patton chapter 1

CONCEPTUAL ISSUES IN QUALITATIVE INQUIRY The Nature of Qualitative Inquiry

1The Nature of Qualitative Inquiry

The Fruit of Qualitative Methods ______________

There once lived a man in a country with no fruit trees. A scholar, he spent agreat deal of time reading. He often came across references to fruit. The descrip-tions enticed him to undertake a journey to experience fruit for himself.

He went to the marketplace and inquired where he could find the land offruit. After much searching he located someone who knew the way. After a longand arduous journey, he came to the end of the directions and found himself atthe entrance to a large apple orchard. It was springtime and the apple trees werein blossom.

The scholar entered the orchard and, expectantly, pulled off a blossom andput it in his mouth. He liked neither the texture of the flower nor its taste. Hewent quickly to another tree and sampled another blossom, and then another,and another. Each blossom, though quite beautiful, was distasteful to him. Heleft the orchard and returned to his home country, reporting to his fellow villag-ers that fruit was a much overrated food.

Being unable to recognize the difference between the spring blossom and thesummer fruit, the scholar never realized that he had not experienced what hewas looking for.

—From Halcolm’s Inquiry Parables

� 3

Recognizing Qualitative Data

This book discusses how to collect, ana-lyze, and use qualitative data. To begin, let’sexamine the fruit of qualitative methods. It isimportant to know what qualitative dataand findings look like so that you will knowwhat you are seeking. It will also be impor-tant to consider criteria for judging the qual-ity of qualitative data. Apples come to mar-ket sorted by type (Red Delicious, Golden),purpose (e.g., cooking or eating), and qual-ity. Likewise, qualitative studies vary bytype, purpose, and quality.

Qualitative findings grow out of threekinds of data collection: (1) in-depth, open-ended interviews; (2) direct observation;and (3) written documents. Interviews yielddirect quotations from people about their ex-periences, opinions, feelings, and knowl-edge. The data from observations consist ofdetailed descriptions of people’s activities,behaviors, actions, and the full range of in-terpersonal interactions and organizational

processes that are part of observable hu-man experience. Document analysis includesstudying excerpts, quotations, or entire pas-sages from organizational, clinical, or pro-gram records; memoranda and correspon-dence; official publications and reports;personal diaries; and open-ended writtenresponses to questionnaires and surveys.(See Exhibit 1.1.)

The data for qualitative analysis typicallycome from fieldwork. During fieldwork, theresearcher spends time in the setting understudy—a program, an organization, a com-munity, or wherever situations of impor-tance to a study can be observed, people in-terviewed, and documents analyzed. Theresearcher makes firsthand observations ofactivities and interactions, sometimes en-gaging personally in those activities as a par-ticipant observer. For example, an evaluatormight participate in all or part of the pro-gram under study, participating as a regularprogram member, client, or student. Thequalitative researcher talks with people

4 � CONCEPTUAL ISSUES IN QUALITATIVE INQUIRY

EXHIBIT 1.1 Three Kinds of Qualitative Data

InterviewsOpen-ended questions and probes yield in-depth responses about people’s experiences, per-

ceptions, opinions, feelings, and knowledge. Data consist of verbatim quotations with sufficientcontext to be interpretable.

ObservationsFieldwork descriptions of activities, behaviors, actions, conversations, interpersonal interac-

tions, organizational or community processes, or any other aspect of observable human experi-ence. Data consist of field notes: rich, detailed descriptions, including the context within which theobservations were made.

DocumentsWritten materials and other documents from organizational, clinical, or programs records;

memoranda and correspondence; official publications and reports; personal diaries, letters, artis-tic works, photographs, and memorabilia; and written responses to open-ended surveys. Data con-sist of excerpts from documents captured in a way that records and preserves context.

about their experiences and perceptions.More formal individual or group interviewsmay be conducted. Relevant records anddocuments are examined. Extensive fieldnotes are collected through these observa-tions, interviews, and document reviews.The voluminous raw data in these fieldnotes are organized into readable narrativedescriptions with major themes, categories,and illustrative case examples extractedthrough content analysis. The themes, pat-terns, understandings, and insights thatemerge from fieldwork and subsequentanalysis are the fruit of qualitative inquiry.

Qualitative findings may be presentedalone or in combination with quantitativedata. Research and evaluation studies em-ploying multiple methods, including combi-nations of qualitative and quantitative data,are common. At the simplest level, a ques-tionnaire or interview that asks both fixed-choice (closed) questions and open-endedquestions is an example of how quantitativemeasurement and qualitative inquiry are of-ten combined.

The quality of qualitative data dependsto a great extent on the methodologicalskill, sensitivity, and integrity of the re-searcher. Systematic and rigorous obser-vation involves far more than just beingpresent and looking around. Skillful inter-viewing involves much more than justasking questions. Content analysis re-quires considerably more than just read-ing to see what’s there. Generating usefuland credible qualitative findings throughobservation, interviewing, and contentanalysis requires discipline, knowledge,training, practice, creativity, and hardwork.

This chapter provides an overview ofqualitative inquiry. Later chapters exam-ine how to choose among the many op-tions available within the broad range ofqualitative methods, theoretical perspec-tives, and applications; how to design aqualitative study; how to use observa-tional methods and conduct in-depth,open-ended interviews; and how to ana-lyze qualitative data to generate findings.

� Qualitative Findings: Themes, Patterns,Concepts, Insights, Understandings

Newton and the apple. Freud and anxiety. Jung and dreams. Piagetand his children. Darwin and Galapagos tortoises. Marx and

England’s factories. Whyte and street corners. What are you obsessed with?

—Halcolm

Mary Field Belenky and her colleaguesset out to study women’s ways of knowing.They conducted extensive interviews with135 women from diverse backgrounds prob-ing how they thought about knowledge, au-thority, truth, themselves, life changes, andlife in general. They worked as a team togroup similar responses and stories to-

gether, informed partly by previous re-search but ultimately basing the analysison their own collective sense of what cate-gories best captured what they found inthe narrative data. They argued with eachother about which responses belonged inwhich categories. They created and aban-doned categories. They looked for com-

The Nature of Qualitative Inquiry � 5

monalities and differences. They workedhard to honor the diverse points of view theyfound while also seeking patterns across sto-ries, experiences, and perspectives. Onetheme emerged as particularly powerful:“Again and again women spoke of ‘gainingvoice’ ” (Belenky et al. 1986:16). Voice versussilence emerged as a central metaphor for

informing variations in ways of knowing.After painstaking analysis, they ended upwith the five categories of knowing summa-rized in Exhibit 1.2, a framework that be-came very influential in women’s studiesand represents one kind of fruit from quali-tative inquiry.


Discovery of an early qualitative evaluation report

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One of the best-known and most influen-tial books in organizational developmentand management is In Search of Excellence:Lessons From America’s Best-Run Companies.Peters and Waterman (1982) based the bookon case studies of 62 highly regarded com-panies. They visited companies, conductedextensive interviews, and studied corporatedocuments. From that massive amount ofdata they extracted eight attributes of excel-lence: (1) a bias for action; (2) close to the cus-tomer; (3) autonomy and entrepreneurship;(4) productivity through people; (5) hands-on, value-driven; (6) stick to the knitting; (7)simple form, lean staff; and (8) simultaneousloose-tight properties. Their book devotes achapter to each theme with case examplesand implications. Their research helpedlaunch the quality movement that has nowmoved from the business world to not-for-profit organizations and government. Thisstudy also illustrates a common qualitativesampling strategy: studying a relativelysmall number of special cases that are suc-cessful at something and therefore a goodsource of lessons learned.

Stephen Covey (1990) used this samesampling approach in doing case studies of“highly effective people.” He identifiedseven habits these people practice: (1) beingproactive; (2) beginning with the end inmind; (3) putting first things first; (4) think-ing win/win; (5) seeking first to understand,then seeking to be understood; (6) syner-gizing, or engaging in creative cooperation;and (7) self-renewal.

Both of these best-selling books, In Searchof Excellence and The 7 Habits of Highly Effec-tive People, distill a small number of impor-tant lessons from a huge amount of databased on outstanding exemplars. It is com-mon in qualitative analysis for mounds offield notes and months of work to reduce to asmall number of core themes. The quality ofthe insights generated is what matters, notthe number of such insights. For example, inan evaluation of 34 programs aimed at peo-ple in poverty, we found a core theme thatseparated more effective from less effectiveprograms: How people are treated affectshow they treat others. If staff members aretreated autocratically and insensitively by


EXHIBIT 1.2Women’s Ways of Knowing:An Example of Qualitative Findings

Silence: A position in which women experience themselves as mindless and voiceless andsubject to the whims of external authority.

Received knowledge: Women conceive of themselves as capable of receiving, even reproducingknowledge from external authorities, but not capable of creating knowledge on their own.

Subjective knowledge: A perspective from which truth and knowledge are conceived aspersonal, private, and subjectively known or intuited.

