Interpretation

Data do not necessarily speak for themselves. Rather, findings can be viewed from multiple perspectives. The process by which a researcher construes meaning from research findings is referred to as interpretation. It involves helping the readers to make sense of the findings produced in a research study. A qualitative researcher may use theoretical orientations to provide interpretations of findings or may generate interpretations a priori.

Interpreting qualitative findings begins with a researcher's own assumptions regarding the world, life, and people. In this manner, worldviews tend to influence how one comes to make meaning or sense of data acquired from a research study. Nobody lives in a philosophical or worldview vacuum; the paradigms that a researcher comes to accept as true tend to color the results of his or her research findings.

Considerable debate exists among contemporary qualitative researchers regarding the role of interpretation, particularly with respect to grounded theory. Traditional models posed that researchers must work vigilantly to hold their own life paradigms at bay when viewing qualitative research results. In this model, qualitative researchers exercise disciplined restraint, so that they essentially avoid interpretation. That step should be left to the readers to make.

More recent approaches, in contrast, view interpretation as an apt part of the qualitative process. In this model, researchers are free to explore a variety of perspectives on the study's findings. Theories or paradigms are fair game for helping the readers to best understand a context for the study's results or to place the findings into larger frameworks.

Some researchers argue that interpretation is a necessary component of the qualitative method. For example, most feminist qualitative researchers rely on a predetermined set of assumptions to make meaning from their data collections. If they were studying, say, a group of Amish women who told the researchers that they were happy living in subordination to their husbands, the feminist qualitative researchers likely would interpret those findings from a preset grid of understanding. Simply giving voice to these women typically would not complete the research project. Rather, such researchers would integrate these findings through a feminist paradigm. That step is interpretation.

Qualitative researchers sometimes argue that everyone possesses assumptions about life and to deny these is simply to deny one's humanity. Consequently, rather than attempting to stay their interpretive bent, a qualitative researcher's role is to explicitly state the perspective used to make interpretations. In this thinking, qualitative researchers’ role is to interact with findings based on their theoretical orientation while clearly informing the readers how that orientation was used to generate conclusions.

Finally, postmodern thought has contributed significantly to the role of interpretation in qualitative research. Essentially, this is the notion that absolute truth does not exist and the context of a situation determines its meaning. Postmodern researchers tend to argue, therefore, that all research findings are relative to the perspective of the readers. As such, interpretation becomes a valuable component to assist the readers with context and meaning for best understanding the research results.