💬 Meanings
The same action can mean different things to different people. A student who wears a school blazer might be showing pride, or just following a rule. Interpretivists want to know what the action means to the person doing it.
Approaches to Research » Interpretivism: Understanding People's Meanings
What you'll learn this session
Study time: 30 minutes
Cambridge spec: 1.1.2
- What the interpretivist approach is and why it takes a micro view
- Key ideas: meanings and motivations, qualitative data, in-depth research and subjectivity
- What validity and verstehen mean
- The strengths and limitations of interpretivism, compared with positivism
Seeing the world through other people's eyes
Numbers can't tell you why they skate - interpretivists hang out with the group to understand what it means to them
Imagine a researcher who wants to understand a group of teenage skateboarders. She could count how many skate and measure how often they fall. But the numbers would not tell her why they skate, what the tricks mean to them, or how they treat newcomers. So she spends months at the skate park, joins in, chats and listens. She wants to see the world the way the skaters see it.
This is the interpretivist approach. (The skate park study is made up, to show the idea.) Interpretivists believe people are not like chemicals. People think, feel and make choices, so we have to interpret what their actions mean to them.
Key terms:
- Interpretivism: the approach that says we must understand the meanings people give to their actions in order to understand society.
- Micro view: studying society by looking at small groups and individuals, and at what happens in everyday face-to-face life.
A micro view
Positivists take a macro view of society as a whole. Interpretivists take a micro view. They zoom in on small groups, such as a family, a classroom or a group of friends. They believe society is made up of the actions of individuals, so the best way to understand it is to study people up close.
Meanings and motivations
🎯 Motivations
A motivation is the reason behind an action. Statistics might show that some students skip lessons. Interpretivists ask why: boredom, worry, friends, or something at home?
This is the heart of interpretivism. Behaviour is not just something to be counted. It is something to be understood.
Qualitative data and in-depth research
A long, relaxed chat gives qualitative data: people's feelings and reasons in their own words
Interpretivists collect qualitative data: information in words, feelings, opinions and descriptions, rather than numbers. A quote from a person explaining how they felt is qualitative data.
Their research is also in-depth. They spend a long time with a small number of people and look for detail. They would rather know a lot about a few people than a little about thousands. Methods that fit this approach include unstructured interviews and participant observation, which you will study later in the course.
Subjectivity
Subjectivity means being influenced by personal views, feelings and experiences. Positivists try to be objective. Interpretivists accept that research cannot be completely objective. They say that understanding people means using your own human judgement to interpret what you hear and see, so some subjectivity is unavoidable. They also say the people being studied have their own subjective views of the world, and these views are what matter.
Validity and verstehen
✅ Validity
Validity means how true and accurate a picture the research gives of what people really think and do. Interpretivists say their research has high validity because spending time with people in a natural setting gives a true-to-life picture.
💖 Verstehen
Verstehen is a German word meaning understanding. It comes from the sociologist Max Weber. It means empathetic understanding: putting yourself in someone else's shoes to feel what their actions mean to them.
Remember, positivists value reliability, which means that another researcher could repeat the study and get the same results. Interpretivists value validity more.
Positivism and interpretivism side by side
📊 Positivism
Macro view. Quantitative data. Objective. Aims for reliability. Looks for patterns and causes.
🗣️ Interpretivism
Micro view. Qualitative data. Accepts subjectivity. Aims for validity. Looks for meanings and motivations.
Strengths and limitations
👍 Strengths
- High validity: a rich, true-to-life picture.
- It explains why people act as they do, not just what they do.
- Gives people a voice in their own words.
- Flexible, so the researcher can follow up unexpected points.
👎 Limitations
- Subjective: the researcher's own views may shape what they notice and how they interpret it.
- Hard to repeat, so reliability is low.
- Small groups, so findings may not apply to everyone.
- Slow and expensive, because it takes a lot of time.
Common mistakes
Students often write that interpretivists use "no evidence" or "just opinions". That is wrong. Interpretivists collect real evidence, but it is qualitative and in-depth. Another mistake is mixing up validity (a true picture) with reliability (getting the same results again).
Exam-style question
(a) Define the term verstehen. [2 marks]
(b) Explain one strength and one limitation of the interpretivist approach. [4 marks]
Model answer
(a) Verstehen is empathetic understanding (1), where the researcher tries to see the world from the point of view of the people being studied (1).
(b) Strength: interpretivism gives high validity (1) because the researcher spends time with people and gets a true-to-life picture of their meanings and motivations (1). Limitation: it is hard to repeat, so reliability is low (1), because the results depend on the researcher's own interpretation and a small group of people (1).
Exam tip
In part (b), do not just name the strength and limitation. Add a reason using "because" for the second mark in each case.
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