# Transcript

Investigating experience is strongly influenced by the methodological philosophy we called interpretivism. It emphasises the importance of understanding the perspectives of the people involved, whatever the issue or situation being studied. It is argued that the researcher must try to see and document the world from these people’s points of view; that only then will it be possible to understand what they were intending to do and why, how their actions fit into, and perhaps follow from, what they take to be the reality of their situation, their sense of identity and of past life. What is assumed here is a world in which people have complex inner perspectives that must be understood if their behaviour is to be properly explained. It is believed that through participation in everyday life people rarely gain access to one another’s perspectives in anything like a full way, and that a distinctive purpose of research is to achieve this; and thereby to produce much better explanations for people’s behaviour than the more superficial ones we are usually forced to rely on as practical actors in the world. Indeed, very often from this point of view, a primary aim of research is treated as overcoming what are viewed as the mis-perceptions generated by official accounts, established theories, popular stereotypes, and widespread myths and ideologies, especially those about low status or marginalised categories of person or group. Qualitative research often evaluates these myths and ideologies negatively against the complex reality of people’s actual views and practices. Examples of this kind of research might include studies of working class or ethnic minority communities that are marginalised by the wider society, of young offenders in correctional institutions, disruptive children in school classrooms, and so on.

Those who adopt this orientation assume that the task of understanding other people’s perspectives is difficult, not least because we must overcome, or at least suspend, our own personal and cultural assumptions, perhaps especially our conventional attitudes and evaluations. In fact, questions are sometimes raised about whether we can ever understand other people, especially those who belong to very different cultures or contexts. Much depends here, of course, on what we mean by ‘understand’. Is it required that we are able completely to take on or identify with others’ points of view, or merely that we are capable of reconstructing fairly accurately why they reacted in the way that they did to some situation, and perhaps also predicting to some extent how they will respond to other situations? At the very least, it is usually argued that understanding other people requires a process of learning, informal in character and necessarily open-ended, in which the influence of the researcher’s initial ideas and background assumptions must be prevented from operating as a strait-jacket.

This argument sometimes leads to an emphasis on the use of in-depth interviews, carried out in contexts where people feel able to reveal what are seen as their genuine perspectives, and with the researcher engaging in considerable efforts to build rapport. Equally, though, it may be argued that we need to observe people in their own natural contexts in order to get some sense of what they actually do, as well as what they say in interviews. It is also sometimes suggested that we must participate in these contexts ourselves in order to get first-hand experience, this participation involving an immersion in their world, perhaps even a temporary suspension of our orientation as researcher and of any other roles that may inhibit our capacity for understanding. Turned the other way round, this can be an argument for insider or practitioner inquiry – for research by those who are already participants in a situation – on the grounds that it is only through long-term participation in a setting that we can fully come to know it. Documents of certain kinds can also be used within this orientation, most obviously personal diaries, perhaps even eliciting imaginative writing through which we can attempt to decipher the beliefs and actions of the authors.

Some versions of this first approach recognise that, whatever precautions are taken, any understanding a researcher can gain of someone-else’s perspective is necessarily filtered through the researcher’s own distinctive view of the world, attitudes, feelings etc. Given this, it is sometimes argued, what is produced must necessarily reflect a transaction between the two perspectives, rather than a representation of the other person’s perspective purely in its own terms. This often motivates a requirement for what is sometimes called reflexivity: that the researcher seeks to explicate her or his own perspective before providing an account of those of the people being studied, so that readers can understand the interplay between the two.