Underlying Assumptions in Koerber and McMichael’s “Qualitative Sampling Methods: A Primer for Technical Communications”
The piece that I would like to focus on this week is Amy Koerber and Lonie McMichael’s journal article, “Qualitative Sampling Methods: A Primer for Technical Communications.” Although the text presents itself as an objective source of information, a simple guide to qualitative research methods (even the word “primer” in the title suggests that it is merely an elementary textbook), the text actually functions in a much more complex way. The article operates on a basic assumption with which it presumes the reader will agree.
Koerber and McMichael work off the assumption that it is possible to develop a systematic vocabulary (and teaching method) for understanding and transferring knowledge about qualitative methods to students. Koerber and McMichael state: “Our field has not yet developed a systematic, transferable vocabulary for discussing and evaluating the traits of appropriate qualitative samples that can help us to compare such studies to each other and, most important, to teach students how to select their own samples for qualitative research” (458). The underlying assumption here is that such a systematic vocabulary can be developed, but hasn’t been yet.
Although this assumption seems fairly straight-forward, it is worth deconstructing. How does this underlying assumption align with, or diverge from, arguments we have read from other technical communicator researchers in this course? On the whole, the underlying assumption in “Qualitative Sampling Methods: A Primer for Technical Communications” seems to be incompatible with the conclusions that other technical communicators have reached about the nature of language and, in a narrower sense, technical communication as a discipline.
For instance, the assumption that a systematic vocabulary can be created and then taught is actively opposed to Kent’s conclusion in “Paralogic Hermeneutics and the Possibilities of Rhetoric.” Kent concluded that teaching language in any systematic way is impossible because language is ultimately intuitive guesswork, an attempt between communicators to align hermeneutic strategies.
I suspect that other technical communicators would be uncomfortable with the assertion that a systematic vocabulary can be developed, and transferred whole-cloth, to all technical communication classes, as well. Koerber and McMichael specifically include the phrase “transferable vocabulary” in the development of their argument, which is problematic precisely because it makes the claim that vocabulary can be objectively and accurately transferred from one to location to another. This is similar to the transmission view of communication that Slack, Miller, and Doak actively challenge in their article, “The Technical Communicator as Author: Meaning, Power, Authority.”
Koeber and McMichael’s conclusion is also problematic, in that it promotes the blending of quantitative and qualitative research methods through the application of more “rigor” to qualitative research. In other words, in order to bridge the gap between the more specific, subjective nature of qualitative research and the more generalized, “objective” nature of quantitative research, Koeber and McMichael suggest that qualitative research become more like quantitative research, more based on systematic processes and “rigor,” shifting its definition ever so slightly.
Kent, Thomas. “Paralogic Hermeneutics and the Possibilities of Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Review 8.1 (1989): 24-42. JSTOR. Web. 1 Sept. 2012.
Koerber, Amy and Lonie McMichael. “Qualitative Sampling Methods: A Primer for Technical Communicators.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Oct 2008; vol. 22: pp. 454-473. Web. 15 Sept. 2012.\
Slack, Jennifer Daryl, David James Miller, and Jeffrey Doak. “The Technical Communicator as Author: Meaning, Power, Authority.” Central Works in Technical Communication. Eds. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 160-174. Print.