Abductive Analysis in Qualitative Inquiry

Taking Your Time

Abductive processes require time for familiarization (and defamiliarization). Abductive analysis involves questioning one’s own knowledge and a close scrutiny of evidence (Charmaz, 2006; Reichertz, 2010). From a sound, expert knowledge of the research evidence under question—deliberated over, reflected on, and talked about—come opportunities for new ideas. What is currently known is meant to be questioned and the researcher’s attitude should be open, willing, and prepared for new insights (Charmaz, 2006; Reichertz, 2010).

Brinkmann (2014) takes a very pragmatist stance when he proposes that as researchers we question what we think we know and take for granted, and actively seek to defamiliarize ourselves in order to know the phenomena in new ways: “to stay unbalanced for a moment longer than what is comfortable, for this is where we may learn something new” (p. 724). John Dewey advises many times to resist making quick judgments. Dewey used the word “deliberation” to emphasize the “operation of intelligence” involved in processes like reflection and analysis (1938). This is a critical aspect to analysis: “the reflexive intellectual and experiential capital one brings to bear on the data” (Opie, 1999, p. 228). Time is needed for a researcher to become familiar with the research evidence through multiple readings (listening, viewing) and to seek defamiliarization (Becker, 2014; Timmermans & Tavory, 2012). Charmaz (2006) encourages researchers to “entertain” all possible explanations, which will also take time.

I propose abductive analysis as a response to the risk of aspects of researcher practice going underground or becoming silenced in the research record due to time pressures for the production of research outputs and our attempts to be efficient. Siobhan O’Dwyer et al. (2018) describe these pressure:

the pressure to produce more, to produce more that is measurable, to produce more with less; to engage, to engage with impact, to engage with more significant impact; to deliver, to deliver with efficiency, to deliver with more efficiency; to be available, to be more available, to be available without delay. (p. 244)

There may be alternative responses. ⁹

I am asking that researchers push back against the call for haste or urgency to research outputs and impact because even when we set out to be efficient in our analysis—assigning codes, swiftly determining themes or categories—it is likely we find that all may not be resolved. A vague “just out of reach” thought might continue to puzzle and distract. No matter how many times we rationally explain to ourselves how that comment or episode in the evidence has been fitted in to our systems (or discarded for good reason), it refuses to be ignored. It niggles, it irritates. Sometimes, we can find ourselves nervous or unsettled as an emotional response to something that occurred or was said (or felt sense, Gendlin, 1991; Perl, 2004). We do have choices when something does not seem to fit and yet we may feel pressured by institutional and publishing norms to complete the project. Howard Becker (2007) reminded researchers of the tension between “getting it out the door” (p. 123) and “making it better” (p. 125) and that we do have to “take into account the organizational rewards and punishments of different strategies” (p. 126). We can elect to put aside our puzzle at this time or continue to question and deliberate.

Not only do we need to take the time to complete our tasks with the satisfaction of work well done, we also need time away from these tasks, including those we label research analysis. Einstein used to sail, play his violin, and walk about town eating ice cream wearing shoes with no socks (Berne, 2016). We cannot know perhaps how each of these activities prompted moves forward in his scientific work but my point is that he did take time for leisure, other creative pursuits, wandering and wondering. ¹⁰ Daniel Kahneman (2011), author of Thinking fast and slow, even identified his exact walking pace in miles per minute to think and to work. ¹¹ Kahneman said he did the “best thinking of his life on leisurely walks with Amos,” his long-time collaborator (p. 40). Kahneman signals with this comment that researcher time for “other than research” activities need not be solitary or independent. Abductive analysis therefore contrasts with concepts of analysis as primarily an “individual-at-a-computer” task.

New ideas come from a consideration of experiences beyond our research both past and future. Jerry Rosiek (2013) writes,

. . . through [abduction], new relations are created within the stream of experience that did not exist before. These novel relations are the product—in part—of the exercise of our judgment, judgments that intuitively anticipate future consequences, but that are also products of [a] sedimented past. (p. 699)

Rosiek’s “stream of experience” echoes Dewey’s (1938) notion of “continuity,” Norman Denzin’s (2015) “meanings in motion,” and Colin Koopman’s (2011) “transitional understanding.” Rosiek’s “novel relations” are an exercise in judgment. Such new relationships can be a creative outcome of new associations or a combination of features in the research evidence. Researchers need room (time and space) for ideas to surface, combine and/or for these ideas to achieve enough materiality to be recorded. Yet the time involved and the influence of “other” activities on new knowledge are rare in research records and how-to methods texts, at least, to the same extent as we might be prepared to uncover our “sedimented past” (include our researcher standpoint and relevant biography) and “anticipate future consequences” (ensuring ethical conduct and proposal of implications arising from the study) (Rosiek, 2013, p. 699).

