposts to hang the recollection of perception on to give it
diachronic meaning.
No I think cognitive interviewing techniques and sufficient correlation and corroboration is what is
needed for something which would stand up to full scientific rigour.
If I were to say my house burnt down on a certain date, and that it was the day of a railway strike,
you would be best to check that in the newspapers before taking it as fact if you see what I mean.
Larry
> -----Original Message-----
> From: The Disability-Research Discussion List
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Andrew Bolger
> Sent: 10 September 2007 18:14
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: grounded theory follow-up
>
> Hi Lillith at the risk of stating the obvious, it seems to me
> that all research presupposes many things, not least what
> might constitute a field of study and what are interesting
> questions arising out of that field.
> Trouble is, research projects need to be limited in order to
> make it manageable for the researcher. I think grounded
> theory, as a research method, is performed through a
> processof funnelling down. You start with a broad issue say
> 'disability' and 'oppression'and think of ways you might
> observe these phenomena, perhaps participant observation of a
> setting, perhaps collecting narratives, perhaps analysing
> texts. Then, if possible, do a pilot study applying this
> method to collecting your data in as open ended manner as you
> can. Then you go over your data looking for patterns; then
> formulate more specific questions arising from the patterns
> which you can address more directly.
> I think this approach works best if you have access to a
> setting where you can deploy indirect 'naturalistic'
> ways of collecting data without manufacturing it specifically
> to address your research questions. (Of course you will have
> to 'make' data and of course this process will be mediated by
> your interests, theoretical leanings etc etc, just try and
> show your workings and look for the counter arguments).
> Tom Wengraf who is on the narrative research use group
> advocates a technique he calls Biographical Narrative
> Interviewing Method (BNIM) which follows a similar funnelling
> pattern. In BNIM the interviewer starts by asking the person
> for the story of their life or how they got to where they are
> now and simply listens to their story for the next telling;
> then reviews the biography with them selecting critical
> points and asking for 'how' this happened 'what do you think
> would have happened if you had done something else?'
> questions before asking questions exploring themes that may
> have arisen out of previous interviews with other people. For
> example if your first interviewee talks a great deal about
> discrimination but your second doesn't mention it, you might
> say 'some people talk a lot about how they have been
> discriminated against but you haven't mentioned it, why do
> you think that is?'
> I suppose it all comes down to what do you want to do.
> If you want to prove or disprove a point grounded theory
> probably isn't the method of choice. If you want to explore
> how other people understand their own lives it can be quite a
> good way of trying to defer judgement until you have listened
> to other people's voices.
>
> --- LILITH Finkler <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
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