by Garfield Scott
Theory & Methodology
This section explores and applies the theoretical and conceptual foundations of the autoethnographic research design. The concept of dialogical models and theories in support of autoethnography provide a rationale and framework for understanding the research design. Next, methods of data collection and analysis are provided. Finally, the section concludes with a discussion of ethical considerations, notably the importance of authenticity in the autoethnographic process to protect against researcher bias toward objectivity.
Dialogical Self Theory
This study’s autoethnographic approach originates in Dialogical Self Theory, which was developed distinct from autoethnography as a research method. Dialogical Self Theory (DST) was developed in the late 20th Century by theorists from the social sciences and humanities who wanted to emphasize the dynamic relationship between the self, society, and others.[1] DST claims that one’s identity, perceptions, values, feelings, and behaviors are constantly changing as a result of the dialogue within and between the self and other cultural artifacts and people. DST challenges the concept of the self, others, and cultural artifacts as separate and fixed items. Instead, the self and these other people and things are part of each other and thus constantly changing based on their interaction.
DST calls for a unique approach to research that recognizes the placement of the researcher in the research setting. DST has origins in philosophers and researchers, such as William James and Margaret Mead, who emphasized the need for observers of other cultures to avoid generalizations of others and understand how their own cultural experiences might intrude on their analysis.[2] James, the 19th Century philosopher of the psychology of self, showed how the consideration of the self includes people and things outside the self, such as friends, family members, and cultural artifacts. Mead, an anthropologist, showed how the delineation between the researcher self and the others being studied creates an inaccurate consideration of people and cultural artifacts. As Mead stated, “selves are not only representatives of society and are deemed to conform to existing institutional structures, [they] are also able to create and innovate them.”[3]
The dialogical model from DST has been applied to autoethnography theory and research because it rejects the detachment of the researcher from the subjects of study. Autoethnography advocate Dwight Conquergood suggests that such detachment presents ethical hazards, including appropriation of culture under the justification of research, superficial research data and findings, and exploitation of research subjects and their culture.[4] The dialogical model advocates for a conversation and engagement between the researcher and the cultural subjects. “The aim of dialogical performance … is to bring self and other together so that they can question, debate, and challenge one another.”[5] Without this dialogue, researchers are at risk not only of the ethical violations noted above but also of inaccurate interpretations of what they observe and hear from others.
By contrast, a dialogical approach to research is more likely to generate data that is robust, accurate, and illustrates how people and cultural artifacts are fluid and changing (artifacts include tangible and intangible culture, i.e., generally held values, perceptions, customs, behaviors, language, products, technology, media, etc.). The dialogical approach is quite suited for a research study on the cultural capital transmitted between foreign tutors and their Chinese students. This interpersonal exchange involves relationship formation and change involving persons and cultural artifacts.[6] The exchange both illuminates personal identities and cultural artifacts as distinct items while changing them at the same time. DST and the dialogical approach of autoethnography provides the framework of understanding this dynamic to generate rich data and analysis.
Theories Supporting Autoethnography
Autoethnography as a research method originates in a number of theories from different disciplines. Symbolic interactionism in sociological theory recognizes the role of communication in identity formation.[7] Everyday communications and behaviors construct symbols that individuals use for identity formation, behaviors, thinking patterns, ways of feeling, and how they view the world and others. Relational Dialectics Theory recognizes how relationships and their communications represent the convergence of different perspectives to produce distinct outputs.[8] For example, two people with different views about something will change each other’s views through the relationship. Narratology is both the study and a theory that emphasizes the importance of narratives or stories that people hold and share about themselves, others, and the world.[9] People experience and make sense of things by constructing narratives, these narratives are particularly strong because they appeal to emotions, and people make decisions based on the narratives they have constructed. All of these theories support autoethnography as an effective research method for studies that include research subjects from other cultures and attempt to make sense of those subjects and culture.
Data Collection
Personal Notes
Data will be collected from individuals, notes, media, and documents related to this researcher’s life in China from 2004 to 2019. The primary source of data will be written and dictated notes created by this researcher during that period and more recently through exercises of reflection. For example, notes were dictated in the past year regarding my experience meeting, dating, and marrying my Chinese wife. Notes have also been dictated and written about my experiences in internships, communications and engagements with others, teacher training, curricula design, and tutoring. Notes will also include journal entries written during my period in China. This data was produced by the researcher and will continue to be produced through the course of the project.
