Should we share qualitative data? Epistemological and practical insights from conversation analysis

ABSTRACT

Over the last 30 years, there has been substantial debate about the practical, ethical and epistemological issues uniquely associated with qualitative data sharing. In this paper, we contribute to these debates by examining established data sharing practices in Conversation Analysis (CA). CA is an approach to the analysis of social interaction that relies on audio/video recordings of naturally occurring human interactions and moreover works at a level of detail that presents challenges for assumptions about participant anonymity. Nonetheless, data sharing occupies a central position in both the methodology and the wider academic culture of CA as a discipline and a community. Despite this, CA has largely been ignored in qualitative data sharing debates and discussions. We argue that the methodological traditions of CA present a strong case for the value of qualitative data sharing and offer open data sharing practices that might be usefully adopted in other qualitative approaches.

KEYWORDS:

• Data sharing
• conversation analysis
• Open Science
• qualitative data

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Emily Hofstetter, Saul Albert and Helen Baron who commented on an early draft of the paper. We would also like to thank the reviewers and editors for their constructive suggestions.

Contributions

TD conceived the initial idea for the paper. The manuscript was drafted by JJ and TD. BB, CR and JJ contributed to the development of key ideas, the structure, the rewriting of several sections of the manuscript, and the editing of the manuscript. RP and RS helped develop the initial ideas on which the paper was written and, along with AK, offered feedback and guidance on drafts of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. A resource that provides guidance on data management and includes a large archive of data and the details of other collections.

2. Data repositories were initially developed to increase the transparency and sharing of data from clinical trials (Antonio et al., 2019).

3. This is influenced by deontological ethics. See, Bishop (2009, pp. 257–260) for an overview.

4. The cumulative relationship between CA and QDS is unique but the specific practices and procedures are not unique to the approach.

5. For a fuller picture of the founding of CA see: Psathas (1994), ten Have (2007), Sidnell (2011), and Silverman (1998).

6. Most modern CA research no longer draws on classic data with that collection being normally reserved for teaching.

7. See Humă and Joyce (frth) for a discussion on the relationship between the culture of data sharing and the culture of continuous refinement and replication in CA.

8. ‘Naturally occuring’ is a slogan in the CA enterprise and usually contrasts with researcher elicited data or scripted talk, but see the debate in Discourse Studies which problematises the ‘natural’ and ‘non-natural’ data distinction (Lynch, 2002; Potter, 2002; Speer, 2002a, 2002b; ten Have, 2002).

9. Participants are rarely in a position to fully understand the research process and a discussion of this and how ethics panels are not geared to handle qualitative data sharing warrants a future paper (but see Hammersley, 2013; ten Have, 2007: 79–81).

10. This was discussed and responded to at length between Emmanuel Schegloff (1997, 1998, 1999b, 1999c), and Margaret Wetherell (1998) and Michael Billig (1999a, 1999b) who took issue with Schegloff’s (1997) paper.

11. It is this additional step that distinguishes CA from other inductive approaches such as ethnography and grounded theory.

12. We refer to ‘culture’ in the sense of disciplinary culture rather than epistemology.

13. Examples of groups include the Conversation Analysis Reading and Data Sessions (CARDS) at Ulster University, and the long-standing Discourse and Rhetoric Group (DARG) at Loughborough University. A list of groups is maintained here: https://rolsi.net/data-sessions/

14. ‘Direct access’ may be confused with access to the in-the-moment encounter, but here we refer to the original recording of the encounter.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute for Health Research under Grant NIHR127367

Notes on contributors

Jack B. Joyce

Jack B. Joyce is a Qualitative Researcher in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford. He works on the NewDAWN project which aims to help more people achieve remission from type 2 diabetes.

Tom Douglass

Tom Douglass is a medical sociologist. He is currently a Research Fellow on an NIHR-funded project concerned with care home closures and is based in the School of Social Policy at the University of Birmingham. He has a range of research interests within health and social care and has published on the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination and trust in healthcare settings.