John Law (2004) sees the need for a “slow and uncertain,” “risky and troubling” process (p. 10) and for researchers “to live more in and through slow method or vulnerable method, or quiet method” (p. 11). Processes of abductive analysis take time: time to be immersed in evidence, to think within the work of our research studies; time to go fishing, chase clouds/notions, take one’s eye off the ball (or the kettle); as well as taking time to encourage novice researchers to do the same. Time spent walking, reading good fiction, watching a movie, or listening to music may tangentially benefit our thinking and therefore our research.

Acknowledging Informal Prompts as Influences

While much of the work of qualitative researchers has become more relational, reflexive, and creative in research records, publications, and methods textbooks, research analysis tends to refer to the “coding of data” and the generation of themes (Kalpokaite & Radivojevic, 2019). Through the use of digital technologies and applications (such as NVivo), it is suggested that evidence can be sifted, sorted, and labeled by following systematic and efficient procedures. ¹² Law (2007) writes, “dominant approaches to method work with some success to repress the very possibility of mess . . . caught in an obsession with clarity, with specificity, and with the definite” (p. 596). Law refers to this as a kind of “hygiene,” a “methodological cleanliness” that “others” (and absences) the mess of whatever is being researched and “the confusion, paradox and imprecision” that ends up hidden (p. 598). Law hopes that social science researchers “can learn to live in a way that is less dependent on the automatic [the mechanical, technical, system or recipe]” (p. 9).

Researchers are influenced by what they see (read) and hear (talk about) in the process of conducting their research (see Atkinson, 2017; Brown, 2019). Paul Atkinson (2017) writes that ideas “will definitely not ‘emerge’ just from our repeated inspection of notes and transcripts” (p. 167) and he advocates for researchers to be intentional regarding where ideas come from rather than editing them out of the reports. I take this reflexivity and transparency a step further than these authors may intend. If people think of research as bounded, then I mean to encourage a step out and over the artificial boundary between research tasks and the researcher’s “other” life activities.

Considering influences beyond a boundary to the research project is in line with what Zygmunt Bauman and Tim May (2001) say of sociology, that it “raises possibilities for thinking differently by including those aspects of our lives that are normally bracketed from consideration” (p. 167). Dewey’s principle of continuity speaks to how the researcher comes to the “moment” or interaction (Dewey’s second principle) of a particular study along the “lateral aspects of experience” (Dewey, 1938, p. 44), thus supporting the need to declare standpoint or positioning. The continuity principle also means the future “has to be taken into account” (p. 47). Applying Dewey’s two principles of continuity and interaction, I advocate the use of abductive analysis processes as a way of revealing more about what happens in the interaction that is the research. This interaction, as the longitudinal aspect of experience of social contact and communication, may take, for participants, hours or months. However, for the researcher, the research “interaction” may take several years. What if we were to more overtly acknowledge the influence of the contemporary present in our lives outside of tasks associated with the research project and include this kind of temporal “mess” in our research reports and publications? ¹³ We may then discover our own creativity, our own inputs into the knowledges and understandings we seek to produce.

What I suggest is for researchers to value, and record, those current influences (or concurrent influences) not normally considered at the time of interaction—that period of time in the study when we are looking at the evidence we have. Researchers, including novices, may recognize the value of spending time in deliberation of evidence and in time off task. This valuing of researcher time would be more strongly supported if it was more visible in our research reports and publications.

Backward Mapping

To give stronger credibility to our insights, researchers can “admit our influences” and, to complete the process, undertake to backward map or present the logics in hindsight that “confirm” the plausibility of an interpretation (Charmaz, 2006).

