Interpretive Research Methods

The Goal of Interpretive Research Methods

Interpretive researchers are guided by questions about the culture and context that they study. The goal of interpretive research methods is an in-depth understanding of a particular cultural context. Researchers who use an interpretive approach pose research questions about the values, norms, and worldview of cultural group members, with the recognition that culture is socially constructed and, thus, subjective. Culture is not something that can be fully understood through study in laboratory settings. While not everyone in a culture behaves in the same way, by looking at patterns of behavior, the researcher can gain insight into the cultural norms and how they are negotiated.

Interpretive research methods are often compared with social scientific/functional research methods, which use quantitative measures (surveys, experiments) and inferential statistics to predict behavior based on knowledge of a number of variables, including cultural group membership. From that perspective, culture is one variable that can be used to determine behavior in an objective manner, often through surveys or experiments. By comparing cultures, differences between how individuals from different cultures behave, the influence of those cultures can be compared. However, interpretive scholars focus on behavior in a natural setting, arguing that the objectivity of scientific studies oversimplifies culture and that people may behave differently in real settings. They also question the value of objectivity that functionalistic researchers hold; when studying human phenomena, it is impossible to be strictly objective as even decisions about what variables to include are made by human researchers.

Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, and other researchers from the 1960s through the 1980s, rejected the idea of studying human behavior in laboratory settings as artificial and out of context. Rather than having theorists predicting relationships and then testing their hypotheses, these researchers and others advocated for grounding analysis in the real-world experiences of those being studied. While cultural anthropologists had [Page 561]been doing this type of naturalistic research since the development of their field, the other social sciences, beginning in the early to mid-20th century, tried to be as much like the natural sciences as possible. They embraced the use of the scientific method and objectivity. The emergence and establishment of the interpretive perspective was challenged by scientific thinking; however, the interpretive researcher has come to be respected for the depth of understanding that can be gained through these methods.

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