Qualitative Research in Technical Communication

James Conklin, George F. Hayhoe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415876353
• eBook ISBN: 9781136935657
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Addressing the explosive growth in qualitative research in recent years, this volume represents the first anthology to bring together a representative sample from this growing body of work, and comments on the reasons for the extraordinary interest in qualitative research. Contributors to the volume bring forward reports of significant, structured qualitative research into various aspects of technical communication practice, addressing the questions of what new insights researchers are generating about the working reality of today's technical communicators, and how technical communicators are perceived and treated by managers and by colleagues from other disciplines.

Including examples of qualitative methodologies—including ethnography, case study, focus groups, action research, grounded theory, and interview research— used by technical communicators to strengthen their practice, the result is a rich harmony of perspectives, as diverse as the field of technical communication itself.

This book will be of interest to to students and academics seeking up-to-date information on current industry practices in technical communication, as well as to practitioners in technical and professional communication. The book will also serve as a text in undergraduate seminars and courses at the master's level.

Chapter 1
Qualitative Research in Technical Communication

Issues of Value, Identity, and Use*

Patricia Sullivan and Rachel Spilka

Editors’ Introduction

Although it was first published nearly 20 years ago, Patricia Sullivan and Rachel Spilka’s “Qualitative Research in Technical Communication: Issues of Value, Identity, and Use” provides few clues of its age. Indeed, other than the opening anecdote about the NeXT Computer (a high-powered multimedia workstation developed by Steve Jobs during his exile from Apple from 1985 to 1997) and the publication years of its references, there is little here to betray its date of composition.

We have included this theoretical article in our collection for several reasons. It provides a solid introduction to the strengths and limitations of qualitative research, and it summarizes several frequently used qualitative methods. And in its exploration of qualitative research theory, it includes plenty of examples to help the unfamiliar reader understand the purposes and value of qualitative research. Finally, the authors believe that qualitative methods are highly appropriate for workplace research and accessible to practitioners. Moreover, the article’s abundant examples will help technical communication practitioners see how a similar study might be applicable to their work environment. For all of these reasons, and particularly because our audience consists primarily of students, most of whom will soon become practitioners, as well as those already practicing in the workplace, we think that this article is particularly appropriate to this anthology.

Even today (although perhaps not as often as when Sullivan and Spilka wrote this article) the value and legitimacy of qualitative methods of research in technical communication are still questioned, especially by those whose backgrounds or experience involve training in engineering, natural science, or medicine, or who work with subject matter experts in those fields. Some are suspicious of the validity or reliability of qualitative studies, or of the fact that the results of qualitative research are not generalizable. Frequently, that skeptical attitude results from lack of understanding of qualitative methodology, so Part 1 of this article explores the usefulness of qualitative techniques by examining how they are used in educational and human–computer interaction research, and then turns to a consideration of goals for qualitative research in our field.

Spilka and Sullivan take most of their examples from ethnography or field studies. In technical, scientific, or professional communication, research involves extended observations of such phenomena as composing in the workplace, the interaction among technical communicators and subject matter specialists, or (from the perspective of the users of information products) the usefulness of documentation. Other approaches involve the analysis of communication artifacts.

Part 1 of the article concludes with a consideration of four typical goals of qualitative studies in our field: interpreting a phenomenon or event, exploring a situation to develop a broader understanding of it, developing a research perspective to explore innovative practices, and communicating with users about a phenomenon when they lack the vocabulary to respond to a survey or other quantitative instrument.

In Part 2, Sullivan and Spilka explore the usefulness of qualitative methods by analyzing their strengths and weaknesses. In discussing the strengths, the authors turn things around by raising five potential problems and considering possible solutions for each. So, for example, they suggest that research design and data collection techniques could be a cause for concern—collecting data for too short a time or from too limited a sample population, or excluding on-site observation when social interaction is a key part of the research question. They then suggest ways that the concerns can be transformed into strengths—through careful exploration of the research situation to identify all the key groups that need to be sampled, or through triangulation in data analysis. (By the way, we find the definition and examples of triangulation here to be among the best we’ve seen.)

As befits an article on qualitative research, Part 2 concludes with two extended examples of strong qualitative research. These studies, well known to technical communication researchers in the 1990s though perhaps lesser known today, are excellent models to illustrate the points made earlier in Part II.

In the third major section, Sullivan and Spilka discuss when and how to use qualitative research. Although they don’t make overarching statements here, they provide two scenarios that help to demonstrate how the preceding parts of the article could be applied.

The article ends with half-page descriptions of the characteristics and strategies used in case studies, ethnographies, and field studies. Although these thumbnails are not sufficiently detailed to help a novice to construct a study, they suggest ways in which these techniques might be used in the workplace.

Although qualitative methods are more accepted today, at least within the community of researchers in our field (see Davy and Valecillos, “Qualitative Research in Technical Communication: A Review of Articles Published from 2003 to 2007,” Chapter 15 in this volume), reservations about these techniques persist. Sullivan and Spilka do an excellent job of assuaging those doubts and suggesting ways of avoiding pitfalls that can trip up even experienced researchers.

