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Public/Private Accounts
Definition
The term refers to the distinction between types of responses (or accounts) that are given by respondents depending on how they wish to present themselves to their audience.
Distinctive Features
Researchers should be aware that respondents may modify their biographical presentations of themselves so as to produce a more acceptable or enhanced account of themselves. This is known as a ‘public account’ and may differ from the ‘private account’ in terms of reports of behaviour and beliefs and the lan- guage in which the account is expressed. West (1990) claims that public accounts serve to affirm and reproduce the moral order. Thus what is said in a public account will be non-controversial, familiar and acceptable to the person listening to the account. For example the often-heard phrase ‘I mustn’t grum- ble’ is a public account typically given by patients. In such exchanges the speakers may feel that they actually do want to complain about their health but are aware that grumbling about their health is not well tolerated by others. Therefore, in public accounts the social order is maintained and within the fieldwork interaction attention is directed away from any potentially
Key Readings
Association of Social Anthropologists (1987) Ethical Guidelines for Good
Practice. London: Association of Social
Anthropologists.
Baker, R. and Hinton, R. (1999) ‘Do focus groups facilitate meaningful participa- tion in social research?’, in R. Barbour and J. Kitzinger (eds), Developing Focus
Group Research: Politics, Theory and Practice. London: Sage.
*Bloor, M., Frankland, J., Thomas, M. and Robson, K. (2001) Focus Groups in
Social Research. London: Sage.
Epstein, S. (1995) Impure Science: AIDS
Activism and the Politics of Knowledge.
Berkeley: University of California Press. Freire, P. (1972) Cultural Action for Free-
dom. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Irwin, A. (1995) Citizen Science. London: Routledge.
Pickard, S. (1998) ‘Citizenship and con- sumerism in health care: a critique of citizens’ juries’, Social Policy and
stigmatizing confessions. In contrast, private accounts refer to more personal, honest and reflective accounts derived from the respondents’ own experiences. Having acknowledged that there might be inconsistency between the types of accounts offered by respondents, the social researcher needs to consider which type of account they wish to access and, later on in the research process, whether the data they have collected may be considered to be either a public or a private account. Respondent accounts should be interpreted within the context in which they were produced. For example, the very presence of the ethnographer within a setting may influence what the members of that culture say or do. Cornwell (1984) is clear that good fieldwork relationships are vital to accessing private accounts. Socio-demographic factors such as age, gender, ethnicity and back- ground are obviously important in aiding rapport between the researcher and respondent but, as Cornwell describes, sharing the same biographical character- istics as one’s respondents is not enough to guarantee access to private accounts. Trust may need to be built up over a period of time, perhaps with repeated vis- its to the same respondents. Goffman (1959) has described how, particularly in new and unfamiliar situations, people are unsure of themselves and seek to limit damage to their character by managing information about themselves. The protection of self through the reproduction of a culturally normative account is perhaps particularly important in situations where people are conscious of a difference in status between themselves and their audience.
Cornwell (1984) also notes that public accounts are more likely to be used in response to a direct question. In contrast private accounts are more likely to be given if the interviewee is invited to tell a story. She argues this is because of a subtle shift of power away from the interviewer in favour of the intervie- wee. The interviewee is therefore diverted away from the interviewer’s agenda and focused on their own experiences.
Fieldwork relationships between researcher and respondent are not the only influence on accessing private accounts. The research setting may have a signifi- cant effect on the type of response given. For example, respondents being inter- viewed in a GP surgery may be more likely to produce public accounts than if they were being interviewed at home, perhaps because they might be worried about being overheard or because they feel less empowered and are therefore less likely to speak their minds. The presence of people other than the researcher can also repress private accounts. For example, during focus group research or group interviews respondents may be more concerned about presenting themselves as socially acceptable to other members of the group (Phoenix et al., 2003).
The term ‘public and private accounts’ has also been used by researchers to reflect the tension between seeking knowledge and understandings from other people’s private lives and then translating them into a format of public knowledge through academic writing. The concern is that an ambiguity arises
when researchers seek to simultaneously serve academic demands while also trying to remain faithful to personal and intimate forms of knowledge. This problem has typically been raised among feminist researchers but it is perhaps also relevant in ethnographic research (Ribbens and Edwards, 1998).