Procedural knowledge: Women are invested in learning and apply objective procedures forobtaining and communicating knowledge.

Constructed knowledge: Women view all knowledge as contextual, experience themselves ascreators of knowledge, and value both subjective and objective strategies for knowing.

SOURCE: Belenky et al. (1986:15).

management, with suspicion and disre-spect, staff will treat clients the same way.Contrariwise, responsiveness reinforces re-sponsiveness, and empowerment breedsempowerment. These insights became thecenterpiece of subsequent cross-project, col-laborative organizational and staff develop-ment processes.

A different kind of qualitative finding isillustrated by Angela Browne’s book WhenBattered Women Kill (1987). Browne con-ducted in-depth interviews with 42 womenfrom 15 states who were charged with acrime in the death or serious injury of theirmates. She was often the first to hear thesewomen’s stories. She used one couple’s his-tory and vignettes from nine others, repre-sentative of the entire sample, to illuminatethe progression of an abusive relationshipfrom romantic courtship to the onset ofabuse through its escalation until it was on-going and eventually provoked a homicide.Her work helped lead to legal recognitionof battered women’s syndrome as a legiti-mate defense, especially in offering insightinto the common outsider’s question: Whydoesn’t the woman just leave? An insider’sperspective on the debilitating, destructive,and all-encompassing brutality of batteringreveals that question for what it is: the facilejudgment of one who hasn’t been there. Theeffectiveness of Browne’s careful, detailed,and straightforward descriptions and quo-tations lies in their capacity to take us insidethe abusive relationship. Offering that in-side perspective powers qualitative report-ing.

Clark Moustakas (1995), a humanisticpsychologist and phenomenologist, alsogives us an insider’s perspective: hisown. An astute and dedicated observer ofrelationships, especially therapeutic rela-tionships, he drew deeply on his own expe-riences and clinical cases to identify, dis-

tinguish, and elaborate three primary pro-cesses that contribute to the development ofa relationship: “Being-In,” “Being-For,” and“Being-With.”

• Being-In involves immersing oneself inanother’s world: listening deeply and atten-tively so as to enter into the other person’sexperience and perception. “I do not select,interpret, advise, or direct. . . . Being-In theworld of the other is a way of going wideopen, entering in as if for the first time, hear-ing just what is, leaving out my ownthoughts, feelings, theories, biases. . . . I enterwith the intention of understanding and ac-cepting perceptions and not presenting myown view or reactions. . . . I only want to en-courage and support the other person’s ex-pression, what and how it is, how it came tobe, and where it is going.” (Moustakas 1995:82-83)

• Being-For involves taking a stand insupport of the other person, being there forthe other. “I am listening. I am also offering aposition, and that position has an element ofmy being on that person’s side, against allothers who would minimize, deprecate, ordeny this person’s right to be and to grow. . . .I become an advocate of the person with ref-erence to his or her frustrations and prob-lems in dealing with others.” (Moustakas1995:83)

• Being-With involves being present asone’s own person in relation to another per-son, bringing one’s own knowledge and ex-perience into the relationship. “This may in-volve disagreeing with the other’s ways ofinterpreting or judging or presenting someaspect of the world. Being-With means lis-tening and hearing the other’s feelings,thoughts, objectives, but it also means offer-ing my own perceptions and views. There is,in Being-With, a sense of joint enterprise—two people fully involved, struggling, ex-ploring, sharing.” (Moustakas 1995:84)


Qualitative findings often have this sim-ple yet elegant and insightful character. Thisstraightforward yet nuanced frameworkrepresents a creative synthesis of years ofparticipant observation and personal in-quiry. Through cases, dialogues, quotations,cases, and introspective reflections, Mous-takas illuminates the process of movingfrom Being-In to Being-For and ultimatelyBeing-With. His work exemplifies the con-tribution of phenomenological inquiry tohumanistic psychology.

Still a different format for capturing andreporting qualitative findings is illustratedby my own inquiry into alternative coming-of-age approaches. I used the device of con-structing ideal-typical alternative para-digms to compare and contrast what Ilearned (Patton 1997a). Exhibit 1.3 providesa sampling of contrasts between traditionaltribe-centered initiations and modern youth-centered coming-of-age celebrations. Thesekinds of polar contrasts can sometimes setup a Hegelian dialectic of thesis and antithe-

sis that leads to a new synthesis. In philoso-phy such contrasts derive from the rumina-tions of philosophers; in qualitative researchsuch thematic contrasts emanate from andare grounded in fieldwork.

This quick sampling of the fruit of quali-tative inquiry is meant, like a wine tasting, todemonstrate choices toward developing amore sophisticated palate, or like appetiz-ers, as an opening to the fuller feast yet tocome. The next section discusses some of thedifferent research and evaluation purposesthat affect what kind of fruit results fromqualitative inquiry and how the quality ofthat fruit is judged.

Different Purposes of andAudiences for Qualitative Studies:Research, Evaluation, Dissertations,and Personal Inquiry

As the title of this book indicates, qualita-tive methods are used in both research and


EXHIBIT 1.3 Coming-of-Age Paradigms

Dimensionsof Comparison Tribal Initiation Modern Coming of Age

View of life passages One-time transition from childto adult

Multiple passages over a lifetimejourney

Territory Tribal territory Earth: Global community

Ancestry Creation myth Evolutionary story of humankind

Identity Becoming a man or woman Becoming a complete person

Approach Standardized Individualized

Outcome Tribe-based identity Personality identity: Sense of self

Message You are first and foremost amember of the tribe

You are first and foremost a personin your own right

SOURCE: Patton (1999a:333, 335).

evaluation. But because the purposes of re-search and evaluation are different, the crite-ria for judging qualitative studies can varydepending on purpose. This point is impor-tant. It means one can’t judge the appropri-ateness of the methods in any study or thequality of the resulting findings withoutknowing the study’s purpose, agreed-onuses, and intended audiences. Evaluationand research typically have different pur-poses, expected uses, and intended users.Dissertations add yet another layer of com-plexity to this mix. Let’s begin with evalua-tion.

Program evaluation is the systematic col-lection of information about the activities,characteristics, and outcomes of programsto make judgments about the program, im-prove program effectiveness, and/or informdecisions about future programming. Pol-icies, organizations, and personnel can alsobe evaluated. Evaluative research, quitebroadly, can include any effort to judge orenhance human effectiveness through sys-tematic data-based inquiry. Human beingsare engaged in all kinds of efforts to makethe world a better place. These efforts in-clude assessing needs, formulating policies,passing laws, delivering programs, manag-ing people and resources, providing ther-apy, developing communities, changing or-ganizational culture, educating students,intervening in conflicts, and solving prob-lems. In these and other efforts to make theworld a better place, the question of whetherthe people involved are accomplishing whatthey want to accomplish arises. When oneexamines and judges accomplishments andeffectiveness, one is engaged in evaluation.When this examination of effectiveness isconducted systematically and empiricallythrough careful data collection and thought-ful analysis, one is engaged in evaluation re-search.

Qualitative methods are often used inevaluations because they tell the program’sstory by capturing and communicating theparticipants’ stories. Evaluation case studieshave all the elements of a good story. Theytell what happened, when, to whom, andwith what consequences. Many examples inthis book are drawn from program evalua-tion, policy analysis, and organizational de-velopment. The purpose of such studies is togather information and generate findingsthat are useful. Understanding the pro-gram’s and participants’ stories is useful tothe extent that they illuminate the processesand outcomes of the program for those whomust make decisions about the program. InUtilization-Focused Evaluation (Patton 1997a),I presented a comprehensive approach todoing evaluations that are useful, practical,ethical, and accurate. The primary criterionfor judging such evaluations is the extent towhich intended users actually use the find-ings for decision making and program im-provement. The methodological implicationof this criterion is that the intended usersmust value the findings and find them credi-ble. They must be interested in the stories,experiences, and perceptions of programparticipants beyond simply knowing howmany came into the program, how manycompleted it, and how many did what after-ward. Qualitative findings in evaluation il-luminate the people behind the numbersand put faces on the statistics, not to makehearts bleed, though that may occur, but todeepen understanding.

Research, especially fundamental or basicresearch, differs from evaluation in that itsprimary purpose is to generate or test theoryand contribute to knowledge for the sake ofknowledge. Such knowledge, and the theo-ries that undergird knowledge, may subse-quently inform action and evaluation, butaction is not the primary purpose of funda-


mental research. Qualitative inquiry is espe-cially powerful as a source of grounded the-ory, theory that is inductively generatedfrom fieldwork, that is, theory that emergesfrom the researcher’s observations and in-terviews out in the real world rather than inthe laboratory or the academy. The primaryaudiences for research are other researchersand scholars, as well as policymakers andothers interested in understanding somephenomenon or problem of interest. The re-search training, methodological prefer-ences, and scientific values of those who useresearch will affect how valuable and credi-ble they find the empirical and theoreticalfruit of qualitative studies.

