Caring Research Role
S. Schumacher
Caring Research Role Relationships: Clarifying or Confusing Critical Ethnography
Sally Schumacher
Virginia Commonwealth University
Research roles in qualitative inquiry are typically described as participant-observer and interviewer. Field work presents conditions which affect the research: personal issues, participatory issues, advocacy issues, ethical issues, and political choices. Most methodological literature minimizes the underlying relational aspects of ideologically-oriented inquiry, specifically qualitative critical theory (Popekevitz, 1990) and critical ethnography (Anderson, 1989, Quartz, 1992). Further, the tendency in Western culture to dichotomize--reason-emotion, fact-value, good-evil, culture-nature, masculine-feminine, rights-responsibility--assumes a hierarchy of opposites in which the first attribute is valued over the second. Some of these attributes may enlighten the complex relational aspects underlying some forms of qualitative inquiry.
Objectives/Perspective:
Lincoln called for "avoiding the distancing of conventional science by adopting a language that demonstrates emotional and social commitment on the part of the inquirer" (1990, p. 86). Belenky, et. al. (1986) demonstrated that morality, mind, self, and relationships are intricately linked to everyday ways of knowing and learning. This paper explores the methodological implications of a caring research role relationship in critical ethnography. The concept of caring is defined from selected feminine literature and described with examples from a policy study of families of adults (ages 18-32) with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). The paper also suggests appropriate validity criteria and implications for research.
The conceptual qualities of caring are drawn from Gilligan (1982) and Noddings (1984), and include moral sensitivity and prosocial moral reasoning and judgement (Bebeau & Brabeck, 1989). Caring is a commitment to an attitude that keeps one responsive to others. However, the ethics of care has limitations (Houston, 1989) and requires moral strategies to minimize researcher self-sacrifice. Caring ethics employs methods of inclusion to create alternatives and to develop personal power based on moral authority (Noblit, 1993).
Methodology:
Data for this analysis is drawn from a concurrent methodological cognitive map-log maintained by the author, a qualitative research specialist. I assumed the role of peer debriefer/internal auditor because of the exploratory nature of the study, the changing multiple relations and research roles, and the intensely emotional morally-laden topic. The log contained records of design decisions, research roles with elaborations, data collection protocols, initial insights from the rich data, and critiques of analytic drafts.
The second source of data, used for illustrative purposes only, is a 27 month critical ethnography, Long-term consequences of severe traumatic brain injury on adults: A qualitative study of families' perceptions of impact and public policy (Wood, 1993). Six families of adults with TBI were selected from members of local Head Injury Foundation chapters in a Southern state. Selection criteria applied to the son or daughter with TBI. Adults with TBI were 1) between the ages of 18 and 35; 2) between two and 15 years post-injury; 3) reliant on public services; and 4) living with their parental family. Although 4 of the 6 families were two-parent, mothers were the caretakers and voices for their adult child with TBI. Including the focus groups in three states, the total number of participants were 58 family members, of whom 41 were female.
The field researcher, co-founder and executive director of the national Association for Persons in Supported Employment (APSE), used data collection strategies of participant-observation, interviews, focus groups, policy analysis of laws and regulations, and a confirmation survey of selected state agency administrators in three geographic regions of the United States. Documents were families' records and national and state policy interpretations of public services for individuals with disabilities. The total number of field work hours was 175.25 from June, 1990, through August, 1992.
Analysis:
Table 1 conceptualizes "caring" and demonstrates how a caring research role undergirded each of the five phases of inquiry of oppressed families of adults with TBI. (See following page for Table 1.)
Pase I Pre-Planning:
Caring, as a concept, involves moral sensitivity leading to prosocial moral reasoning and judgment in the selection of an ideologically-oriented topic for critical study. Prosocial moral reasoning is "making inferences from individual's verbal and nonverbal behavior, identifying what others want or need, anticipating their reactions to one's attempt to help, and responding with appropriate affect" (Bebeau & Brabeck, 1989, p, 150). Human concerns for others include physical, material, and psychological needs and conditions. Prosocial reasoning leads to judgement which in this case was the selection of both a topic for critical study and an interactive methodology.
The field researcher was morally indignant at her frequent casual observations of the apparent response of the public service system to families of adults with TBI. These adults, with obvious functional needs for available services and supports, fell through the "gaps" of five public agencies. Why were other disability populations, such as physical and mentally handicapped adults, able to use public services when families with TBI adults were not? This puzzlement identified a research problem in Phase I.