In the television series House, ¹⁴ Dr. Gregory House is characterized as a medical genius. He leads a team that diagnoses medical mysteries at the fictional Princeton–Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Knowledge of what is causing the patient’s symptoms often comes to Dr. House in an “aha moment” while riding his motorbike or playing the piano. There is at least the suggestion that his drug taking (pain medication) also plays a part in House’s ability to reach diagnoses. In early episodes, Dr. House presented at the hospital and explained the logic of his diagnosis to members of his team and to the audience just as Adamsberg was able to do in Fred Vargas’s novels.

In later episodes of House, the solution would come to Dr. House in a similar way but the logic (or backward-mapping process) of the explanation for the patient’s symptoms—the reveal to his medical colleagues and audience members—was no longer explained. Obviously, a dedicated television audience does not demand the same rigor as academic researchers or editors. I think, however, that researchers presenting insights do need to trace back the clues in their evidence to convey/reconstruct the logic that is there in hindsight in order, first, to satisfy ourselves and our readers. But more importantly, this self-reflexive move makes transparent the often-disparate bits that provided resolution. This unpacking of what Howard Becker (2014) terms the “black box” of thinking may lead to more discoveries. It might be as simple as asking ourselves, “Where did I get that idea?”

Along with “well-documented evidence” to make “a strong and compelling case,” as Johnny Saldaña phrases it, “initiative prompts,” “hunches,” or “gut feelings” sometimes encourage us to do something differently, to go back, rethink, reword, and reorganize. He also advises researchers check up on hunches and “assess their credibility through confirmation” (p. 54). For Saldaña (2014), however, thinking abductively is “considering the choices and options available to you before making that ‘final’ decision” (p. 25). Saldaña suggests three questions to explore multiple possibilities: “What is possible? What is plausible? What is preferable?” (p. 25). Other questions could be “What is reasonable?” and “What is credible?” The goal of an abductive process is not to arrive at certainty or fixed and universal knowledge. Peirce’s view is that a shared “truth” can only be reached “if all members of a society have come to the same conviction. Since, in PEIRCE’s [capitals used in original] work, ‘all’ includes even those who were born after us, the process of checking can in principle never be completed” (Reichertz, 2010, p. 10).

Time for Familiarization and Defamiliarization

At different points in the research analysis process, I printed clean copies of each of the transcripts to enable me to “look again” at the words of the text. However, I spent a lot of time deeply engaged with, annotating, sitting with, tuning-in, and wondering about all the evidence I had gathered in its various forms.

Both audio recordings and transcripts were used as evidence in analysis. The audio recordings of the interview became significant items in that I listened to these over and over before and after transcription was complete. My methods were also a process of saturation, a sitting with and working with the evidence. Over weeks of making notes and of rereading all my evidence as the series of interviews progressed, ideas returned through reiteration and reinforcement.

Analysis is a combined process of attention being drawn and attention being given. Specific content in the research evidence seems to stand out to be noticed and researchers approach the evidence with questions, looking for content they recognize. After reading Becker (2007), I began wondering if I would hear something different if a man instead of a woman spoke the passage under my attention or vice versa, or if a person of a different ethnicity spoke those words. ¹⁶ I tried writing out passages from the transcripts in long hand, even trying different handwriting styles. I took to walking about and reading passages aloud. I needed to look out for where my sympathies might blind me to inconsistencies, and how my familiarity with the education language being used might leave questions unasked and unanswered. Being prepared to take my time allowed me to ask more questions of my assumptions and positioning, of participants’ ways of being, and of the limitations of my research. I also became more confident about what was important in the evidence. Importance is in part determined by what is noticed and what is recognized and this attention is influenced by my own experience and beliefs, my observations of how the world works and also specific events during the period of this research.

Acknowledging Influential Prompts ¹⁷

While using the internet to check out International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry workshop presenters, Jerry Rosiek’s cowboy boots and talk of barbeque prompted me to investigate his work further. “con- temporary pragmatism” (2013) could respond to poststructuralists such as Foucault, I saw license to take a theoretical stand using Deweyan pragmatism without, as I felt at the time, ignoring developments in research theory since the 1950s. Contemporary pragmatism was the label I used to acknowledge renewed interest and potential use of pragmatism in the present (contemporary) times, and as a methodology for educational research.

