Research Methods
One small fictional dataset, three research questions and three theoretical sensitivities. Each pairing produces a different defensible account of the same six extracts — and two of the nine pairings do not hold together at all.
Fictional — the same invented extracts used across this module's qualitative tools
By the end you should be able to show how a research question and a theoretical position shape which themes become available.
About 30 minutes. Nothing you do here is saved or sent anywhere.
That more than one account is defensible does not make all accounts defensible. Every reading here must be traceable to the extracts, coherent with the question it answers, and explicit about its own assumptions. The "hold this reading to account" section exists to show claims failing that test, including under the reading that produced them.
The same six extracts every time. What changes is which of them the analysis is looking at, and what it is looking for.
Four pairings are strong, three are workable with a caveat, and two pull against themselves. Each one says which and why.
| Saved account | Current account |
|---|
Five claims someone might write up from this dataset. Judge each one under the reading you currently have selected, then check. Two of them fail under every reading, and one depends entirely on which lens you chose.
Nothing was added to or removed from the dataset by any choice made in this tool. What changed is which extracts sit at the centre of the analysis and which recede. Toby is a marginal case for a question about the felt moment of deciding, and the single most important participant for a question about what the setting does. Same six people, different studies.
Every reading here needs one. Without a position there is no basis for treating "I'd rather it stayed the one who's fine" as being about anything in particular. Reflexivity is not the removal of the analyst's position but the statement of it, so that a reader can see what it made visible and what it cost.
Two of the nine pairings pull against themselves: the question asks about one kind of object and the lens is built to see another. The resulting accounts are not incompetent, they are beside the point, and the mismatch is visible without any appeal to the analyst's skill. This is one of the clearest standards available in qualitative work and it is rarely taught as one.
Two of the five claims in the accountability check fail under every reading available here — one imports a disposition nobody reported, one attributes an intention to an organisation nobody interviewed. A third is supported by exactly one participant and stated as though it were about a group. Pluralism about interpretation is not permission.