Dissertations and graduate theses offerspecial insight into the importance of atten-tion to audience. Savvy graduate studentslearn that to complete a degree program, thestudent’s committee must approve thework. The particular understandings, val-ues, preferences, and biases of committeemembers come into play in that approvalprocess. The committee will, in essence,evaluate the student’s contribution, includ-

ing the quality of the methodological proce-dures followed and the analysis done. Qual-itative dissertations, once quite rare, havebecome increasingly common as the criteriafor judging qualitative contributions toknowledge have become better understoodand accepted. But those criteria are not abso-lute or universally agreed on. As we shallsee, there are many varieties of qualitativeinquiry and multiple criteria for judgingquality, many of which remain disputed.

While the preceding discussion of evalua-tion, research, and dissertations has empha-sized taking into account external audiencesand consumers of qualitative studies, it isalso important to acknowledge that you maybe the primary intended audience for yourwork. You may study something becauseyou want to understand it. As my childrengrew to adulthood, I found myself askingquestions about coming of age in modernsociety so I undertook a personal inquiry thatbecame a book (Patton 1997a), but I didn’tstart out to write a book. I started out tryingto understand my own experience and theexperiences of my children. That is a form of


QUALIA

Neurologist V. S. Ramachandran studies uniquecases of brain damage trying to find out how ayoung man can think his parents are imposters;why a woman with a stroke laughs uncontrol-lably; how a man with a stroke can be obliviousto being paralyzed on one side; why amputeeshave intense feeling, even pain, in missinglimbs; and why an epilepsy patient has in-tense religious experiences. Beyond what canbe measured in brain waves and electrical im-pulses, he strives to understand “qualia”—what humans subjectively add to the scientifi-

cally measurable aspects of experience. Thisinvolves inquiry into the greatest sharedchallenge for neuroscience, social sciences,and philosophy: understanding consciousness.Ramachandran postulates that consciousnessmay involve the capacity to process qualia andthat that capacity resides in a specific brainlocation (Ramachandran and Blakeslee, 1998).

If Ramachandran is right, qualitative in-quirers may need that part of the brain to be es-pecially active, accessible, and responsive.

qualitative inquiry. While doing interviewswith recipients of MacArthur FoundationFellowships (popularly called “GeniusAwards”), I was told by a social scientist thather fieldwork was driven by her own searchfor understanding and that she disciplinedherself to not even think about publicationwhile engaged in interviewing and observ-ing because she didn’t want to have her in-quiry affected by attention to external audi-ences. She wanted to know because she wantedto know, and she had made a series of careerand professional decisions that allowed herto focus on her personal inquiry without be-ing driven by the traditional academic ad-monition to “publish or perish.” She didn’twant to subject herself to or have her workinfluenced by external criteria and judg-ment.

In summary, all inquiry designs are af-fected by intended purpose and targeted au-dience, but purpose and audience deservespecial emphasis in the case of qualitativestudies, where the criteria for judging qual-ity may be poorly understood or in dispute,even among qualitative methodologists.This book cannot resolve these debates, butit will illuminate the methodological op-tions and their implications. (Chapter 9 dis-cusses alternative criteria for judging thequality of qualitative studies.)

The implication of thinking about pur-pose and audience in designing studies isthat methods, no less than knowledge, aredependent on context. No rigid rules canprescribe what data to gather to investigate aparticular interest or problem. There is norecipe or formula in making methods deci-sions. Widely respected psychometricianLee J. Cronbach has observed that design-ing a study is as much art as science. It is“an exercise of the dramatic imagination”(Cronbach 1982:239). In research as in art,there can be no single, ideal standard.Beauty no less than “truth” is in the eye ofthe beholder, and the beholders of researchand evaluation can include a plethora ofstakeholders: scholars, policymakers, fund-ers, program managers, staff, program par-ticipants, journalists, critics, and the generalpublic. Any given design inevitably reflectssome imperfect interplay of resources, capa-bilities, purposes, possibilities, creativity, andpersonal judgments by the people involved.

Research, like diplomacy, is the art of thepossible. Exhibit 1.4 provides a set of ques-tions to consider in the design process, re-gardless of type of inquiry. With that back-ground, we can turn to consideration of therelative strengths and weaknesses of quali-tative and quantitative methods.

� Methods Choices: ContrastingQualitative and Quantitative Emphases

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything thatcounts can be counted.

—Albert Einstein


Making Methods Decisions

Thinking about design alternatives andmethods choices leads directly to consider-ation of the relative strengths and weak-nesses of qualitative and quantitative data.The approach here is pragmatic. Some ques-tions lend themselves to numerical answers;some don’t. If you want to know how muchpeople weigh, use a scale. If you want to

know if they’re obese, measure body fat inrelation to height and weight and comparethe results to population norms. If you wantto know what their weight means to them,how it affects them, how they think about it,and what they do about it, you need to askthem questions, find out about their experi-ences, and hear their stories. A comprehen-


EXHIBIT 1.4Some Guiding Questions and Options forMethods Decisions

1. What are the purposes of the inquiry?Research: Contribution to knowledgeEvaluation: Program improvement and decision makingDissertation: Demonstrate doctoral-level scholarshipPersonal inquiry: Find out for oneself

2. Who are the primary audiences for the findings?Scholars, researchers, academiciansProgram funders, administrators, staff, participantsDoctoral committeeOneself, friends, family, lovers

3. What questions will guide the inquiry?Theory-derived, theory-testing, and/or theory-oriented questionsPractical, applied, action-oriented questions and issuesAcademic degree or discipline/specialization prioritiesMatters of personal interest and concern, even passion

4. What data will answer or illuminate the inquiry questions?Qualitative: Interviews, field observations, documentsQuantitative: Surveys, tests, experiments, secondary dataMixed methods: What kind of mix? Which methods are primary?

5. What resources are available to support the inquiry?Financial resourcesTimePeople resourcesAccess, connections

6. What criteria will be used to judge the quality of the findings?Traditional research criteria: Rigor, validity, reliability, generalizabilityEvaluation standards: Utility, feasibility, propriety, accuracyNontraditional criteria: Trustworthiness, diversity of perspectives, clarity of voice, credibility

6. of the inquirer to primary users of the findings

sive and multifaceted understanding ofweight in people’s lives requires both theirnumbers and their stories. Doctors who lookonly at test results and don’t also listen totheir patients are making judgments withinadequate knowledge, and vice versa.

Qualitative methods facilitate study of is-sues in depth and detail. Approaching field-work without being constrained by prede-termined categories of analysis contributesto the depth, openness, and detail of qualita-tive inquiry. Quantitative methods, on theother hand, require the use of standardizedmeasures so that the varying perspectivesand experiences of people can be fit into alimited number of predetermined responsecategories to which numbers are assigned.

The advantage of a quantitative approachis that it’s possible to measure the reactionsof a great many people to a limited set ofquestions, thus facilitating comparison andstatistical aggregation of the data. This givesa broad, generalizable set of findings pre-sented succinctly and parsimoniously. Bycontrast, qualitative methods typically pro-duce a wealth of detailed information abouta much smaller number of people and cases.This increases the depth of understanding ofthe cases and situations studied but reducesgeneralizability.

Validity in quantitative research dependson careful instrument construction to ensurethat the instrument measures what it issupposed to measure. The instrument mustthen be administered in an appropriate,standardized manner according to pre-scribed procedures. The focus is on the mea-suring instrument—the test items, surveyquestions, or other measurement tools. Inqualitative inquiry, the researcher is the in-strument. The credibility of qualitativemethods, therefore, hinges to a great extenton the skill, competence, and rigor of theperson doing fieldwork—as well as thingsgoing on in a person’s life that might prove

a distraction. Guba and Lincoln (1981) havecommented on this aspect of qualitativeresearch:

Fatigue, shifts in knowledge, and cooptation,as well as variations resulting from differencesin training, skill, and experience among differ-ent “instruments,” easily occur. But this loss inrigor is more than offset by the flexibility, in-sight, and ability to build on tacit knowledgethat is the peculiar province of the human in-strument. (p. 113)

Because qualitative and quantitativemethods involve differing strengths andweaknesses, they constitute alternative, butnot mutually exclusive, strategies for re-search. Both qualitative and quantitativedata can be collected in the same study. Tofurther illustrate these contrasting ap-proaches and provide concrete examples ofthe fruit of qualitative inquiry, the rest of thischapter presents select excerpts from actualstudies.

Comparing Two Kindsof Data: An Example

The Technology for Literacy Center was acomputer-based adult literacy program inSaint Paul, Minnesota. It operated out of astorefront facility in a lower-socioeconomicarea of the city. In 1988, after three years ofpilot operation, a major funding decisionhad to be made about whether to continuethe program. Anticipating the funding deci-sion, a year earlier local foundations and thepublic schools had supported a summativeevaluation to determine the overall outcomesand cost-effectiveness of the center. Theevaluation design included both quantita-tive and qualitative data.