A number of users who were learning to use a page layout program on the NeXT computer in an office experienced a “startle effect” when the tutorial began to talk to them. They jumped, fidgeted, exclaimed, swore, etc. Almost every one of them tried to find all the instances of voiced information in the tutorial. Most lost track of what they were trying to learn. Many brought their friends to see and hear it. Only the person responsible for report production learned the system and that person did not use the tutorial again.

(Sullivan 1991, 71)

Suppose you observed a situation such as this one, and it made you wonder whether some of the innovations in documentation that you and others were developing might be problematic for users. One solution to the product-specific question it raises would be to conduct a qualitative study of people trying to use the program you were documenting in their workplaces. If you were following the lead of Suchman’s 1987 study of programmable copy machines, you might “hang out” by the copy machines and watch what happens. Such research could help you identify the problems for users, particularly the more serious problems.

But the observation could also raise far-reaching questions about how users interact with computers, and could then prompt formal qualitative research to study in depth the users of computers in an organization. Both responses would employ qualitative research methods.

Much has been said about the importance of, and need for, research in technical communication. For example, in 1983, Anderson, Brockmann, and Miller, analyzing what they then perceived as “the failure of research in technical and scientific communication” (1983, 8), speculated that improved research on workplace writing could have at least three positive effects for the field: building theory, supporting curriculum design, and informing the practices and problem-solving strategies of the professional (1983, 10).

In 1985, Frank Smith, in a much-quoted statement, agreed that “the more people we have trained to work in and do research in technical communication, the more likely we are to develop the recognition, appreciation, and standards [that] were lacking ten years ago” (1985, 7). Also, as recently as 1990, Mary Sue MacNealy, after surveying the types of research reported at the 1989 ITCC (International Technical Communication Conference) and IPCC (International Professional Communication Conference), recognized welcome improvements in both quantitative and qualitative research during the 1980s, but noted that “Given that empirical research is important to the growth of technical communication as a profession and discipline, the relatively small amount reported at the conferences is worrisome” (1990, 202).

There seems to be a consensus, therefore, that what is needed for further growth in technical communication is not only more research on workplace writing, but also more attempts to conduct scholarly, systematic studies of technical communication. Simply put, a body of research is needed for technical communication to be considered a profession.

In this article, we take up issues of the value, identity, and use of qualitative research methods from the perspective of incorporating qualitative research more fully into the growing profession of technical communication.

• First, we discuss the variety of meanings for qualitative research and its critical features in order to show that qualitative research has identity both as a formal and as a product-related activity.

• Then we discuss what makes a high-quality study—exposing the positives, the negatives, and the potential improvements—in order to equip readers of qualitative studies with a wider critical arsenal.

• Finally, we discuss how qualitative research might be applied to workplace situations in order to show its usefulness.

In doing so, we aim to argue that:

• Qualitative research findings contribute to the growing body of technical communication research by exploring situations, organizations, and cultures.

• Qualitative studies can be evaluated on the basis of their carefulness and rigor rather than routinely accepted.

• Formal research can be used to enrich thinking about analogous problems or to serve as a model for more informal work on a particular problem.

Part 1: The Value and Identity of Qualitative Research in Technical Communication

The Value of Qualitative Research

In the context of technical communication the value of qualitative research, in particular, has received positive attention in the past decade. For example, Stephen Doheny-Farina and Lee Odell argued in 1985 that qualitative studies of workplace writing contribute substantially to the understanding of the composing process, of the characteristics of good writing, of how readers make meaning, and of the functions of writing. Some suggest that qualitative research, more than other types of research, has enormous potential to strengthen the field of technical communication.

In 1988, Jeanne Halpern argued that qualitative research enables us to “discover meaning” (1988, 30) and to

[A]sk new kinds of questions about how people communicate at work and also about what we teach in our classes… . [These questions] offer new insights by suggesting incongruities or gaps between what we thought we knew and what is really the case… . [This type of research offers] the opportunity to explore new areas of interest … [to] get in deep …...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Qualitative Research in Technical Communication
• Chapter 2 Evaluating Qualitative Inquiry in Technical and Scientific Communication
• Chapter 3 The Future of Technical Communication
• Chapter 4 Modeling Information for Three-Dimensional Space
• Chapter 5 Toward a Meaningful Model of Technical Communication*
• Chapter 6 The Role of Rhetorical Invention for Visuals
• Chapter 7 A Work in Process
• Chapter 8 A Call for New Courses to Train Scientists as Effective Communicators in Contemporary Government and Business Settings*
• Chapter 9 Proceeding with Caution
• Chapter 10 Using Web 2.0 to Conduct Qualitative Research
• Chapter 11 Heuristic Web Site Evaluation
• Chapter 12 Making and Acting
• Chapter 13 Integrating Experts and Non-Experts in Mathematical Sciences Research Teams
• Chapter 14 Team Learning in Usability Testing
• Chapter 15 Qualitative Research in Technical Communication
• Chapter 16 Conclusion
• Contributor Biographies
• Index