Table 1 Caring Research Relationship
Phases of Emergent
Design
Concept of Caring
Caring Research
Role
I Pre-Planning
Phase
*moral sensitivity
*prosocial moral
reasoning and
judgement
*selection of
ideologically-
oriented topic
for critical study
II Entry into
the Field
Phase
*meets the other as
one-caring
*responsiveness to
participants
III Data Collection
Phase
*caring relationship:
-engrossment
-motivational
displacement
*passionate
participant and recorder
*emotional/reflective
expressiveness
IV Confirmation
Phase
*method of inclusion
*creates solutions
to moral problems of
individual & society
*empowerment of self
(researcher)
to empower the
oppressed and
exploited
V Dissemination
Phase
*moral authority
*dissemination to
oppressed group
*dissemination to
social & political
action groups
*legal query posed to
Attorney General
The field researcher had multiple purposes: to gain knowledge, to serve as a catalyst for family empowerment, and to present policy options to national associations. Thus, the research goals were beyond the empirical interest of producing valid conclusions. To empower others necessitated first empowering herself, the ethnographer, as data were collected and analyzed. Empowerment is not something done "to" or for" someone. "Empowerment is a process one undertakes for oneself"; its essence is people coming into a sense of their own power, a new relationship within their own contexts (Lather, 1991, p. 4).
Specifically, the foreshadowed problems were: 1) what is the impact of TBI on these adults and their close family members, 2) how well do public service systems meet their needs, and 3) what needs are not met within the current publicly funded systems. Five major laws provided civil rights protection (Americans With Disabilities Act 1990, P.L. 101-336; Developmental Disabilities Act 1984, P.L. 98-527) and publicly funded services and supports (Rehabilitation Act 1973, P.L. 93-112; Mental Retardation Facilites and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act 1963, P.L. 88-164; Social Security Act of 1935). The study focused on close family members' perspectives. Empowerment of families' voices could be intermingled with a flexible research role and activated through national associations and local chapters. States implemented national and state policy and APSE served the needs of all disabilities. APSE would be a major mechanism through which family voices would be heard in national arenas and information could be socially transformed for families and state agency administrators. The association did not formally sponsor the study.
Phase II Entry into the Field:
Caring is fundamentally a relationship. Noddings described caring as a mutual process in which "the cared-for contributes to the caring relation....by receiving the efforts of the one-caring, and this receiving may be accomplished by a disclosure of his own subjective experience in direct response" (Noddings, 1984, p. 151). Thus, what is first sought is not a contractual reciprocity, but a special reciprocity that connotes spontaneous responsiveness to family members' situations. The researcher's expressive responsiveness ignited a flood of verbal and nonverbal communication regarding family life with an adult son or daughter who was now dependent and child-like.
Phase III Data Collection:
Two distinctive features of a caring relationship are engrossment and motivational displacement. Engrossment, for a caring ethnographer, is a "feeling with" the other. Noddings (p. 30) suggests the relationship is not one of "empathy", i.e., "putting myself in the other's shoes" by analyzing his reality with objective data, and then asking "how would I feel in such a situation?" On the contrary, the ethnographer sets aside his or her desire to analyze. Instead, the researcher receives the other into one's self, and sees and feels with the other. One who is "engrossed" is listening, looking, and feeling in the affective-receptive mode, not in an analytic-objective mode. However, a lateral move into rational thinking may be appropriate at the proper time.
A second feature of a caring relationship is motivational displacement, i.e. "when we see the other's reality as a possibility for us, we must act to eliminate the intolerable, to reduce the pain, to fill the need, to actualize the dream" (Noddings, p. 14). Thus, caring involves more than feeling with someone; it is a motivational shift toward the goals of the cared-for. For caring ethnographers, shifting their interest from one's own reality to the reality of the participants arouses a feeling of "I must do something." The urgency "to do something" is, for the caring ethnographer, an extension of his or her own ethical self.
During data collection, the ethnographer was a passionate participant-observer and recorder. Emotional and reflective expressiveness were intermingled by both persons in eliciting valid data. All of these family members described their relations with their adult children with TBI more as caregivers rather than the professional term of "caretakers". Family members feelings were simultaneously recorded with their stories. Thus, coded feelings became a major category for the impact of TBI on the individuals and their family members. Emotions experienced by the adults with TBI and either discussed or displayed by their parents were those of sadness, fear, anger, frustration, anxiety, depression, denial, aggression, tension, and despair. This analysis generated another a query to the mothers regarding percentage of time that they were emotionally charged about something related to their adult child. The estimates voiced ranged from 40% to 90%. The percentage of time spent doing or thinking about things related to their adult child ranged from 65% to almost 100%. Further analysis generated the concept of "disability domination" which was illustrated with family social isolation, emotional stress, and financial draining interacting with multiple caregiving roles of family members.
The researcher was less an "instrument", implying a mechanistic approach to recording data, and more a "feeling with" person.
