Reading response: Week 10

The Interpretive Process (The Qualitative Research Companion, Chapter 14)

While I was reading Norman K. Denzin’s essay about interpretive process I used my research project to go through the process. This helped me have a clearer idea of where I’m right now in the project and how I will develop it.

Although Denzin explains that “the subject matter of interpretive studies always biographical,” (p. 364) I believe it can also be applied to non-biographical studies, like analyzing text and any other kind of research. Like for every research progress, this process implies doing literature review, gathering data, analyzing data and writing a final report. I will mention the different steps of the process and I will relate it to my project.

1. Framing the research question

Denzin states that for the interpretive process the research question should be a how question instead of a why question. This is because “interpretive studies examine how problematic, turning-point experiences are organized, perceived, constructed, and given meaning by interacting individuals.” (p. 351) In the case of my project, I came up with two main how questions.

How different is the discourse in the press about government secrecy before and after 9/11?

How the importance of records is discussed in the discourse about government secrecy in the press for the past 14 years?

For the first question, the events of 9/11 can be established as the “problematic” and “turning-point” experience, this time not just in some individuals, but to a whole society. This question drives me into a lot of interest because of what I have found in the literature and by what is generally discuss in the media about 9/11, which is the comment that “9/11 changed the world,” using this as a justification for more secrecy. That’s why I’m splitting the research before and after 9/11. In terms of the second question, my main purpose is to interpret how archives, records, and recordkeeping systems outside the archival profession, in this case by the media. It has the purpose to call archivists about the importance of understanding how these aspects are viewed outside our profession.

2. Deconstructing prior conceptions of the phenomenon

This step is basically the preparation of the literature review for the research project. It should involve looking about prior conceptions of the topic, interpreting these conceptions and looking for gaps in the literature that need further research.

3. Capturing the phenomenon

Denzin indicates that “capture deals with what the researcher is doing with the phenomenon in the present, in his or her study.” (p. 354) I relate this step with data gathering, which in my case is retrieving editorial pieces from 6 major newspapers about the topic of government secrecy.

4. Bracketing the phenomenon

Once the researcher has captured the phenomenon, or gathering the data, it moves into defining and analyzing its structured. I related this step with the process of coding. When the researching is coding, he/she is restructuring the data in common concepts that would help him/her find trends and to better analyze the data. Which is the next step in the interpretive process: constructing the phenomenon.

5. Constructing the phenomenon

6. Contextualizing the phenomenon

Here is where the researcher interprets what he/she has constructed trough coding, in my case. This contextualization is finally redacted in a final report, which should includes (as explained by Silverman in chapter 10): introduction, literature review, methodology, data chapter and conclusion. (Silverman, p. 338)