The Good Qualitative Researcher

Abstract

This article discusses what it means to be a good qualitative researcher. The aim is to deliberately blur the distinction between epistemic and ethical goodness by arguing that there is a close connection between being a good qualitative researcher in the epistemic and the ethical senses. First, the relation between researcher and researched is articulated as a power relation giving rise to certain ethical demands. Second, some similarities between the discourses on ethics and qualitative research are brought forth, and it is argued that many key capabilities that enable qualitative researchers to deal well with their subject matter are also moral virtues. Finally, the concepts of objectivity and validity in qualitative research are discussed as moral matters.

Keywords:

• duties
• ethics
• goodness
• objectivity
• power
• rights
• validity

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Steinar Kvale for critical comments to the manuscript in an early stage. In addition, the manuscript has greatly benefited from challenging comments from Martin Packer and three anonymous reviewers. The remaining flaws and unclarities are entirely the author's own responsibility.

Notes

¹I use the terms “epistemic” and “ethical” to denote the difference between matters relating to the nature of knowledge and matters relating to the nature of the good and value. The traditional philosophical questions concerning epistemic issues are: How ought I to think? What ought I to believe? What is knowledge? The corresponding questions in ethics are: How ought I to live? What ought I to do? What is good? I do not want to fixate these concepts in rigid definitions, for a main point in what follows (inspired by a dissolving of the fact-value dichotomy in the human sciences that goes back to Aristotle) is that knowing well in qualitative psychology is (at least partly) an ethical affair and that acting well in the human world of qualitative phenomena is (at least partly) an epistemic affair. An important point will be that we should not think of ethics as a particular field of human action and thought, but as pertaining to wider issues in human life about how to live and what to do (Annas, 2001:485). Finally, it should be noted that in general I use the terms “morality” and “ethics” interchangeably. Ethics comes from the Greek ethos (character) and morality from the Latin mores (which also means character, custom, or habit) (ibid.).

²Of course, we might add that not every vulnerability engenders a right. All matter is corruptible, e.g., and thus vulnerable, but this does not allow us to (absurdly) apply the concept of right to all matter (Harré and Robinson, 1995). The vulnerabilities that engender rights are those that are tied to interests of some kind. A further discussion of this, however, will bring me too far away from the main issues of the paper.

³It can be objected that I commit a version of the naturalistic fallacy here. I write about what a good qualitative researcher is, as if it were a fact, but should I not instead restrict myself to the discussion of what a qualitative researcher ought to be? I believe that this is a false way of articulating the issue. As MacIntyre (1985a) pointed out, when we talk about functional concepts, i.e., concepts that denote the proper function of something, we can in fact derive normative statements from factual ones. To take a simple example: From “this watch is inaccurate and too heavy to carry around,” we may validly conclude that it is a bad watch, because it does not do what it ought to do. A watch is defined as something that ought to tell time and be handy enough to carry, and if it fails in these regards, it fails to be what it is, in a certain sense. Thus, “this is a bad watch” can be an objective value judgment based on facts. Clearly, “qualitative researchers” do not have a similarly simple and well-defined function, but this, I believe, does not mean that they have no functions at all that should be discussed. My view is that, like all other researchers, they should strive for objectivity and validity in what they do and, as the sections below try to demonstrate, objectivity and validity are moral concepts before they are epistemic ones. Finally, my argument does not rest on these or any other specific ideas of the “functions” of qualitative researchers, but rather on the insistence that the normative discussion of the functions and aims of qualitative research and researchers in society is indispensable to understanding the kind of practice qualitative research is. Thus, to paraphrase MacIntyre, if we want to know what researchers are, we need an understanding of what they do when they engage well in their practice, for, like all other practices, the practice of qualitative research is defined by its internal goods (cf. Brinkmann, 2005b). From my point of view, a response to the counter-question “could we not obtain good knowledge from unethical research?” can only be given if we specify what we mean by good, i.e., specify the function of the “knowledge-getting” process. And if it is true that social science inevitably makes assumptions not only about the nature of persons and society, but also about good persons and a good society “and considers how far these conceptions are embodied in our actual society” as Robert Bellah and co-workers have put it (Bellah et al., 1985:301), then a science that does this well cannot in the strict sense obtain good knowledge from unethical research. For good science is here defined as something that assist us in living better together.