1. Citation
Broad, Bob. “Strategies and Passions in Empirical Qualitative Research.” Writing Studies Research in Practice: Methods and Methodologies. Eds. Lee Nickoson and Mary P. Sheridan. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. pp 197-209. ProQuest EBook.
2. Summary
Bob Broad begins this chapter from Writing Studies Research in Practice: Methods and Methodologies by beginning to define what he means in his title by “qualitative.” The distinction between qualitative and quantitative research can ultimately be reduced to a primary focus on textual data or numerical data, respectively. However, he goes on to further differentiate textual research from empirical research: textual research focuses on writing which exists in published, academic sphere, whereas empirical research focuses on the “things people do, say, and write in day-to-day life” such as unpublished writing, interviews, and observations. Empirical qualitative research has to do with lived experience, the “amateur” texts produced in the classroom, and what they say about the lived experience of the authors (i.e. research subjects).
Broad then goes on to advocate exploring research methods that are specific to both the rhetorical context of the textual data you’re examining and to your interests and preferences as a researcher. He insists that as researchers we should tailor our research methodologies in order to maximize productivity with the audience and texts that we have available to us, and to help researchers stay engaged in our work. As something of a case study in the benefits of personalizing research methods, he then details some of his history working in literature and academia by describing how he essentially started out in textual-qualitative studies (i.e. close reading and analysis of published text via literary criticism) and eventually began to explore more empirical methods by way of integrating first-person experiences (interviews, observations, unpublished writings, etc.) in to his academic work.
Finally, he again emphasizes the need for researchers to make methodological choices that are specific to them and their interests, calling this chapter “a call for our field to add researchers’ enthusiasm and curiosity to the array of contexts that comprises our ecological understanding of methodological options and choices” (205). He argues that diversifying our methodological choices to suit our research and interests could invigorate the field of writing studies research and improve researchers’ attention to and enthusiasm for their work. He says that “research projects we can love are also those on behalf of which we can be the most eloquent and persuasive with our audiences. We are strongest as researchers when we combine our methodological passions and strategies.” (207)
3. Quotations
“The primary focus of the empirical- qualitative researcher is relationships and interactions among people, not published texts.” (199)
“Textual researchers often provide anecdotes from empirical, lived experience (e.g., personal stories, classroom scenarios) as introductions to and frames for their textual analyses. And empirical researchers in English studies nearly always frame their research questions and data analyses with literature reviews that ground their empirical projects in a textual history and a textually established line of inquiry and argument.” (199)
“…I need to identify myself as an empirical (main kind of data: people’s lived experiences, not published texts) qualitative (main kind of analysis: interpretive, not objectivist) researcher.” (199)
“It is this intriguing interaction between methodological choices that are strategic and those that stem from personal preference, between methods as context-driven and methods as profoundly and personally prejudged that the remainder of this chapter explores.” (200)
“I expect most of us choose a career in English studies driven and guided by two deeply felt emotions: (1) the eager joy we feel when reading and writing texts critically and creatively, and (2) our firm faith that doing this textual work is a noble, worthy, and socially valuable activity.” (203)
“Grounded theory is the qualitative method that does the best job, in my view, of meeting qualitative researchers’ most urgent responsibility: to actively seek out interpretations contrary to what they might have hoped or expected to find, and to ensure that interpretations and findings are “emic,” that is, that they are deeply rooted in the interpretive framework(s) of research participants.” (204)
“I believed—and still believe—that we have a stronger chance of transforming more of the world with empirical-qualitative research than we do with exclusively textual research because empirical data register with more readers as relevant, accessible, and in-the-world than does solely text-based theorizing.” (207)
4. Response
To be honest, this article was somewhat disappointing. I was expecting—as the title suggests—some defined strategies for empirical qualitative research, but it was more of an Op-Ed piece on why the author loves his research methods and why you should love your research methods, too. He spends most of the article simply advocating for the diversification of methodological skillsets among writing studies researchers. He uses his own passion for qualitative empirical methods as an example of (1) what diversifying that skillset may look like and (2) how personalizing your methods can improve your research. He’s more making a pitch for using empirical qualitative research methods, without getting in to much specific detail about what that entails. There’s nothing about what kind of observations to make in the writing data; nothing about how to measure and correlate information between data sets (i.e. different students’ writing) to form cohesive data; he’s very vague about what constitute the features of qualitative data; and there’s no indication of, as an instructor, what kinds of classroom activities or environments foster qualitative data production. In short, there was nothing particularly practical in this article that I could apply to my own research methods except a published and peer-reviewed justification for their being qualitative rather than quantitative.
Broad advocates for research methods tailored to the conditions of research and says that “rhetorical contexts should drive methods and that the most effective research methods in any given rhetorical situation…will depend on the specifics of that situation” (200). He got me thinking about the ways that my “rhetorical context,” as he calls it, may be able to point me to the most effective methodologies. That is, thinking about how the structure of the class and the curriculum may lend itself to specific methods. For instance, one could argue that the grading contract lends itself more to quantitative analysis than qualitative. The contract in some ways prefers the quantity of work done over the quality of work done, which makes drawing out the qualitative aspects of the work done difficult—and inconsistent. Because there is rubric-driven definition of quality by which to consistently measure qualitative success, it’s difficult to identify qualities in the work and to meaningfully corroborate them with the influence of the curriculum. The rubrics largely constitute formal and thematic requirements.
I was also hoping for some insight on how to avoid totally subjective and even biased interpretations of qualitative data, which Broad does address in a way. What may manifest as unexamined bias in quantitative research (like, for instance, subjective grading from one quarter to the next leading to what looks like “better performance”) is, to Broad’s thinking, an opportunity to lean in to and more clearly define the parameters of your qualitative analysis. He advocates for examining and utilizing your interests and passions, such as perhaps using your subjective interests in students’ texts to shape the expectations you have around what qualitative features you’re looking for. He quotes fellow writing studies researcher Pamela Moss who also pushes for bringing personal interest to your work when she says, “preconceptions, ‘enabling’ prejudices, or foreknowledge are inevitable and valuable in interpreting a text. In fact, they make understanding possible” (201). Moss—and Broad—are likening the qualitative analysis of student texts to close reading practices, which is valuable not only to reflect on your process as a researcher (as they are discussing here), but also points towards methods for implementing qualitative analysis that could be modeled on traditional close reading practices.
While Broad does not clearly define any methods for collecting and analyzing qualitative data in the classroom, he does refer to something called Grounded Theory, which “is a system for developing and validating findings based on analysis of empirical, discursive data” (204) so, at the very least, it does point me in the direction of continued research that could be more specifically fruitful to me as I try to define the way I will evaluate what my research design calls “improved writing outcomes” for my students.