Documents
Data will also include professional and academic documents, email communications, and written accounts from students, teachers, colleagues, friends, and acquaintances. This data exists in digital and physical format, such as archived email messages and print materials of curricula. This data was not produced by the researcher’s subjective processes of note-taking, reflection and memory recollection. This data exists as distinct objective artifacts that were produced during this researcher’s tenure in China.
Cultural and Media Artifacts
Data will also include cultural and media artifacts produced in China. This data includes art and literature that indicate cultural values and practices. For example, this set of data includes drawings, proverbs, and common sayings produced by Chinese and which indicate norms, values, and behavioral patterns.
Interviews
Interview data will also be generated for this study. Individuals associated with this researcher’s Chinese experience will be interviewed to ensure accuracy of recollected memories. Interview data will be used to illuminate this researcher’s reflections, fulfilling the ideal of dialogical exchange that produces robust data. Interview data will be used to gain insight into areas of inquiry that can be the basis for additional data generation by the researcher. For example, interviewees might provide data that will be the basis for reflecting and recollecting experiences that this researcher did not previously remember or consider. Interviews will follow a semi-structured format. This format includes prewritten questions but also allows for impromptu questions. The semi-structured format is associated with robust data that expands beyond the researcher’s assumptions and experiences.[10]
Data Analysis
Content analysis will apply a process of evaluation and interpretation of the data collected from notes, documents, interviews, and artifacts. Content analysis is a powerful method of qualitative research when the data consists of human language and cultural production.[11] Content analysis intends to discern the meaning of language or cultural artifacts that are described by language. Content analysis includes steps of evaluation, summarizing, triangulating, and interpreting the data to produce results and findings. Evaluation and summary of data is usually referred to in content analysis as coding, which seeks to determine the fundamental meaning of the data.[12] Triangulation and interpreting are the interpretive tools of content analysis to generate results and findings. The levels of analysis will include words, phrases, and sentences in notes, interview transcripts, documents, and cultural artifacts.
Identifying Relevant Data
The first step of content analysis will identify relevant data through reading and evaluation. Data will exist in written language that will be evaluated for relevance to the research questions. Relevant data will be highlighted, copied, and pasted into a digital word-processing document verbatim with indicators of the source. Data will be determined as relevant by identifying concepts that support, negate, or inform in some way the research questions. All relevant data will be assigned to a single document for the next phase of content analysis, identifying themes.
Identifying Themes
Themes in the relevant data set will be identified through another level of content analysis, which will require identifying distinctions at the levels of analysis. For example, relevant notes might have words, phrases, and sentences that relate to different themes. These analytical units will be highlighted, copied, and pasted into another document designated by a singular theme. The thematic documents will consist of units from different sources that relate to the specific theme.
Triangulation
Triangulation will represent the first stage of interpretation of the thematic data to generate unique results. Triangulation in content analysis requires the researcher to compare and contrast data with other sources, such as research literature.[13] For example, the thematic document content will be compared and contrasted to findings presented in the literature review about cultural capital, Chinese education, and other research topics. This phase of content analysis will generate additional documents that include the content from the thematic documents with excerpts or notes from the research literature. For example, a theme might support a literature finding, and a quotation or paraphrased section from the associated research article will be attached to the content from the thematic document in the triangulation document. The triangulation document will include cited literature findings with the thematic content generated by this study.
Interpretation
The content analysis will then progress to the final stage of interpreting the triangulation content to produce unique findings of this research study. This document will produce content necessary for the findings, implications, and direction for future research sections of the written research report.
Ethical Considerations
This research study presents information from and about others who might suffer psychological distress and reputational harm if their identities becoming known to a third party. To prevent harm, the identities of others must remain confidential. All persons other than the researcher and his wife will remain anonymous or will be provided with an informed consent form that advises them of the nature of the study and the potential for harm. Individuals who cannot be contacted for informed consent will only be referred to anonymously. Anonymous subjects will be referred to in notes and the report by pseudonyms, initials, or abbreviations, such as first name and last initial. Institutional Review Board approval for human subjects (interview participants) will be obtained.