The quantitative testing data showedgreat variation. The statistics on average


achievement gains masked great differencesamong participants. The report concludedthat although testing showed substantialachievement test gains for the treatmentgroup versus the control group, the moreimportant finding concerned the highly in-dividualized nature of student progress. Thereport concluded, “The data on variation inachievement and instructional hours lead toa very dramatic, important and significantfinding: there is no average student at TLC”(Patton and Stockdill 1987:33).

This finding highlights the kind of pro-gram or treatment situation where qualita-tive data are particularly helpful and appro-priate. The Technology for Literacy Centerhas a highly individualized program inwhich learners proceed at their own pacebased on specific needs and interest. Thestudents come in at very different levels,with a range of goals, participate in widelyvarying ways, and make very differentgains. Average gain scores and averagehours of instruction provide a parsimoniousoverview of aggregate progress, but suchstatistical data do little to help funders un-derstand what the individual variationmeans. To get at the meaning of the programfor individual participants, the evaluationincluded case studies and qualitative datafrom interviews.

INDIVIDUAL CASE EXAMPLES

One case is the story of Barbara Jenkins, a65-year-old Black grandmother who came toMinnesota after a childhood in the deepSouth. She works as a custodian and housecleaner and is proud of never having been onwelfare. She is the primary breadwinner fora home with five children spanning threegenerations, including her oldest daugh-ter’s teenage children for whom she hascared since her daughter’s unexpected

death from hepatitis. During the week sheseldom gets more than three hours of sleepeach night. At the time of the case study, shehad spent 15 months in the program andprogressed from not reading at all (second-grade level) to being a regular library user(and testing a grade level higher than whereshe began). She developed an interest inBlack history and reported being particu-larly pleased at being able to read the Bibleon her own. She described what it was likenot being able to read:

Where do you go for a job? You can’t make outan application. You go to a doctor and youcan’t fill out the forms, and it’s very embar-rassing. You have to depend on other peopleto do things like this for you. Sometimes youdon’t even want to ask your own kids becauseit’s just like you’re depending too much onpeople, and sometimes they do it willingly,and sometimes you have to beg people tohelp. . . .

All the progress has made me feel lotsbetter about myself because I can do some ofthe things I’ve been wanting to do and I could-n’t do. It’s made me feel more independent todo things myself instead of depending onother people to do them for me.

A second contrasting case tells the storyof Sara Johnson, a 42-year-old Caucasianwoman who dropped out of school in the10th grade. She is a clerical office manager.She tested at 12th-grade level on entry to theprogram. After 56 hours of study over 17days, she received her general equivalencydiploma (GED), making her a high schoolgraduate. She immediately entered college.She said that the decision to return for herGED was

an affirmation, as not having a diploma hadreally hurt me for a long time. . . . It was alwaysscary wondering if somebody actually found


out that I was not a graduate that they wouldfire me or they wouldn’t accept me because Ihadn’t graduated. The hardest thing for me todo was tell my employer. He is very much intoeducation and our company is education-oriented. So the hardest thing I ever had to dowas tell him I was a high school dropout. Ineeded to tell because I needed time to go andtake the test. He was just so understanding.I couldn’t believe it. It was just wonderful.I thought he was going to be disappointed inme, and he thought it was wonderful that Iwas going back. He came to graduation.

These short excerpts from two contrast-ing cases illustrate the value of detailed, de-scriptive data in deepening our understand-ing of individual variation. Knowing thateach woman progressed about one gradelevel on a standardized reading test is only asmall part of a larger, much more complexpicture. Yet, with over 500 people in the pro-gram, it would be overwhelming forfunders and decision makers to attempt tomake sense of 500 detailed case studies(about 5,000 double-spaced pages). Statisti-cal data provide a succinct and parsimoni-ous summary of major patterns, while selectcase studies provide depth, detail, and indi-vidual meaning.

OPEN-ENDED INTERVIEWS

Another instructive contrast is to com-pare closed-ended questionnaire resultswith responses to open-ended group inter-views. Questionnaire responses to quantita-tive, standardized items indicated that 77%of the adult literacy students were “veryhappy” with the Technology for LiteracyCenter program; 74% reported learning “agreat deal.” These and similar results re-vealed a general pattern of satisfaction andprogress. But what did the program mean tostudents in their own words?

To get the perspective of students, I con-ducted group interviews. “Groups are notjust a convenient way to accumulate the in-dividual knowledge of their members. Theygive rise synergistically to insights and solu-tions that would not come about withoutthem” (Brown, Collins, and Duguid 1989:40). In group interviews I asked students todescribe the program’s outcomes in per-sonal terms. I asked, “What difference haswhat you are learning made in your lives?”Here are some responses.

I love the newspaper now, and actually read it.Yeah, I love to pick up the newspaper now. Iused to hate it. Now I love the newspaper.

I can follow sewing directions. I make a gro-cery list now, so I’m a better shopper. I don’tforget things.

Yeah, you don’t know how embarrassing it isto go shopping and not be able to read thewife’s grocery list. It’s helped me out so muchin the grocery store.

Helps me with my medicine. Now I can readthe bottles and the directions! I was afraid togive the kids medicine before because I wasn’tsure.

I don’t get lost anymore. I can find my wayaround. I can make out directions, read themap. I work construction and we change loca-tions a lot. Now I can find my way around. Idon’t get lost anymore!

Just getting a driver’s license will be wonder-ful. I’m 50. If I don’t get the GED, but if I canget a license . . . ! I can drive well, but I’m scaredto death of the written test. Just getting adriver’s license . . . , a driver’s license.

Now I read outdoor magazines. I used to justread the titles of books—now I read the books!

I was always afraid to read at school and atchurch. I’m not afraid to read the Bible now at


Bible class. It’s really important to me to beable to read the Bible.

I can fill out applications now. You have toknow how to fill out an application in thisworld. I can look in the Yellow Pages. It used tobe so embarrassing not to be able to fill out ap-plications, not to be able to find things in theYellow Pages. I feel so much better now. Atleast my application is filled out right, even if Idon’t get the job, at least my application isfilled out right.

I’m learning just enough to keep ahead of mykids. My family is my motivation. Me and myfamily. Once you can read to your kids, itmakes all the difference in the world. It helpsyou to want to read and to read more. When Ican read myself, I can help them read so theycan have a better life. The kids love it when Iread to them.

These group interview excerpts providesome qualitative insights into the individ-ual, personal experiences of adults learningto read. The questionnaire results (77% satis-fied) provided data on statistically general-izable patterns, but the standardized ques-tions only tap the surface of what it meansfor the program to have had “great per-ceived impact.” The much smaller sample ofopen-ended interviews adds depth, detail,and meaning at a very personal level of ex-perience. Another example will show thatqualitative data can yield not only deeperunderstanding but also political action asthe depth of participants’ feelings is re-vealed.

The Power of Qualitative Data

In the early 1970s, the school system ofKalamazoo, Michigan, implemented a newaccountability system. It was a complex sys-tem that included using standardized

achievement tests administered in both falland spring, criterion-referenced tests devel-oped by teachers, performance objectives,teacher peer ratings, student ratings ofteachers, parent ratings of teachers, princi-pal ratings of teachers, and teacher self-ratings.

The Kalamazoo accountability system be-gan to attract national attention. For exam-ple, the American School Board Journal re-ported in April 1974 that “Kalamazooschools probably will have one of the mostcomprehensive computerized systems ofpersonnel evaluation and accountability yetdevised” (p. 40). In the first of a three-part se-ries on Kalamazoo, the American SchoolBoard Journal asserted: “Take it from Kala-mazoo: a comprehensive, performance-basedsystem of evaluation and accountability canwork” (“Kalamazoo Schools” 1974:32).

Not everyone agreed with that positiveassessment, however. The Kalamazoo Edu-cation Association charged that teacherswere being demoralized by the accountabil-ity system. Some school officials, on theother hand, argued that teachers did notwant to be accountable. In the spring of 1976,the Kalamazoo Education Association, withassistance from the Michigan Education As-sociation and the National Education Asso-ciation, sponsored a survey of teachers tofind out the teachers’ perspective on the ac-countability program (Perrone and Patton1976).

The education association officials wereinterested primarily in a questionnaire con-sisting of standardized items. One part ofthe closed-ended questionnaire providedteachers with a set of statements with whichthey could agree or disagree. The question-naire results showed that teachers felt the ac-countability system was largely ineffectiveand inadequate. For example, 90% of theteachers disagreed with the school adminis-tration’s published statement “The Kala-


mazoo accountability system is designed topersonalize and individualize education”;88% reported that the system does not assistteachers to become more effective; 90% re-sponded that the accountability system hasnot improved educational planning inKalamazoo; and 93% believed, “Account-ability as practiced in Kalamazoo creates anundesirable atmosphere of anxiety amongteachers.” And 90% asserted, “The account-ability system is mostly a public relations ef-fort.” Nor did teachers feel that the account-ability system fairly reflected what they didas teachers, since 97% of them agreed, “Ac-countability as practiced in Kalamazooplaces too much emphasis on things that canbe quantified so that it misses the results ofteaching that are not easily measured.”

