Owning One’s Story: In Defense of Subjective Research

Qualitative research is the “poor cousin” of quantitative research.

This sad perspective was cited by Dr. Antonio Contreras as he opened the SDRC webinar workshop “A Guide to Qualitative Research for Camarines Norte State College” on April 10 via Zoom. The webinar was the final event in the week-long celebration of the Center’s 42^nd anniversary, and was part of its social engagement to help build capacities among local leaders and communities. A Political Science Department professor and former Dean of the DLSU College of Liberal Arts, Dr. Contreras revealed to CNSC faculty that he was a fellow native of Bicol, raised in Tiwi, Albay, and he graduated from Ateneo de Naga High School. But he also disclosed that his academic roots were in quantitative research, doing mathematical modelling in his masteral studies, and teaching quantitative approaches to management in forestry while at the University of the Philippines-Los Baños. He explained that his purpose in the webinar was to offer a different approach to the lesser regarded qualitative research, emphasizing that quantitative research was powerful but had its limitations, and that each approach had its strengths and could complement the other.

Beginning with a discussion of epistemology or the study of how truth is established, Dr. Contreras laid the premise of his presentation and how objectivity and neutrality in science could have negative effects. He emphasized that a closer examination of the power relations that exist in world problems, and how scholarship could be exploitative and contribute to such imbalance, indicates that partisan research is vital. While a suspension of subjectivity and being dispassionate are the norms conveyed in undertaking social science research, he contended that ultimately one needed to determine what one’s motivation was, why research was being conducted, and for whom.  He proceeded with a review of the various theoretical approaches applied in qualitative research, critical concerns in the conduct of social research and issues in research itself, assumptions of qualitative designs, features of qualitative research, and arguments for its use.

Seeking a more interactive engagement with participants, Dr. Contreras encouraged them to raise questions in the course of the presentation. Their queries revolved around how to minimize subjectivity in the interpretation of responses (“I would rather not minimize but contextualize. We are not there to report on something so clinical and objective but to provide a narrative…the discourse is intersubjective”), how to establish reliability and validity in qualitative research (where “reliability and validity should be deconstructive…The best way…is to hone your skills as a researcher. You should be prepared and know what you are doing. You should be aware of the methodology you are using. You have to have theoretical sophistication. You are your lens”), how to avert response bias (“I’m more for the Critical Social Theory approach. What is important is context…Probing is important. Be observant. Ask as many people as you can”), whether one week is long enough to gather data (“One week may be too short. That is a quasi-ethnography. An honest ethnography will require more than that”), and how to ensure that one’s research is rigorous, when using alternative approaches during the pandemic (“You cannot ensure the rigor of your analysis, someone will have to ensure that for you. Make sure everything you say is warranted by evidence…If you say something, there should be a reason…Back it with theory and literature”).

The Qualitative Research webinar training continued in the afternoon with Behavioral Sciences Department Vice Chair Dr. Crisanto Q. Regadio providing an overview and demonstration of the basic features of the NVivo data analysis software. As his research interests include the sociology of identity and Muslim Filipino studies, he shared a transcript from his work on LGBTQ Muslims in the demonstration. The transcript was used to show how the coding process involved the selection of excerpts from particular participant responses to create nodes that lead to meaning in data. He also showed how the codes could be analyzed through the use of the Word Frequency Query Results (a graphic depiction of how often particular words are used), Tree Map (which uses boxes to show how words are related), and Cluster Analysis (which draws connections between words) functions in the application.

Throughout the demonstration, the participants asked about how words rather than numbers were used in NVivo coding, whether there was a right or wrong way of assigning nodes, how to assign codes (“Two approaches can be used – a data approach, or a thematic approach”), whether an excerpt could be categorized into more than one code, how long it takes to assign codes for the transcript of a single interview, and whether a greater number of participants results in a better study (“In small scale qualitative research, what is important is not the number of participants but how in-depth the discussion is”). Their inquiry further validated the rigor and gravity involved in the conduct of qualitative research.

Dr. Josefina Socorro Tondo, Vice President for Research and Extension Services at CNSC, opened and concluded the Qualitative Research webinar by expressing the school’s appreciation for SDRC’s initiative in helping the College take its “initial step to achieve a more balanced approach to research.”  She shared that the webinar would help to attain their objective of beginning an ethnography of indigenous peoples in Camarines Norte, through an active engagement among faculty and students in volunteerism and commitment to communities in the region. Both she and SDRC Director Dr. Melvin Jabar were happy to note that the training had pushed through that day, albeit remotely¸ after the original in-person capacity building event scheduled in 2020 was disrupted. They saw the webinar as the start of a new partnership toward greater understanding and increased interest in approaches to social science research—not merely as a career, but “as a way of life.”