Introduction to the special issue on qualitative-interpretive research

Citation

Cook, D.T. (2009), "Introduction to the special issue on qualitative-interpretive research", Young Consumers, Vol. 10 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/yc.2009.32110daa.001

Introduction to the special issue on qualitative-interpretive research

Article Type: Editorial From: Young Consumers, Volume 10, Issue 4

When Brian Young invited me to join the Editorial Advisory Board of Young Consumers, in addition to being honoured I was also a bit puzzled. As a long time researcher in the qualitative-constructivist-symbolic interactionist tradition, I wondered how my input and insight could be of benefit to a journal and readership that seemed largely attuned to psychological, quantitative and business-impact approaches in the study of young consumers. The kind Editor assured me of his desire to shake things up a bit and hoped I could be of service.

Accustomed to teaching and speaking to audiences of diverse academic interests and approaches, and always cognizant of the insidious “quantitative-qualitative” divide in many scholarly circles, I proposed editing a special issue that made some qualitative research in the social science tradition – rather than in the consumer behaviour or market practitioner traditions – available to the readership. No doubt, these are not hard and fast categories of thought and the boundaries between them have been breaking down for decades. They, nonetheless, continue to hold sway in many quarters. As I solicited manuscripts, I reflected on the divisions just noted and the differences in perspective they bring to purportedly the “same” phenomenon – namely, the understanding of young consumers. Out of this reflection emerged my contribution to this special issue that offers an historical treatment of how changing conceptualisations of the “child” help make possible and viable the recent interest in interpretive-qualitative research in investigating children’ sand youth’s consumer behaviour.

Overviews and histories give one kind of angle of vision on qualitative research, but nothing drives home the point like reading reports on research. The four research articles in this volume together present an array of theoretical and methodological stances that draw on and contribute to the ongoing project that is qualitative-interpretive research. By no means do these paint anything approaching an exhaustive picture of the kind of research being conducted along these lines. What they share is an engagement with the central preoccupation of the qualitative-interpretive standpoint – namely, the problem of meaning in human social life. It is a view that comprehends humans as actively and regularly involved in the process of interpreting and ordering the world about them, including their interactions with others. Sociologist Herbert Blumer (1969, p. 5) put the matter concisely some decades ago in an oft-quoted passage: “The actor selects, checks, suspends, regroups and transforms the meanings in the light of the situation in which he (sic) is placed and the direction of his (sic) action”. One great change of the last 10 or 15 years in this regard centres on the way this view of the social actor has been applied to children by many scholars in many fields of inquiry, as evidenced by the contributions to this volume.

We see then in Rebekah Willett’s study of the social networking site, Bebo, how the use of interviews, the viewing of web sites and the use of screen grabs allow the youth she studies to articulate the ways in which their on-line practices work to carve out spaces for identity creation, both between peers and in relation to their view of adults and the adult world. Anna Sparrman examines the “interpretive competencies” of children though focus group interviews regarding breakfast cereal packaging in an effort not only to elicit their views about the packaging, but also to uncover what larger discourses the children draw on to make meaning for themselves and others. Making use of detailed conversation analysis of pre-school children in Dublin, Olivia Freeman interrogates the usefulness of the method as she unpacks the children’s understandings of their selves and peers through talk about Coca-Cola. Margit Keller and Veronika Kalmus investigate the multifarious ways children understand “cool” by attending to how they position themselves as experts, fun lovers, achievers and/or creators in relation to the world of goods.

The reader will no doubt note a number of characteristics distinctive of this form of research reportage. The lengths of the articles are much longer than those typically published in this journal. It is through detailed analysis of language, images and behaviour that the stuff, the material, of meaning and identity in everyday life can be brought to light. The number of cases studied are much smaller than many studies in Young Consumers. Interpretive research self-consciously trades identifiable generalisability across many cases in favour of capturing the depth and detail of a few.

Researchers in the qualitative-interpretive tradition also comprehend the research act as a social act that necessarily carries with it assumptions and biases that cannot be shed but can be taken into account. Methods are not seen as neutral tools, unaffected by the participants, that uncover extant truths. Hence, the contributors prudently discuss and reflect on their relationship with the children with whom they worked, recognising that their relationship vis-à-vis the children both allows and constrains the gathering of different kinds of data.

No one method or perspective tells all. In bringing these papers to this readership, it is my hope that all of us come to understand both the promises and limitations of our respective views and find ways to move beyond them so as to arrive in a new place. I thank Brian Young for his willingness to try new things and the reviewers who put in dedicated and sincere effort to help better these papers.

Daniel Thomas Cook