It is relatively clear from these statementsthat most teachers who responded to thequestionnaire were negative about the ac-countability system. When school officialsand school board members reviewed thequestionnaire results, however, many ofthem immediately dismissed those resultsby arguing that they had never expectedteachers to like the system, teachers didn’treally want to be accountable, and the teach-ers’ unions had told their teachers to re-spond negatively anyway. In short, manyschool officials and school board membersdismissed the questionnaire results as bi-ased, inaccurate, and the results of teacherunion leaders telling teachers how to re-spond in order to discredit the school au-thorities.

The same questionnaire included twoopen-ended questions. The first was placedmidway through the questionnaire, and thesecond came at the end of the questionnaire.

1. Please use this space to make any fur-ther comments or recommendationsconcerning any component of the ac-countability system.

2. Finally, we’d like you to use this space toadd any additional comments you’dlike to make about any part of theKalamazoo accountability system.

A total of 373 teachers (70% of those whoresponded to the questionnaire) took thetime to respond to one of these open-endedquestions. All of the comments made byteachers were typed verbatim and includedin the report. These open-ended data filled101 pages. When the school officials andschool board members rejected the ques-tionnaire data, rather than argue with themabout the meaningfulness of teacher re-sponses to the standardized items, we askedthem to turn to the pages of open-endedteacher comments and simply read at ran-dom what teachers said. Examples of thecomments they read, and could read on vir-tually any page in the report, are reproducedbelow in six representative responses fromthe middle pages of the report.

Teacher Response No. 284: “I don’t feel thatfear is necessary in an accountability situation.The person at the head of a school system hasto be human, not a machine. You just don’ttreat people like they are machines!

“The superintendent used fear in this sys-tem to get what he wanted. That’s very hard toexplain in a short space. It’s something youhave to live through to appreciate. He lied onmany occasions and was very deceitful. Teach-ers need a situation where they feel comfort-able. I’m not saying that accountability is notgood. I am saying the one we have is lousy. It’shurting the students—the very ones we’resupposed to be working for.”

Teacher Response No. 257: “This system iscreating an atmosphere of fear and intimida-tion. I can only speak for the school I am in, butpeople are tense, hostile and losing their hu-manity. Gone is the good will and team spiritof administration and staff and I believe this


all begins at the top. One can work in theseconditions but why, if it is to ‘shape up’ a fewpoor teachers. Instead, it’s having disastrousresults on the whole faculty community.”

Teacher Response No. 244: “In order to fullyunderstand the oppressive, stifling atmo-sphere in Kalamazoo you have to ‘be in thetrenches’—the classrooms. In 10 years ofteaching, I have never ended a school year asdepressed about ‘education’ as I have thisyear. If things do not improve in the next twoyears, I will leave education. The Kalamazooaccountability system must be viewed in itstotality and not just the individual componentparts of it. In toto, it is oppressive and stifling.

“In teaching government and history, stu-dents often asked what it was like to live in adictatorship. I now know firsthand.

“The superintendent with his accountabil-ity model and his abrasive condescendingmanner has managed in three short years todestroy teacher morale and effective creativeclassroom teaching.

“Last evening my wife and I went to an endof the school year party. The atmosphere therewas strange—little exuberance, laughter or re-lease. People who in previous years laughed,sang and danced were unnaturally quiet andsomber. Most people went home early. Thekey topic was the superintendent, the schoolboard election, and a millage campaign. Peo-ple are still tense and uncertain.

“While the school board does not ‘pay us tobe happy’ it certainly must recognize thatemotional stability is necessary for effectiveteaching to take place. The involuntary trans-fers, intimidation, coercion and top to bottom‘channelized’ communication in Kalamazoomust qualify this school system for the list of‘least desirable’ school systems in the nation.”

Teacher Response No. 233: “I have taught inKalamazoo for 15 years and under five super-intendents. Until the present superintendent, Ifound working conditions to be enjoyable and

teachers and administration and the Board ofEducation all had a good working relation-ship. In the past 4 years—under the presentsuperintendent—I find the atmosphere dete-riorating to the point where teachers distrusteach other and teachers do not trust adminis-trators at all! We understand the position theadministrators have been forced into and feelcompassion for them—however—we stillhave no trust! Going to school each morning isno longer an enjoyable experience.”

Teacher Response No. 261: “A teacherneeds some checks and balances to functioneffectively; it would be ridiculous to thinkotherwise—if you are a concerned teacher. Butin teaching you are not turning out neatlypackaged little mechanical products all alikeand endowed with the same qualities. Thisnonsensical accountability program we havehere makes the superintendent look good tothe community. But someone who is in theclassroom dealing with all types of kids, somewho cannot read, some who hardly ever cometo school, some who are in and out of jail, thisteacher can see that and the rigid accountabil-ity model that neglects the above mentionedproblems is pure ‘BULLSHIT!’ ”

Teacher Response No. 251: “ ‘Fear’ is theword for ‘accountability’ as applied in our sys-tem. My teaching before ‘Accountability’ isthe same as now. ‘Accountability’ is a politicalploy to maintain power. Whatever good theremay have been in it in the beginning has beendestroyed by the awareness that each new ed-ucational ‘system’ has at its base a politicalmotive. Students get screwed. . . . The bitter-ness and hatred in our system is incredible.What began as ‘noble’ has been destroyed.You wouldn’t believe the new layers of admin-istration that have been created just to keepthis monster going.

“Our finest compliment around our state isthat the other school systems know what is go-


ing on and are having none of it. Lucky people.Come down and visit in hell sometime.”

Face Validity and Credibility

What was the impact of the qualitativedata collected from teachers in Kalamazoo?You will recall that many of the school boardmembers initially dismissed the standard-ized questionnaire responses as biased,rigged, and the predictable result of the un-ion’s campaign to discredit school officials.However, after reading through a few pagesof the teachers’ own personal comments, af-ter hearing about teachers’ experiences withthe accountability system in their ownwords, the tenor of the discussion about theevaluation report changed. School boardmembers could easily reject what they per-ceived as a “loaded” questionnaire. Theycould not so easily dismiss the anguish, fear,and depth of concern revealed in the teach-ers’ own reflections. The teachers’ wordshad face validity and credibility. Discussionof the evaluation results shifted from an at-tack on the measures used to the question:“What do you think we should do?”

During the summer of 1976, followingdiscussion of the evaluation report, the su-perintendent “resigned.” The new superin-tendent and school board in 1976-1977 usedthe evaluation report as a basis for startingfresh with teachers. A year later teacher as-sociation officials reported a new environ-ment of teacher-administration cooperationin developing a mutually acceptable ac-countability system. The evaluation reportdid not directly cause these changes. Manyother factors were involved in Kalamazoo atthat time. However, the qualitative informa-tion in the evaluation report revealed the fullscope and nature of teachers’ feelings aboutwhat it was like to work in the atmospherecreated by the accountability system. Thedepth of those feelings as expressed in the

teachers’ own words became part of the im-petus for change in Kalamazoo.

The Purpose ofOpen-Ended Responses

The preceding example illustrates the dif-ference between qualitative inquiry basedon responses to open-ended questions andquantitative measurement based on scalescomposed of standardized questionnaireitems. Quantitative measures are succinct,parsimonious, and easily aggregated foranalysis; quantitative data are systematic,standardized, and easily presented in ashort space. By contrast, the qualitative find-ings are longer, more detailed, and variablein content; analysis is difficult because re-


THROUGH THE EYES OF A CHILD

“I know of a small boy eight years old whosat alone on a park bench five or six hoursevery day for almost a week. He alternatelyplayed with the pigeons, watched the pass-ing people, made patterns in the air with hisfeet and legs, or looked blankly into space.On the fourth day of his visit to this bench, afriend of mine asked this boy why he satthere every day. He replied that his motherbrought him there in the mornings tellinghim to wait there while she looked for a joband a place for them to stay. There is noplace else for him to go. When asked whathe did all day he simply said that he watchedand he waited. He watched the pigeons andthe people. He made a game of guessingwhere each had to go. He said that mostly hejust waited for his mother to come at theend of the day so they could wait togetheruntil the night shelter opened” (Boxill1990:1).

sponses are neither systematic nor standard-ized. Yet, the open-ended responses permitone to understand the world as seen by therespondents. The purpose of gathering re-sponses to open-ended questions is to en-able the researcher to understand and cap-ture the points of view of other peoplewithout predetermining those points ofview through prior selection of question-naire categories. As Lofland (1971) put it:“To capture participants ‘in their own terms’one must learn their categories for renderingexplicable and coherent the flux of raw real-ity. That, indeed, is the first principle of qual-itative analysis” (p. 7, emphasis added).