Other entries in my research journal during this period point to learning that came from looking away from the study, from my research tasks. Reading for my well-being and reading good writing influenced me. Alan Watts (2011) reminded me that I needed to be cautious about interpreting events in the same way as the principals who told me saw them—whether largely positive or largely negative—but instead to examine any story I was told for what might be evident to me from using different perspectives.

When reading Travels with Charlie by John Steinbeck (1962), I modified his question of “what are Americans like?” into “what are school principals like?” and then wondered as he did:

Traveling about, I early learned the difference between an American [a principal] and the Americans [principals]. They are so far apart that they might be opposites (p. 242) . . . Americans [Principals] as I saw them and talked to them were indeed individuals, each one different from the others, but gradually I began to feel that Americans [principals] exist, that they really do have generalised characteristics regardless of their states, their social and financial status, their education, their religious and their political convictions. But if there is indeed an American [a ‘principal’s’] image, . . . what is this image? What does it look like? What does it do? (Steinbeck, 1962, p. 244)

The idea of individual school principals being different from each other, while there also being generalized characteristics of school principals, makes sense. Questions I recorded at that time included the following: Do principals have generalized characteristics? If there is an image of the school principal, what is this image? How does this image influence principals’ work and the judgment of their work? What else might it do? My decision to present the principals’ comments on their self-assessment using research poetry arose, in good part, from reading this one paragraph in a Steinbeck novel.

Down the road from our house in New Zealand are steps to the Whaingaroa harbor shore. Having been approved a period of sabbatical during our summer, I could catch the high tide for a swim. Floating about my mind would wander. Seemingly my thoughts were of water temperature, wind direction, cloud formations, which houses were occupied and which were unoccupied. However, on occasion, while my attention was thus engaged, I would grasp a hint out of the corner of my mind that concerned my research project. Often this was something I recognized that had simply had the chance to surface behind my mind’s back, so to speak. At some stage, apparently, I had picked up the notion that how people think about their jobs can have more impact on their understanding of their work than what they actually do because during a swim I began to think that the proportion of time spent on different responsibilities was not an indication of the respective value the principal participants placed on those activities. ¹⁸ I used this idea to look for principal participants’ comments on how they prioritized different aspects of their work in relation to the criteria used in appraisal.

Listening to Trevor Penfold, a wildlife photographer who presented at the World Café Natural World Writers presentation in Raglan (August, 2015), I heard his aim to portray in his still photographs a connection between subject and environment for someone who was not there. He spoke of how he wants to get the viewer to take notice, to pause, take a bit more time to observe the photograph, and, subsequently, maybe, give the world a longer look. This resulted in a journal note where I was wondering who would be my audience, about the relationships between what is in frame (what is needed/wanted between the thesis cover) and what is not, and had me thinking about possible places to slow down the reader to encourage a longer “look.”

Those ideas that were recorded again and again in my journals grew in value over time. Rereading my journals acted as a reminder prompt and the repetition of particular ideas across the months increased my confidence in the evidence and in my knowledge of my research and research participants.

Backward Mapping From Idea to Insight Using Evidence

The idea, from a swim, that examining what criteria school principals are appraised on or what they do each day might not actually tell me what they value in their work sent me back to the evidence to look for participants’ comments on what took up their time and what was important. I found administrative requirements (“administrivia”) rated low as a priority and “making a difference” for children (“it’s about the children”) was their sense of purpose. I also discovered how much time they spent on managing situations between individuals and groups to maintain a safe and positive learning environment and to sustain good relations with the school’s community. Insights from this exercise led me to the phrase it is people that matter and this phrase shaped the whole of my final thesis.

Whether an idea germinates from a leisurely (and time-consuming) swim, is prompted by something read or heard, I return to the evidence (and my desk) to weigh and evaluate any working theory. The challenge is to map where the idea came from using the evidence. Questions I found useful included the following:

Given what I know of other possible explanations including those in theory and literature:

These types of questions stimulate ongoing deliberation, progress analysis, and help weigh the usefulness of any potential contributions from the study.

From a pragmatist’s point of view, it is important to give some thought to the potential consequences and implications of one’s exploration, ideas, and theory. It is also helpful to present and discuss possibilities to others as I did with anyone who would listen, my supervisors, colleagues in seminars, doctoral support events, and to audiences at conferences.