Analyzing data: Quantitative and Qualitative 4

11. Symbolic Interactionism: Symbolic interactionists view social life as an unfolding process in which the
individual interprets his or her environment and acts on the basis of that interpretation. Thus a stimulus
to act is depicted as undergoing a process of interpretation before a response is forthcoming. Two
concepts are central to this tradition. They are the definition of the situation and the social self. The idea
of the definition of the situation facilitates an understanding of the bases of action as well as providing
an awareness of the implications of varying definitions for people’s behaviour. The idea of the social self
draws attention to the individual as a complex texture of biological instincts and internalized social
constraints. These two facets of the self are captured in the distinction between the “I” and the “Me”
which was given by Mead. The “Me” contains our views of ourselves as others see us. The ‘I’ comprises
the urges of the individual. The self is depicted as a process in that it is the outcome of the dialectic
between the ‘I’ and the ‘Me’.

12. Thus, interaction is a continuous process of mutual interpretation of the nature of situations and
how we believe our actions will be received. This general representation of social life has been evident
in the writings of Blumer. Symbolic Intercatiobnism depends on three premises: a) human beings act
toward things on the basis of the meanings the things have for them b) the second is that the meaning
of such things is derived from, or arises out of the social interaction that one has with one’s fellows c)
the third premise is that these meanings are handled in and modified through an interpretative process
used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters.

13. Verstehen: Apart from symbolic interactionism, Max Weber’s idea of verstehen is often taken as one
of the intellectual precursors of qualitative research. Weber recognised two forms of understanding:
‘direct observational understanding’ and ‘motivational understanding’. For example, a particular kind of
facial expression is indicative of anger; explanatory understanding occurs when we probe the motive for
the outburst of anger. Weber’s writings on this subject sought to establish that the study of society
requires a different kind of understanding from that of the natural sciences. He therefore vouched for
empathetic understanding or verstehen as being an important intellectual underpinning of qualitative
research.

14. Naturalism: The word naturalism is not to be confused with the applicability of the natural science
model to study social reality. Matza has pointed to another meaning of naturalism which is the exact
opposite of the identification of the term with the natural sciences. Naturalism in this second sense
implies that the researcher should treat the phenomena being studied as naturally as possible.
Naturalism is the philosophical view that strives to remain true to the nature of phenomenon under
study. It is not like the approach of the botanists and the zoologists who study plants and animals in
their natural settings by imposing their own conceptual schemes on the social world but an approach
which does not disturb the naturalness of their subject’s world. Naturalism subsumes two interrelated
themes: a distaste for artificial methods of research which are seen as providing distorted pictures of
social reality and a concern to reveal the social world in a manner consistent with the image of that
world which its participants carry around with them.
15. Ethogenics: A central feature of the ethogenic approach is the understanding of episodes in social
life. Episodes are sequences of interlocking acts by individuals. It is the task of ethogenics to elucidate
the underlying structures of such episodes by investigating the meaning actors bring to the constituent
acts. A central methodological ingredient of ethogenics is the analysis of people’s accounts of their
actions within identified episodes; along with ethnographic research, the analysis of accounts is required
to formulate hypotheses about the belief system which is being used by actors in generating typical
episodes. In grasping the belief systems which underlie social episodes, the rules and conventions of
social life from the subject’s perspective can be derived. It is the socially shared knowledge upon which
actors draw that is that is the particular province of ethogenics.

16. Characteristics of Qualitative Research: The chief characteristics of qualitative research can be
enumerated as follows: a) Seeing through the eyes of others b) description c) contextualism d) process
e) flexibility and lack of structure f) theory and concepts.

17. While quantitative research was described as drawing the bulk of its intellectual inspiration from a
natural science approach, and from certain tenets of positivism in particular, qualitative research derives
from and has been stimulated by traditions which are distinctively different from such an orientation. All
five of the intellectual concerns discussed here reveal that broadly speaking qualitative research is about
seeing through the eyes of the people being studied.