Direct quotations are a basic source of rawdata in qualitative inquiry, revealing respon-dents’ depth of emotion, the ways they haveorganized their world, their thoughts aboutwhat is happening, their experiences, andtheir basic perceptions. The task for the qual-itative researcher is to provide a frameworkwithin which people can respond in a waythat represents accurately and thoroughlytheir points of view about the world, or thatpart of the world about which they are talk-ing—for example, their experience with aparticular program being evaluated. Too of-ten social scientists “enter the field with pre-conceptions that prevent them from allow-ing those studied to ‘tell it as they see it’ ”(Denzin 1978b:10).

I have included the Kalamazoo evalua-tion findings as an illustration of qualita-tive inquiry because open-ended responseson questionnaires represent the most ele-mentary form of qualitative data. There aresevere limitations to open-ended data col-lected in writing on questionnaires, limi-tations related to the writing skills of re-spondents, the impossibility of probing orextending responses, and the effort requiredof the person completing the questionnaire.Yet, even at this elementary level of inquiry,the depth and detail of feelings revealed in

the open-ended comments of the Kalama-zoo teachers illustrate the fruit of qualitativemethods.

While the Kalamazoo example illustratesthe most elementary form of qualitative in-quiry, namely, responses from open-endedquestionnaire items, the major way in whichqualitative researchers seek to understandthe perceptions, feelings, and knowledge ofpeople is through in-depth, intensive inter-viewing. The chapter on interviewing willdiscuss ways of gathering high-quality in-formation from people—data that reveal ex-periences with program activities and per-spectives on treatment impacts from thepoints of view of participants, staff, and oth-ers involved in and knowledgeable aboutthe program or treatment being evaluated.

Inquiry by Observation

What people say is a major source of qual-itative data, whether what they say is ob-tained verbally through an interview or inwritten form through document analysis orsurvey responses. There are limitations,however, to how much can be learned fromwhat people say. To understand fully thecomplexities of many situations, direct par-ticipation in and observation of the phenom-enon of interest may be the best researchmethod. Howard S. Becker, one of the lead-ing practitioners of qualitative methods inthe conduct of social science research, ar-gues that participant observation is the mostcomprehensive of all types of research strat-egies.

The most complete form of the sociological da-tum, after all, is the form in which the partici-pant observer gathers it: an observation ofsome social event, the events which precedeand follow it, and explanations of its meaningby participants and spectators, before, during,and after its occurrence. Such a datum gives us


more information about the event under studythan data gathered by any other sociologicalmethod. (Becker and Geer 1970:133)

Observational data, especially partici-pant observation, permit the evaluation re-searcher to understand a program or treat-


Certain really discriminating people like nothing better than to relax on thebeach with a good, in-depth, and detailed qualitative study in hand.

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ment to an extent not entirely possible usingonly the insights of others obtained throughinterviews. Of course, not everything canbe directly observed or experienced, andparticipant observation is a highly labor-intensive—and, therefore, relatively expensive—research strategy. In a later chapter, strate-gies for using observational methods, in-cluding both participant and nonparticipantapproaches, will be discussed at length. Mypurpose at this point is simply to give thereader another taste of the fruit of qualitativemethods. Before discussing how to collectobservational evaluation data, it is helpful toknow what such data should look like.

The purpose of observational analysis isto take the reader into the setting that wasobserved. This means that observationaldata must have depth and detail. The datamust be descriptive—sufficiently descrip-tive that the reader can understand what oc-curred and how it occurred. The observer’snotes become the eyes, ears, and perceptualsenses for the reader. The descriptions mustbe factual, accurate, and thorough withoutbeing cluttered by irrelevant minutiae andtrivia. The basic criterion to apply to a re-corded observation is the extent to which theobservation permits the reader to enter thesituation under study.

The observation that follows is meant toillustrate what such a descriptive account islike. This evaluation excerpt describes atwo-hour observation of mothers discussingtheir child rearing in a parent education pro-gram. The purpose of the program, one of 22such state-supported programs, was to in-crease the skills, knowledge, and confidenceof parents. The program was also aimed atproviding a support group for parents. Infunding the program, legislators empha-sized that they did not want parents to betold how to rear their children. Rather, thepurpose of the parent education sessionswas to increase the options available to par-

ents so that they could make consciouschoices about their own parenting styles andincrease their confidence about the choicesthey make. Parents were also to be treatedwith respect and to be recognized as the pri-mary educators of their children—in otherwords, the early childhood educators werenot to impose their expertise upon parentsbut, instead, to make clear that parents arethe real experts about their own children.

Site visits were made to all programs, andparenting discussions were observed oneach site visit. Descriptions of these sessionsthen became the primary data of the evalua-tion. In short, the evaluators were to be theeyes and ears of the legislature and the stateprogram staff, permitting them to under-stand what was happening in various parentsessions throughout the state. Descriptivedata about the sessions also provided a mir-ror for the staff who conducted those ses-sions, a way of looking at what they were do-ing to see if that was what they wanted to bedoing.

What follows is a description from onesuch session. The criterion that should beapplied in reading this description is the ex-tent to which sufficient data are provided totake you, the reader, into the setting and per-mit you to make your own judgment aboutthe nature and quality of parent educationbeing provided.

OBSERVATION DATA ILLUSTRATED:A DISCUSSION FOR MOTHERSOF TWO-YEAR-OLDS

The group discussion component of thisparent education program operates out of asmall classroom in the basement of a church.The toddler center is directly overhead onthe first floor so that noises made by the chil-dren these mothers have left upstairs can beheard during the discussion. The room is


just large enough for the 12 mothers, onestaff person, and me to sit along three sidesof the room. The fourth side is used for amovie screen. Some mothers are smoking.(The staff person told me afterward thatsmoking had been negotiated and agreed onamong the mothers.) The seats are paddedfolding chairs plus two couches. A few col-orful posters with pictures of children play-ing decorate the walls. Small tables are avail-able for holding coffee cups and ashtraysduring the discussion. The back wall is linedwith brochures on child care and child de-velopment, and a metal cabinet in the roomholds additional program materials.

The session begins with mothers watch-ing a 20-minute film about preschool chil-dren. The film forms the basis for getting dis-cussion started about “what two-year-oldsdo.” Louise, a part-time staff person in herearly 30s who has two young children of herown, one a two-year-old, leads the discus-sion. Louise asks the mothers to begin bypicking out from the film things that theirown children do, and talking about the waysome of the problems with children werehandled in the film. For the most part, themothers share happy, play activities theirchildren like. “My Johnny loves the play-ground just like the kids in the film.” “Yeah,mine could live on the playground.”

The focus of the discussion turns quicklyto what happens as children grow older,how they change and develop. Louise com-ments, “Don’t worry about what kids do at aparticular age. Like don’t worry that yourkid has to do a certain thing at age two or elsehe’s behind in development or ahead of de-velopment. There’s just a lot of variation inthe ages at which kids do things.”

The discussion is free flowing and, oncebegun, is not directed much by Louise.Mothers talk back and forth to each other,sharing experiences about their children. Amother will bring up a particular point and

other mothers will talk about their own ex-periences as they want to. For example, oneof the topics is the problem a mother is hav-ing with her child urinating in the bathtub.Other mothers share their experiences withthis problem, ways of handling it, andwhether or not to be concerned about it. Thecrux of that discussion seems to be that it isnot a big deal and not something that themother ought to be terribly concernedabout. It is important not to make it a bigdeal for the child; the child will outgrow it.

The discussion turns to things thattwo-year-olds can do around the house tohelp their mothers. This is followed by somediscussion of the things that two-year-oldscan’t do and some of their frustrations in try-ing to do things. There is a good deal oflaughing, sharing of funny stories aboutchildren, and sharing of frustrations aboutchildren. The atmosphere is informal andthere is a good deal of intensity in listening.Mothers seem especially to pick up onthings that they share in common about theproblems they have with their children.

Another issue from another mother is theproblem of her child pouring out her milk.She asks, “What does it mean?” This ques-tion elicits some suggestions about usingwater aprons and cups that don’t spill andother mothers’ similar problems, but the dis-cussion is not focused and does not reallycome to much closure. The water apron sug-gestion brings up a question about whetheror not a plastic bag is okay. The discussionturns to the safety problems with differentkinds of plastic bags. About 20 minutes ofdiscussion have now taken place. (At thispoint, one mother leaves because she hearsher child crying upstairs.)

The discussion returns to giving chil-dren baths. Louise interjects, “Two-year-olds should not be left alone in the bathtub.”With reference to the earlier discussionabout urinating in the bathtub, a mother in-


terjects that water with urine in it is prob-ably better than the lake water her kids swimin. The mother with the child who urinatesin the bathtub says again, “It really bugs mewhen he urinates in the tub.” Louise re-sponds, “It really is your problem, not his.If you can calm yourself down, he’ll beokay.”

