MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

and stored on CD Rom. Thus, a complete audit trail of the
coding process exists which would enable any future researcher
to work with the data in the same way as the researcher and
endeavour to reach the same results.
In the trade union field, research is usually quantitative. There is,
therefore, often pressure on qualitative researchers to overcome
positivist pressure to demonstrate the objectivity of their research.
Lincoln and Guba (1985) say that trustworthiness is needed, through
triangulated empirical materials. They employ criteria of credibility,
transferability, dependability and confirmability. This does not, it is
suggested, involve external coding of the data. Greene (1994) says
that, in interpretivist work, it is precisely the individual qualities of the
human inquirer that are valued as indispensable to meaning
construction. The researcher in this study, in his unique position as
practitioner and academic, has, it is submitted, brought these qualities
to this project. The method used is in all respects transparently laid out
in this thesis so that readers can see and understand the perspectives
of the interviewees and follow how that relates to the literature upon
which the study is based.
This argument is also relevant to the issue of bias. The researcher was
one of the very first within the British trade union movement to argue
for the importance of management in trade unions. This is a strength
but also a weakness in that it is easy to suggest that negative findings
would be reached at great personal cost. Miles and Huberman
(1994:263) identify three ‘archetypal’ sources of analytic bias:-
• The holistic fallacy – interpreting events as more patterned and
congruent than they really are, lopping off the many loose ends
of which social life is made
• Elite bias – overweighting data from articulate, well-informed,
usually high-status informants and under-representing data from
less articulate, lower status ones
• Going native – losing your perspective or your ‘bracketing’
ability, being co-opted into the perceptions and explanations of
local informants
The holistic fallacy is, it is suggested, tackled by the transparent way in
which analysis is demonstrably linked via coding structures directly to
the propositions arising from the research, and by triangulation. Elite
bias is not involved; almost all of the interviewees are high level
officials and the perspectives of them all have been analysed from text,
not from status. Emotionally, the researcher has found it very easy on
many occasions to become deeply involved during interviews, and
transcriptions, and coding, in what interviewees were saying. Going
native would have been very easy – were it not for the structured
analysis process followed which concentrated on text rather than, as
noted above, on individuals. This is not to say that the researcher is not
left with a sense of tremendous admiration for the respondents and the
extent of their work to improve the lives of the members by improving
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