Resonance

Within an interpretive tradition of qualitative research, resonance refers to a researcher's posture of openness and receptivity toward potential meanings embedded in text. It serves as an important ontological and epistemological counterpoint to the postpositivist stance of objective analysis of data.

Texts as representations of human experience are assumed to be social constructions imbued with meaning—by the author of a text and those who resonate with it. As Elliot Eisner suggested with the concept of connoisseurship, it is a researcher's sensibilities that allow him or her to see the nuances of a text with an “enlightened eye.” Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, in formulating grounded theory, offered the term theoretical sensitivity to connote a similar capacity of researchers to engage insightfully with texts of a social phenomenon. Writing within a tradition of existential phenomenology, Hans-Georg Gadamer argued that “our sensitive-spiritual existence is an aesthetic resonance chamber that resonates with the voices that are constantly reaching us” (p. 8). As Gadamer's observation suggests, resonance is not an analytic technique. Rather, it stems from our very existence, our way of being and relating in the world. Thomas Schwandt, drawing on Deborah Kerdeman's interpretation of Gadamer, pointed to the relational nature of understanding and the transformative possibilities that arise when researchers are open to the “other.” The quality of openness to voices that are reaching the researcher's ear might be likened to a finely tuned musical instrument capable of picking up and reverberating with external vibrations. In extending this musical analogy, it is useful to consider resonance in concert with dissonance and consonance. As Maureen McCarthy Draper explained, “dissonance refers to intervals or chords that create tension because they are unstable and therefore generate the energy to move—the opposite of consonance, in which sounds are relatively stable and free of tension” (p. 46). Resonance connotes a capacity to hear both consonance and dissonance—the harmonies and disharmonies. Reverberating with the consonance and dissonance within a text allows researchers to discern a multiplicity of potential meanings associated with the phenomenon under study. Through a richly nuanced representation of these meanings, an inquiry may strike a responsive chord in others, thereby allowing for what Robert Stake called naturalistic generalization. Vipassana Esbjorn-Hargens and Rosemarie Anderson, in describing intuitive inquiry in psychology, used the concept of resonance validity to describe this mode of extending meaning beyond the specific context of a study to a broader, more universal audience.