For this field researcher, caring and respect for both one's self and for other people's needs was through connection, in the realization that herself and others were interdependent and that life could only be sustained in relationships. Knowledge came "not from detachment, but from living in connections with ...[self] and others, from being embedded in the conditions of life" (Giddings, 1982, p. 148). This was dramatically demonstrated when the researcher became a participant with a single mother in trying to access public services for her 18 year old daughter with TBI. The ethnographer was a coach, broker, mediator, and prompter for the mother (Wax, 1952; Harding, 1987). Information regarding public services was collaboratively shared as this desperate mother wandered through the maze of agency regulations and personnel. The researcher also made repeated telephone calls to appropriate public service agencies and heard for herself the various responses and conflicting bureaucratic regulations. Detailed field notes were kept during the 18 month process. Finally, this single mother, emotionally, physically, and financially exhausted, gave up her 18 year old daughter with TBI for institutionalization.
Phase IV Confirmation:
Caring involves inclusion in creating solutions to moral problems of individuals in social situations and, by implication, society. Inclusion is not derived by the logic of fairness, rights, or avoidance of hurting others, but one of responsibility and caring (Giddings, pp. 134, 149). In Phases III and IV, family members voiced their specific needs for public services and supports. The researcher transformed these needs into professional language and policy discourse of case management services, caretaker support services, long-term care and or rehabilitation services, out-of-family home residential services, psychological counseling/behavior intervention, and respite care services. With all families, including those in focus groups, she collaborate in creating possible solutions to access public services.
In focus group meetings, the ethnographer raised critical consciousness and provided emancipatory enlightenment. She served as the moderator, using the Focus Group Interview Protocol. However, once the tape recorder was stopped, she said to the group "I want to talk to you all...Were you aware that...?" The researcher provided information for families to empower and to emancipate themselves.
Phase V Dissemination:
Knowledge acquired from a caring relationship can be a form of power, or more specifically, the ethical use of power (Noblit, 1993). Power traditionally is conceived as a trait, a relationship, and as institutionalized ideologies and control structures. Caring is connected and is often located in roles distant from the actual family caregivers such as teachers, case managers, ministers, and the like. Power, in this sense, is not about competition, but is used to confirm the other and to benefit both parties in different ways. Knowledge, when socially transformed, empowers the caring ethnographer's moral authority. This was particularly evident in Phase V Dissemination.
Following an analysis of survey data from three different states pertaining to state regulations for accessing public services, the researcher called some state agency administrators. She informed the state administrators that, despite their claims of available program services, the state eligibility criteria denied these very services to adults with TBI. As a disability policy authority, she linked family needs to various public services with eligibility hurdles for adults with TBI. The analysis illuminated possible discriminatory eligibility criteria for accessing public services and supports based on disability label rather than functional criteria.
Validity Criteria:
The appropriate criteria for valid data, that is, agreement on description of the phenomena between researcher and participants, were: verbatim accounts, low-inference descriptors, mechanically recorded data, participant researcher (anecdotal records, diaries of families), member checking, peer debriefer/internal auditor, and negative and discrepant data (McMillan & Schumacher, 1993). Triangulation of themes and patterns was crucial for discovery strategies.
Construct validity, especially that of the impact of the adult child with TBI on family life, revealed how prior adult development and family research was questioned by the logic of families' stories. Face validity, demonstrated in the focus groups, provided a "click of recognition" and a "yes, of course", rather than "but, our experience is...". It seems both confirmation and face validity are important in construct validity.
Catalytic validity represents the degree to which the research process re-orients, focuses and energizes participants toward knowing reality in order to transform it; to consciously channel this impact so that the participants gain knowledge, understanding, and, ultimately, self-determination (Lather, 1991). Dissemination included a national policy referred journal manuscript, APSE advocacy workshops, and study requests from state directors. Copies of the study were sent to the National Head Injury Foundation and to a family member in a leadership position of an advocacy group. In addition, a legal query was posed to the Department of Justice regarding discriminatory eligibility criteria based on disability label under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Implications:
"Caring" may describe more accurately the underlying relational aspect in some qualitative critical studies. A range of emotions frequently accompanies interactive field strategies (Kleinman & Copp, 1993). This paper focused on the underlying relational aspects of field work in one study. Other qualitative researchers may select an ideologically-oriented topic but value the more distant relationship of a traditional social scientist. Research conducted under institutional permission rather than participant permission creates a different situation. See, for example, a discussion (Taylor, 1987) of ethical dilemmas in unexpectedly witnessing abuse and ultimately deciding it was more important to complete the study rather than ignore the prior institutional agreement.
Caring relationships do not prevent logical reasoning in analysis and presentation of conclusions and policy implications. In fact, lateral shifts may be to moral reasoning based on rights and justice. Methodological development necessitates accurate description of all aspects of the inquiry.
A caring research relationship is emotionally and cognitively demanding. The role may require additional research strategies. Strategies in this study included a concurrent cognitive log; the articulation of all research purposes in preplanning; and language fluency in working across diverse constituencies such as families, public social system personnel, medical specialists, and legal resources. Most important was the frequent peer debriefing to voice personal and professional tensions from living with depressing and powerless situations. These strategies minimized ethnographer self-sacrifice and provided evidence for addressing appropriate validity criteria.
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