Autoethnography presents a potential ethical dilemma of psychological distress from interpersonal conflict between the researcher and the subject.[14] Harm could occur to subjects if expressions of differences during conversations/interviews with the researcher produce interpersonal conflict. For example, the researcher and a subject might disagree about something they both experienced. Anticipation of conflict can diminish harm as the researcher empathizes with the subject in a dialogical exchange that is respectful.[15] The purposes and practices of autoethnography should facilitate such an exchange since they are oriented toward positive relationship formation and interpersonal exchanges that have a humanitarian objective toward cultural understanding. Interviews and other communications with subjects will be guided by these principles to avoid negative emotional impacts of any conflict that might arise related to different memories or interpretations of commonly shared experiences. This researcher will prepare interview questions that anticipate areas of conflict and implement conflict resolution skills, such as emotional regulation when discussing different accounts or perceptions of shared experiences.
Authenticity and Researcher Bias
Autoethnography presents a specific ethical dilemma related to researcher bias and cultural authenticity. Authenticity “is a way for people to distinguish who is culturally similar or different in order to establish solidarity.”[16]Authenticity might imply that a specific identity or perspective represents the most accurate cultural item, experience, or person. For example, an autoethnography by an American about experiences in China will present results and findings that might imply an objective cultural reality of something that is authentically Chinese. This can present an ethical hazard that violates the tenets of autoethnography’s objective to produce data that reflects social reality better than traditional ethnography. A researcher might attempt to use the autoethnography method to assert a greater claim to authenticity.
To avoid this form of researcher bias in autoethnography, researchers must be mindful of how their cultural identities, values and perceptions are subjectively situated even as they strive for realistic portrayal. Reflection must guide all steps of the research process to avoid the false construction and presentation of something as more authentic to cultural reality than something else. Such reflection can avoid researcher bias in forming assumptions and then presenting those assumptions as unqualified findings of reality.[17] For example, when formulating and presenting a finding in a written report, the researcher can qualify the finding with language that recognizes its origins in the researcher’s interpretation.
Researcher bias toward an assumption of cultural authenticity an also be addressed through the dialogical method of autoethnography. Dialogue with others can generate data that recognizes multiplicities of perspectives about a cultural item.[18] These multiplicities can be accepted as part of a complex and even paradoxical cultural reality rather than formulated into a singular finding that claims a singular cultural authenticity, which is actually only the researcher’s subjective interpretation – or researcher bias.
Bibliography
Adams, Tony, Jones, Stacy Holman, and Carolyn Ellis. 2015. Autoethnography: Understanding qualitative research. Oxford University Press.
Boylorn, Robin M. and Orbe, Mark P. 2014. Critical Autoethnography: Intersecting Cultural
Identities in Everyday Life. Left Coast Press.
Chang, Heewon. 2016. Autoethnography as Method. Routledge.
Hermans, Hubert and Thorsten Glaser. 2011. Handbook of Dialogical Self Theory. Cambridge
University Press.
Matthes, Jorg, Davis, Christine, and Robert E. Potter. 2017. The International Encyclopedia of
Communication Research Methods. John Wiley & Sons.
Mayring, Philipp. 2021. Qualitative Content Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide. SAGE
Publications, 2021.
[1] Hermans, Hubert and Thorsten Glaser. 2011. Handbook of Dialogical Self Theory. Cambridge University Press.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Hermann and Glaser, p. 6.
[4] Adams, Tony, Jones, Stacy Holman, and Carolyn Ellis. 2015. Autoethnography: Understanding Qualitative Research. Oxford University Press.
[5] Adams et al., p. 14.
[6] Chang, Heewon. 2016. Autoethnography as Method. Routledge.
[7] Boylorn, Robin M. and Orbe, Mark P. 2014. Critical Autoethnography: Intersecting Cultural Identities in Everyday Life. Left Coast Press.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Mayring, Philipp. 2021. Qualitative Content Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide. SAGE Publications, 2021.
[11] Ibid
[12] Ibid
[13] Ibid
[14] Boylorn and Orbe, Critical Autoethnography
[15] Matthes, Jorg, Davis, Christine, and Robert E. Potter. 2017. The International Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods. John Wiley & Sons.
[16] Boylorn and Orbe, Critical Autoethnography
[17] Chang, Autoethnography as Method
[18] Hermans and Glaser, Handbook of Dialogical Self Theory
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