Examples
Cornwell’s anthropological study of families in the East End of London is perhaps the most famous discussion of public and private accounts. The study explored the common-sense ideas and theories about health, illness and health services from 24 people (15 women and 9 men). The study was anthropological in the sense that Cornwell did not explore peoples’ ideas about health in isolation but rather in relation to other aspects of everyday life: family, work, community. Cornwell recruited her respondents through informal networks and made repeated visits to them. In her early fieldwork encounters she noted how her respondents produced ‘expected’ responses to things which they believed to be medically authorized. Over time, as her fieldwork relationships developed, she noted how her respondents gave different accounts regardless of whether the dis- cussion was about work, family, health or the community. For example, at first interview a woman describes her neighbours as helpful and friendly but on the sixth visit the same woman recounts a story of the verbal and physical street fights she had with neighbours. Public accounts of family life typically reflected images of unity with loving relationships between and among the generations. Private accounts of family life, however, drew attention to the conflicts, strains and contradictions between family members. Similarly, when discussing employ- ment, respondents produced public accounts of work as a respectable activity, capable of producing rewards (income, security, satisfaction). Personal accounts of work, on the other hand, emerged from more detailed and specific discussions about respondents’ particular job and the meaning that it had for them person- ally. The resulting private accounts of employment revealed experiences of alien- ation and constraint.
Duke (2002) provides a methodological and reflexive account of her inter- views with drug policy makers within a range of government departments. Within her access negotiations she made it clear that she was interested in the civil servants’ individual views and experiences rather than the views of the organization or the department. However, she describes that fairly early in her fieldwork it became evident that there was an official line: her task was to recognize this public account and probe beyond it. Duke reflects that she managed to achieve this in some interviews, demonstrated by the fact that some of the respondents requested repeated assurances of anonymity or stressed that they were telling her things ‘off the record’. Accessing private Public/Private Accounts
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accounts was perhaps particularly challenging with this particular occupational group as civil servants are prevented from disclosing information about their work without official sanction. An extreme disclosure could represent a breach of the Official Secrets Act. Furthermore Duke argues that civil servants are socialized to underemphasize their own personal influence within policy making. Interestingly she notes that it was easier to penetrate beyond the official line when asking her respondents to reflect on policies of the previous government.
Evaluation
Acknowledging that respondents may provide differing accounts depending on to whom they are speaking and the context of the question, raises issues about the status of interview data. Accounts may not be viewed in a positivistic sense as simple representations of the world. It cannot be claimed that public accounts are always ‘false’ and private accounts are always ‘true’. Public accounts are given for a purpose, and that representation of the world by the respondent to the researcher should be acknowledged as a valid representation. The skill is for the researcher to be able to acknowledge public accounts for what they are and, if required, to probe beyond into the private beliefs and behaviours.
Associated Concepts:
Access Negotiations, Ethnography, Fieldwork
Relationships, Focus Groups, Group Interviews, Trust.
Key Readings
*Cornwell, J. (1984) Hard Earned Lives:
Accounts of Health and Illness from East London. London: Tavistock.
Duke, K. (2002) ‘Getting beyond the “official line”: reflections on dilem- mas of access, knowledge and power in researching policy networks’,
Journal of Social Policy, 31(1): 39–59.
Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of
Self in Everyday Life. New York:
Doubleday.
Phoenix, A., Frosh, S. and Pattman, R. (2003) ‘Producing contradictory
masculine subject positions: narrative of threat, homophobia and bullying in 11–14 year old boys’, Journal of
Social Issues, 59(1): 179–195.
Ribbens, J. and Edwards, R. (1998) Femi-
nist Dilemmas in Qualitative Research: Public Knowledge and Private Lives.
London: Sage.
West, P. (1990) ‘The status and validity of accounts obtained at interview: a contrast between two studies of fami- lies with a disabled child’, Social