RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

386 ACCOUNTS
Box 17.2
Account gathering
Research strategy
Informants
Definition of episode and role groups
representing domain of interest
Identification of exemplars
Selection of individual informants
Control procedure
Rationale for choice of episode and role groups
Degree of involvement of potential informants
Contact with individuals to establish motive for
participation, competence and performance
Account gathering situation
Establishing venue
Recording the account
Controlling relevance of account
Authenticating account
Establishing role of interviewer and
interviewee
Post account authentication
Contextual effects of venue
Appropriateness and accuracy in documenting
account
Accounts agenda
Negotiation and internal consistency
Degree of direction
Corroboration
Transformation of accounts
Provision of working documents
Data reduction techniques
Researchers’ accounts
Transcription reliability; coder reliability
Appropriateness of statistical and content analyses
Account of the account: summary, overview,
interpretation
Description of research operations, explanatory
scheme and theoretical background
Source:BrownandSime1981:163
prompted by the fifteen situations listed in
Box 17.3.
Because the experience-sampling method
avoids interrogation, the material which emerges
is less organized than that obtained from a
tightly structured interview. Successful handling
of individual accounts therefore requires the
researcher to know the interview content
extremely well and to work toward the gradual
emergence of tentative interpretive schemata
which he then modifies, confirms or falsifies
as the research continues. Kitwood identifies
eight methods for dealing with the tape-recorded
accounts. The first four methods are fairly close to
the approach adopted in handling questionnaires,
and the rest are more in tune with the ethogenic
principles that we identified earlier:
The total pattern of choice: the frequency of
choice of various items permits some surface
generalizations about the participants, taken as
agroup.Themostrevealinganalysesmaybe
those of the least and most popular items.
Similarities and differences: using the same
technique as in the first method, it is possible to
investigate similarities and differences within
the total sample of accounts according to some
characteristic(s) of the participants such as age,
sex, level of educational attainment, etc.
Grouping items together: it may be convenient
for some purposes to fuse together categories
that cover similar subject matter. For example,
items 1, 5 and 14 in Box 17.3 relate to conflict;
items 4, 7 and 15 relate to personal growth and
change.