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Interpretive Research: How do people make sense of their experiences…
Interpretive Research:
How do people make sense of their experiences within their real life setting?
Start with meaning
I want to understand people’s experiences from their point of view.
What does a situation mean to the people living through it?
Context shapes what people experience.
Their relationships, history, and surroundings are part of the explanation.
Build understanding from the evidence I gather.
I listen and observe for ideas I may not have considered at the start.
Interpretive research is an approach, not a type of data.
Interviews are often useful, but numbers can add helpful detail too.
Study the whole setting
Natural setting:
Study people where life actually happens.
Where an experience happens helps me understand what it means.
History and context:
Ask what happened before and what pressures or supports are present now.
Different perspectives:
Two people can experience the same event differently. I need to understand both accounts.
Time:
I may need to follow a situation as it changes to understand how people’s views develop.
Gather their stories
Interviews help me hear people in their own words.
Ask what they experienced and what it meant to them.
Interviews + observation + documents = credibility:
Different sources help me check my understanding.
Observation helps me see daily interactions.
I can observe from the outside or participate, depending on the study.
Documents add another view.
Messages, reports, and program materials can provide context or help me check an account.
Numbers can still help.
Attendance or participation records may clarify a pattern, even when my main question is about meaning.
Interpret and revisit
Listen for language, emotion, and meaning.
How someone describes an experience can tell me more than a short answer alone.
Hermeneutic Circle: moving between the details and the bigger picture.
One comment makes more sense when I consider the person’s full story and setting.
Collect and analyze evidence at the same time. **
What I learn from an early interview may help me ask better questions in the next one.
**Keep checking my interpretation.If a new perspective doesn't fit, I need to reconsider my explanation.
Know the related approaches
Interpretive case research:
Study a situation in depth to understand how a process unfolds in context.
Ethnography:
Spend substantial time learning the practices and meanings within a culture or community.
Phenomenology:
Focus closely on what a shared experience feels like to the people who lived it.
Action research:
Take action on a problem, evaluate what happens, and use what I learn to guide the next action.
Check my role
Bring my own experiences into the room.
They may help me connect with participants, but they may also shape what I expect to hear.
Being aware of my assumptions and how they may affect my perspective.
Trust affects what people share.
I need to give people room to speak honestly.
Seek more than one perspective.
One person’s account may be sincere without showing the whole situation.
I need enough evidence to support my interpretation.
I do not want to reach a conclusion too soon or collect so much that I cannot analyze it carefully.
Show that the research is sound
Dependability:
Have I explained my process clearly enough for someone else to follow how I reached my findings?
Credibility:
Is my interpretation believable and supported by the evidence? Spending time in the setting and checking multiple sources can help.
Confirmability:
Do participants recognize their experiences in what I have written?
Transferability:
Have I described the setting well enough for readers to judge whether the findings might apply somewhere else?
Rich description → transferability:
Readers need enough detail to decide whether an insight fits another setting.