Research and forensic investigations

[Sayamol]

My answer is based on the terms we have learned in RM class this morning. I am trying to make use of it.

In terms of research, I think it depends on where researchers position themselves on the continuum of research paradigms. Positivists believe in one absolute truth and that reality is stable and can be observed (or found out), which should be similar to detectives holding the belief that where a murder case occurs, the culprit is out there for them to find. Interpretivists, however, do not have a hypothesis to begin with, so they just explore the whole things to get something (or nothing) interesting out of it. Positivists are strict on what they are looking for as it has been predetermined (just like detectives who may have a predetermined profile of the suspect) while interpretivists are more flexible in searching for findings.

[Richard]

Interesting point. So if positivist researchers are like detectives, what job can be a metaphor for interpretivist researchers?

[linhai]

I agree with Sayamol

Detectives employ measurable and logical evidence to find the objective truth. However, if you are an interpretivist researcher, you may believe that there is no single external reality. the meaning you understand and the knowledge you acquire are socially constructed through interaction with each other.

For your question " what job.....interpretivist researchers?", my answer would be psychoanalysts. When you consult what your dream means, a psychoanalyst uses the images out of your dream to help understand unseen dangers and unconscious desires. Well, dream does not tell a single and simple story. So psychoanalysts usually concentrate on recurring dreams and take one's background, past lives, and context into account.

[Sayamol]

I think interpretivist researchers and journalists are similar in many ways. Journalists tend to get close or become a part of the community of their sources to get the most exclusive information for reporting/writing news articles, and similarly, interpretivist researchers collect data from the emic perspective. Sometimes, journalists expose themselves to danger (e.g. war reporters) without knowing exactly what will happen to them or what they will get from the sources, and interpretivist researchers also cannot predict what their salient findings will be until they assimilate into the participant community and learn from them.

[punjaporn]

I agree with Sayamol that interpretivist researchers are like journalists.
I also think there is some connection between interpretivist researchers and archaeologists too. At first, they have some reason to dig a site where archeaological evidence may or may not exist. They analyse the evidence to see what it means for understanding the past. Because they never knew what happened, reporting archaeological findings and final conclusions almost always involve interpretations. They report the reality in the past time mainly from archeaological evidence through their interpretations, background and experiences.

[stevelouw]

Linking back to the discussion about Harris' anti-essentialism post, one would have to argue that there isn't any link between crime and the exploratory nature of qualitative research. Since the researcher's subjective interpretation of the data informs the findings, there is no single culprit, and everyone on the train stabbed the victim in their own way. If out goal is not to find the 'right' method, or the 'perfect technique', or the 'reason' for a teacher's failure (for instance) but simply to describe the landscape of a classroom or interactions which inform learning, then there is little linking detective work and applied linguistics research.

I like Punjaporn's idea of the qualitative researcher as being like an archeologist, building pictures that fill out understanding about a bigger picture based on information about individuals and 'small moments'.