At a lull in the discussion, Louise asks,“Did you agree with everything in themovie?” The mothers talk a bit about thisand focus on an incident in the movie whereone child bites another. Mothers share sto-ries about problems they’ve had with theirchildren biting. Louise interjects, “Biting canbe dangerous. It is important to do some-thing about biting.” The discussion turns towhat to do. One mother suggests biting thechild back. Another mother suggests thatkids will work it out themselves by bitingeach other back. Mothers get very agitated,more than one mother talks at a time. Louiseasks them to “cool it,” so that only one per-son talks at a time. (The mother who had leftreturns.)

The discussion about biting leads to a dis-cussion about child conflict and fighting ingeneral, for example, the problem of chil-dren hitting each other or hitting their moth-ers. Again, the question arises about what todo. One mother suggests that when her childhits her, she hits him back, or when her childbites her, she bites him back. Louise inter-jects, “Don’t model behavior you don’t like.”She goes on to explain that her philosophy isthat you should not do things as a model forchildren that you don’t want them to do. Shesays that works best for her; however, othermothers may find other things that workbetter for them. Louise comments that hit-ting back or biting back is a technique sug-gested by Dreikurs. She says she disagreeswith that technique, “but you all have to de-cide what works for you.” (About 40 min-utes have now passed since the film, and 7 of

the 11 mothers have participated, most ofthem actively. Four mothers have not partic-ipated.)

Another mother brings up a new prob-lem. Her child is destroying her plants,dumping plants out, and tearing them up.“I really get mad.” She says that the tech-nique she has used for punishment is to iso-late the child. Then she asks, “How long doyou have to punish a two-year-old before itstarts working?” This question is followedby intense discussion with several mothersmaking comments. (This discussion is re-produced in full to illustrate the type of dis-cussion that occurred.)

Mother No. 2: “Maybe he needs his ownplant. Sometimes it helps to let a childhave his own plant to take care of andthen he comes to appreciate plants.”

Mother No. 3: “Maybe he likes to play in thedirt. Does he have his own sand or dirt toplay in around the house?”

Mother No. 4: “Oatmeal is another goodthing to play in.”

Louise: “Rice is another thing that childrenlike to play in and it’s clean, good to useindoors.”

Mother No. 5: “Some things to play in wouldbe bad or dangerous. For example, pow-dered soap isn’t a good thing to let kidsplay in.”

Mother No. 2: “Can you put the plants wherehe can’t get at them?”

Mother with problem: “I have too many plants,I can’t put them all out of the way.”

Louise: “Can you put the plants somewhereelse or provide a place to play with dirt orrice?” (Mother with problem kind ofshakes her head no. Louise goes on.) “An-other thing is to tell the kid the plants arealive, to help him learn respect for living


things. Tell him that those plants are aliveand that it hurts them. Give him his ownplant that he can get an investment in.”

Mother with problem: “I’ll try it.”

Mother No. 2: “You’ve got to be fair about atwo-year-old. You can’t expect them notto touch things. It’s not fair. I try hangingall my plants.”

Louise: “Sometimes just moving a childbodily away from the thing you don’twant him to do is the best technique.”

Mother No. 4: “They’ll outgrow it anyway.”

Mother with problem: “Now he deliberatelydumps them and I really get angry.”

Louise: “Maybe he feels a rivalry with theplants if you have so many. Maybe he’strying to compete.”

Mother No. 3: “Let him help with the plants.Do you ever let him help you take care ofthe plants?”

Mother No. 6: “Some plants are dangerous tohelp with.”

Louise: “Some dangerous house plants arepoison.”

Louise reaches up and pulls down a bro-chure on plants that are dangerous and saysshe has brochures for everyone. Several peo-ple say that they want brochures and shegoes to the cabinet to make them available.One mother who has not participated ver-bally up to this point specifically requests abrochure. This is followed by a discussion ofchild-proofing a house as a method of childrearing versus training the child not to touchthings, but with less emphasis on child-proofing, that is, removing temptation ver-sus teaching children to resist temptation.One parent suggests, in this context, thatchildren be taught one valuable thing at a

time. Several mothers give their points ofview.

Louise: “The person who owns the housesets the rules. Two-year-olds can learn to becareful. But don’t go around all day longsaying, ‘No, no.’ ”

The time had come for the discussion toend. The mothers stayed around for about 15minutes, interacting informally and then go-ing upstairs to get their children into theirwinter coats and hats for the trip home. Theyseemed to have enjoyed themselves andcontinued talking informally. One motherwith whom Louise had disagreed about theissue of whether it was all right to bite or hitchildren back stopped to continue the dis-cussion. Louise said:

I hope you know that I respect your right tohave your own views on things. I wasn’t try-ing to tell you what to do. I just disagreed, but Idefinitely feel that everybody has a right totheir own opinion. Part of the purpose of thegroup is for everyone to be able to come to-gether and appreciate other points of view andunderstand what works for different people.

The mother said that she certainly didn’tfeel bad about the disagreement and sheknew that some things that worked for otherpeople didn’t work for her and that she hadher own ways but that she really enjoyed thegroup.

Louise cleaned up the room, and the ses-sion ended.

The Raw Data ofQualitative Inquiry

The description of this parenting sessionis aimed at permitting the reader to under-stand what occurred in the session. Thesedata are descriptive. Pure description and


quotations are the raw data of qualitative in-quiry.

The description is meant to take thereader into the setting. The data do not in-clude judgments about whether what oc-curred was good or bad, appropriate or in-appropriate, or any other interpretivejudgments. The data simply describe whatoccurred. State legislators, program staff,parents, and others used this description,and descriptions like this from other pro-gram sites, to discuss what they wanted theprograms to be and do. The descriptionshelped them make explicit their own judg-mental criteria.

In later chapters, guidance on interpret-ing qualitative data will be offered in depth.

People-Oriented Inquiry

Thus far, the examples of observation andinterviewing in this chapter have been pre-

sented as separate and distinct from eachother. In practice, they are often fully inte-grated approaches. Becoming a skilled ob-server is essential even if you concentrateprimarily on interviewing because everyface-to-face interview also involves and re-quires observation. The skilled intervieweris thus also a skilled observer, able to readnonverbal messages, sensitive to how the in-terview setting can affect what is said, andcarefully attuned to the nuances of the inter-viewer-interviewee interaction and relation-ship.

Likewise, interviewing skills are essentialfor the observer because during fieldwork,you will need and want to talk with people,whether formally or informally. Participantobservers gather a great deal of informationthrough informal, naturally occurring con-versations. Understanding that interview-ing and observation are mutually reinforc-ing qualitative techniques is a bridge to


MAPPING EXPERIENCES: OUR OWN AS WELL AS THOSE OF OTHERS

Qualitative inquiry offers opportunities notonly to learn about the experiences of othersbut also to examine the experiences that theinquirer brings to the inquiry, experiences thatwill, to some extent, affect what is studied andhelp shape, for better or worse, what is discov-ered. Approaches to qualitative inquiry such asautoethnography, heuristic inquiry, and criti-cal reflexivity emphasize examining and un-derstanding how who we are can shape whatwe see, hear, know, and learn during fieldworkand subsequent analysis. In that sense, quali-tative inquiry can be thought of as mappingexperiences, our own as well as those of others.

Imagine a map . . . drawn from your mem-ory instead of from the atlas. It is made of

strong places stitched together by thevivid threads of transforming journeys. Itcontains all the things you learned fromthe land and shows where you learnedthem. . . .

Think of this map as a living thing, nota chart but a tissue of stories that growshalf-consciously with each experience. Ittells where and who you are with respectto the earth, and in times of stress or dis-orientation it gives you the bearings youneed in order to move on. We all carrysuch maps within us as sentient and re-flective beings, and we depend uponthem unthinkingly, as we do upon lan-guage or thought. . . . And it is part of wis-dom, to consider this ecological aspect ofour identity. (Tallmadge 1997:ix)

understanding the fundamentally people-oriented nature of qualitative inquiry.

Sociologist John Lofland has suggestedthat there are four people-oriented man-dates in collecting qualitative data. First, thequalitative methodologist must get closeenough to the people and situation beingstudied to personally understand in depththe details of what goes on. Second, the qual-itative methodologist must aim at capturingwhat actually takes place and what peopleactually say: the perceived facts. Third, qual-itative data must include a great deal of puredescription of people, activities, interac-tions, and settings. Fourth, qualitative datamust include direct quotations from people,both what they speak and what they writedown.

The commitment to get close, to be factual, de-scriptive and quotive, constitutes a significantcommitment to represent the participants intheir own terms. This does not mean that onebecomes an apologist for them, but rather thatone faithfully depicts what goes on in theirlives and what life is like for them, in such away that one’s audience is at least partiallyable to project themselves into the point ofview of the people depicted. They can “takethe role of the other” because the reporter hasgiven them a living sense of day-to-day talk,day-to-day activities, day-to-day concernsand problems. . . .