Bethan Benwell

Bethan Benwell is a Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Stirling. She is a conversation and discourse analyst and her primary research focus is on the relationship between discourse and identity. She is the co-author (with Elizabeth Stokoe) of Discourse and Identity and has published articles and chapters on discourse and reader identity, on discourses and representations of masculinity in popular culture, on tutorial discourse and student identity and on healthcare and health complaints interactions. She conducted a pilot study on interactional approaches to complaints to the NHS in Scotland with May McCreaddie, and is now co-investigator on the NIHR funded project: ‘Enhancing the patient complaints journey: harnessing the power of language to transform the experience of complaining’ with colleagues in the universities of Ulster, Stirling, Queen Margaret and Loughborough, which uses conversation analysis to understand the longitudinal experience of complaining and to develop training materials for healthcare professionals handling complaints.

Catrin S. Rhys

Catrin S. Rhys is Senior Lecturer in linguistics and Head of School in the School of Communication and Media at Ulster University. She works in a Conversation Analytic framework to examine language and social interaction in a range of different institutional and mundane settings. Having come from a background in formal linguistics, with a particular interest in the syntax semantics interface, there is an emphasis in her research on the interaction between the interactional and the linguistic properties of language in use. Her current focus is the Real Complaints project: an NIHR funded project researching the language of complaints handling in the NHS with colleagues at the Universities of Stirling, Loughborough and Queen Margaret

Ruth Parry

Ruth Parry recently retired as Professor of Human Communication and Interaction at Loughborough University UK. She uses audio-visual recordings of real life interactions and an approach known as conversation analysis to capture and understand how we attempt and accomplish things with one another through our interpersonal interactions. She has largely worked on recordings of healthcare interactions. She has interests in difficult communication tasks such as telling someone else what is wrong with their motor performance, and talking about issues such as illness progression and dying. Ruth’s other key area of interest is in using analysis of recordings to generate insights into what somewhat nebulous concepts (dignity, patient-centred care) look like in practice. In recent years, with her team, Ruth developed, disseminated, and evaluated a set of communication training resources called ‘RealTalk’ which incorporate both clips from real life recordings and learning points based upon insights and findings of conversation analytic research. The resources are designed for use by communication trainers within their work in the NHS, universities, and hospices, and aim to increase the evidence-base and authenticity of health and social care communication training. Ruth has also pioneered the adaptation and application of systematic review methods for conversation analytic studies.

Richard Simmons

Richard Simmons is a Professor of Public and Social Policy, and Co-Director of the Mutuality Research Programme at the University of Stirling. Over the last decade he has led an extensive programme of research on the use of voice in public services. This includes four studies funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, a Single Regeneration Budget-funded study, and work for the NHS, Scottish Executive, National Consumer Council, Carnegie Trust, World Bank, Co-operatives UK, NESTA and the Care Inspectorate. He also writes widely on these issues for academic, policy and practitioner audiences. His book, ‘The Consumer in Public Services’ is published by the Policy Press. As well as a series of journal articles in high-quality international journals such as Social Policy and Administration, Policy and Politics, Annals of Public and Co-operative Economics, and Public Policy and Administration, Richard has written a number of policy-oriented publications and professional journal articles for a practitioner audience. His research interests are broadly in the field of user voice, the governance and delivery of public services and the role of mutuality and co-operation in public policy. The Mutuality Research Programme has acquired an international reputation as a centre of excellence for research, knowledge exchange and consultancy on these issues.

Adrian Kerrison

Adrian Kerrison is a Postdoctoral Researcher/Postdoktor at Linköping University with the Non-Lexical Vocalizations project. His work uses Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis to examine how crowds operate as social actors within large-scale settings such as sporting events, artistic performances, and protests. Currently he is focused on the use of individual non-lexicals (yelps, grunts, etc.) to perform attention, understanding, and assessment of play in sporting contexts.