Researcher Perspective
It is important to note that while the informants of this study are African-
American women, I am a Caucasian female, making me an outsider in this group. Within social science research, there is a debate about whether an emic or an etic point of view yields the best results. An emic perspective emerges if the researcher is an insider, what Geertz (1983) refers to as “experience-near,” while an etic perspective is “experience- distant” where the researcher has an outsider perspective. With an emic viewpoint, the researcher possesses the advantage of understanding the “language” the informants speak. In other words, since the researcher is a part of the group, he or she understands the worldview that the informants possess. However, an etic perspective allows the researcher to question suppositions and ideas that the group takes for granted, to obtain a
69 picture not only of the worldview of the informants, but also of the assumptions
underlying that point of view.
Geertz (1983) argues that both perspectives are necessary in qualitative research, as emic research leaves researchers “awash in immediacies, as well as entangled in vernacular,” while etic research results in the researcher being “stranded in abstractions and smothered in jargon” (57). The need for both perspectives is one of the reasons why qualitative research is often performed collaboratively with a mix of emic and etic experiences. However, dissertation research is performed independently, rather than collaboratively. Not being an African-American woman, I therefore can only offer an etic perspective. In order to combat the lack of an emic perspective, during the data analysis I conducted extensive research on the subculture in question, consulting literature in anthropology, sociology, family studies, and Black feminism.
Data Output
All interviews were audiotaped and transcribed for data analysis. In total the transcribed text yielded more than 650 pages of text. On average, each interview was approximately 30 double-spaced pages. Additionally, I collected 23 usable collages to analyze. Each collage was scanned and saved in a color pdf file for ease of data analysis. Data Analysis Procedure
Throughout the data analysis process, I adhered to Glaser and Strauss’ (1967) tenets of grounded theory. In contrast to the tenets of quantitative research, the grounded theory perspective argues that rather than enter a study with a prior hypotheses,
70 Corbin (1990, 1998) advocate three levels of coding: (1) open coding, (2) axial coding, and (3) selective coding.
The purpose of open coding is to “disentangle” or segment the data by identifying key codes and concepts within the text and pictorial data. This process allows researchers to gain a more holistic understanding of the data. Preliminary open coding can result in numerous codes (Strauss and Corbin 1990), so the researcher must first organize the codes into meaningful categories. In analyzing both the collages and the written text from the in-depth interviews, I searched for emergent themes while also engaging in dialectical tacking (Strauss and Corbin 1998). That is, I conducted a cursory analysis on all of the interviews and collages and summarized each informant encounter to identify preliminary codes, which I then organized into categories for each research question.
During the second level of coding, axial coding, researchers seek to refine the preliminary categories. In this step, researchers examine the relationships among the thematic categories in order to distinguish each individual category. In Strauss and Corbin’s (1998) paradigm model, they argue that the refined categories become “(1) a phenomenon for this category and/or (2) the context or conditions for other categories, or, for a third group of categories, (3) a consequence” (Flick 2009, 311). Researchers must practice inductive and deductive analysis, relying on an iterative process of continuously developing categories and concepts and testing the categories and concepts against the data. In this stage, I went through the data multiple times in order to refine my analysis. I also analyzed each category individually, as well as considering it as part of the whole. More specifically, while I examined each category individually, I also explored how they related to each other and fit into the overall research model I developed. This process
71 allowed me to combine certain categories that were similar and tease other categories apart in order to better answer the research questions.
Throughout the final stage of coding, selective coding, researchers must winnow the data and further refine thematic categories. Researchers should also explore
informants’ assumptions about their experiences and question why they hold these suppositions. Furthermore, they must continuously refer to the interdisciplinary literature to discover consistencies and inconsistencies with the data in order to further current theoretical frameworks and develop new theory. During this stage, I delved into the literature on intersectionality as well as the research on race and gender. Furthermore, as the concept of identity gaps emerged in the data, I immersed myself in the identity scholarship in both consumer research and other social science disciplines.
In the next chapter, I will briefly restate my research questions before presenting my research findings. I discuss each research question individually and present a holistic model that details how race and gender stigmatization affects African-American women’s lived experiences.
72 CHAPTER 4: INTERPRETATION
In this chapter, I will briefly review my research objectives before presenting the interpretation. Over the course of this chapter, I will use identity gap theory to develop a holistic, theoretical model of how stigma affects African-American women’s
consumption decisions.