A major methodological consequence ofthese commitments is that the qualitativestudy of people in situ is a process of discovery. Itis of necessity a process of learning what ishappening. Since a major part of what is hap-pening is provided by people in their ownterms, one must find out about those termsrather than impose upon them a preconceivedor outsider’s scheme of what they are about. Itis the observer’s task to find out what is funda-mental or central to the people or world underobservation. (Lofland 1971:4)

The Fruit of QualitativeMethods Revisited

This chapter began with the parable of theman who traveled far in search of a widelyproclaimed food called “fruit.” When finallydirected to a fruit tree, he confused thespring blossom of the tree with the fruit ofthe tree. Finding the blossom to be tasteless,he dismissed all he had heard about fruit as ahoax and went on his way. This chapter hasdescribed qualitative data so that the personin search of the fruits of qualitative methodswill know what to look for—and knowwhen the real thing has been attained. Ex-hibit 1.5 lists Internet resources for thosewho want to carry on this search for qualita-tive fruit in virtual space. To close this chap-ter, it may be instructive to consider twoother short parables about the search forfruit.

While the first seeker after fruit arrivedtoo early to experience the ripened delicacyand tasted only the blossom, a second seekerafter fruit arrived at a tree that had been im-properly cultivated, so that its fruit wasshriveled and bitter. This bad fruit had beenleft to rot. Not knowing what good fruitlooked like, he sampled the bad. “Well, I’veseen and tasted fruit,” he said, “and I can tellyou for sure that it’s terrible. I’ve had it withfruit. Forget it. This stuff is awful.” He wenton his way and his journey was wasted.

One can hope that such a foolish mistakeis less likely today, because early in schoolstudents are taught the danger of generaliz-ing from limited cases. Yet, rumors persistthat some people continue to reject all quali-tative data as worthless (and “rotten”), hav-ing experienced only bad samples producedwith poor methods.

A third seeker after fruit arrived at thesame tree that produced the shriveled andbitter fruit. He picked some of the rottingfruit and examined it. He took the fruit to afarmer who cultivated fruit trees with great


success. The farmer peeled away the rottenexterior and exposed what looked like astone inside. The farmer told him how toplant this hard core, cultivate the resultingtrees, and harvest the desired delicacy. Thefarmer also gave him a plump, ripe sampleto taste. Once the seeker after fruit knewwhat fruit really was, and once he knew that

the stonelike thing he held in his hand was aseed, all he had to do was plant it, tend prop-erly the tree’s growth, and work for theeventual harvest—the fruit. Though therewas much work to be done and there weremany things to be learned, the resultinghigh-quality fruit was worth the effort.


EXHIBIT 1.5Internet E-mail Discussion Groups (listservs) onQualitative Methods

1. [email protected]: Qualitative Research for the Human Sciences; to subscribe,send this message to [email protected]: subscribe QUALRS-L yourname

2. [email protected]: Qualitative Research in Management and Organization Studies;to subscribe, send this message to [email protected]: subscribe qualnet

3. [email protected]: Qualitative Research List, initiated by Penn State, but immediatelyattracted a broader audience; to subscribe, send this message to [email protected]:subscribe QUAL-L firstname lastname

Other resources for qualitative evaluation and research:

4. [email protected]: American Evaluation Association (AEA) Discussion List; tosubscribe, send this message to [email protected]: subscribe evaltalk ourname

AEA home page with links to evaluation organizations, training programs, andInternet resources: www.eval.org

5. [email protected]: A list for social science research methods instructors; to subscribe,send this message to [email protected]: join methods yourname

NOTE: Thanks to Judith Preissle, Aderhold Distinguished Professor, Social Foundations of Education, Universityof Georgia, for list subscription details. These sites and subscription details may change, and this list is not ex-haustive. This list is meant to be suggestive of the qualitative resources available through the Internet. SeeChapter 3, Exhibit 3.7; Chapter 4, Exhibit 4.9; and Chapter 8, Exhibit 8.3, for additional, more specialized quali-tative resources through the Internet.

CONCEPTUAL ISSUES IN QUALITATIVE INQUIRY Top Ten Pieces of Advice

Between-Chapters Interlude

Top Ten Pieces of Advice to aGraduate Student Consideringa Qualitative Dissertation

The following query was posted onan Internet listserv devoted to dis-cussing qualitative inquiry:

I am a new graduate student thinking aboutdoing a qualitative dissertation. I know youare all busy, but I would appreciate an an-swer to only one question.

If you could give just one bit of advice to astudent considering qualitative research for adissertation, what would it be?

The responses below came from differ-ent people. I’ve combined some responses,edited them (while trying to maintain theflavor of the postings), and arranged themfor coherence.

� Top Ten Responses

1. Be sure that a qualitative approach fitsyour research questions: questions aboutpeople’s experiences; inquiry into themeanings people make of their expe-riences; studying a person in the con-text of her or his social/interpersonalenvironment; and research where notenough is known about a phenomenonfor standardized instruments to havebeen developed (or even to be ready tobe developed).

(Chapter 2 will help with this bypresenting the primary themes of qual-itative inquiry.)

� 33

2. Study qualitative research. There arelots of different approaches and a lot toknow. Study carefully a couple of thebooks that provide an overview of dif-ferent approaches, then go to the origi-nal sources for the design and analysisdetails of the approach you decide touse.

(Chapter 3 covers different qualita-tive approaches.)

3. Find a dissertation adviser who willsupport your doing qualitative re-search. Otherwise, it can be a long,tough haul. A dissertation is a big com-mitment. There are other practical ap-proaches to using qualitative methodsthat don’t involve all the constraints ofdoing a dissertation, things like pro-gram evaluation, action research, andorganizational development. You canstill do lots of great qualitative workwithout doing a dissertation. But if youcan find a supportive adviser and com-mittee, then, by all means, go for it.

(Chapter 4 covers particularly ap-propriate practical applications of quali-tative methods.)

4. Really work on design. Qualitative de-signs follow a completely different logicfrom quantitative research. Completelydifferent. Are you listening? Com-pletely different. Especially sampling.This is not the same as questionnairesand tests and experiments. You cancombine designs, like quant and qualapproaches, but that gets really compli-cated. Either way, you have to figure outwhat’s unique about qualitative de-signs.

(Chapter 5 covers qualitative de-signs.)

5. Practice interviewing and observationskills. Practice! Practice! Practice! Dolots of interviews. Spend a lot of time do-ing practice fieldwork observations. Getfeedback from someone who’s reallygood at interviewing and observations.There’s an amazing amount to learn.And it’s not just head stuff. Qualitativeresearch takes skill. Don’t make themistake of thinking it’s easy. The better Iget at it, the more I realize how bad I waswhen I started.

(Chapters 6 and 7 cover the skills ofqualitative inquiry.)

6. Figure out analysis before you gatherdata. I’ve talked with lots of advancedgrad students who rushed to collectdata before they knew anything aboutanalyzing it—and lived to regret it, bigtime. This is true for statistical data andquantitative data, but somehow peopleseem to think that qualitative data areeasy to analyze. No way. That’s a big-time NO WAY. And don’t think that thenew software will solve the problem.Another big-time NO WAY. You, that’sYOU, still have to analyze the data.

(Chapter 8 covers analysis.)

7. Be sure that you’re prepared to dealwith the controversies of doing qualita-tive research. People on this listserv areconstantly sharing stories about peoplewho don’t “get” qualitative researchand put it down. Don’t go into it naively.Understand the paradigms and politics.

(Chapter 9 deals with paradigms,politics, and ways of enhancing thecredibility of qualitative inquiry.)

8. Do it because you want to and are con-vinced it’s right for you. Don’t do it be-


cause someone told you it would beeasier. It’s not. Try as hard as possibleto pick/negotiate dissertation researchquestions that have to do with somepassion/interest in your professionallife. Qualitative research is time-con-suming, intimate, and intense—you willneed to find your questions interestingif you want to be at all sane during theprocess—and still sane at the end.

9. Find a good mentor or support group.Or both. In fact, find several of each. Ifyou can, start a small group of peers inthe same boat, so to speak, to talk aboutyour research together on a regularbasis—you can share knowledge, brain-

storm, and problem solve, as well asshare in each other’s successes, all in amore relaxed environment that helpstake some of the edge off the stress(for example, you might have potluckmeals at different homes?). This can betremendously liberating (even on a lessthan regular basis). Take care of your-self.

10. Prepare to be changed. Looking deeplyat other people’s lives will force you tolook deeply at yourself.

(See the discussions “Voice, Perspec-tive, and Reflexivity” in Chapter 2 and“The Observer and What Is Observed:Unity and Separation” in Chapter 6.)

Top Ten Pieces of Advice � 35