The Qualitative Posture: Indwelling

A posture can be defined as a state or condition taken by one person at a given time especially
in relation to other persons or things. This is the meaning of the title of this chapter: A qualitative
researcher assumes the posture of indwelling while engaging in qualitative research. This posture
(indwelling) is very different from the posture of a quantitative researcher because each research
orientation is based on different sets of postulates regarding the nature of the world and the implication
of those postulates on the conducting of research.

To indwell means to exist as an interactive spirit, force or principle-to exist within an activating
spirit, force or principle. It literally means to live within. Perhaps this dictionary definition can be
translated for naturalistic inquiry to mean being at one with the persons under investigation, walking a
mile in the other person’s shoes, or understanding the person’s point of view from an empathic rather
than a sympathetic position. Polanyi states in Knowing and Being:

To this extent knowing is an indwelling; that is a utilization of the framework for

unfolding our understanding in accordance with the indications and standards imposed by the
framework …If an act of knowing affects our choice between alternate frameworks, or modifies
the framework in which we dwell, it involves a change in our way of being. (Grene, 1969:84)

This indwelling, as the quote indicates, is also reflective. To reflect is to pause and think; to
process what has gone before. The qualitative researcher or naturalistic inquirer is a part of the
investigation as a participant observer, an in depth interviewer, or a leader of a focus group but also
removes him/herself from the situation to rethink the meanings of the experience.

While information gathering and interpretation of information is the task of all research, one of
the fundamental differences between traditional research and qualitative research concerns the
methods and tools for the collection and analysis of data. The traditional researcher attempts to be, and
in fact claims to achieve, objectivity through the use of their information gathering tools such as
standardized tests, and mathematical or statistical analysis. Working from a different world view (see
Table 2.2), the qualitative researcher attempts to gain an understanding of a person or situation that is
meaningful for those involved in the inquiry. To reach their goals, researchers in the traditional
orientation look to reliable and valid non-human instruments of data collection and statistical analysis,
while the qualitative inquirer looks to indwelling as a posture and to the human-as-instrument for the
collection and analysis of data.

The human-as-instrument is a concept coined by Lincoln and Cuba to illustrate the unique
position taken by qualitative researchers and builds implicitly on Polanyi’s concept of indwelling. A
person, that is, a human-as instrument, is the only instrument which is flexible enough to capture the
complexity, subtlety, and constantly changing situation which is the human experience (1985:193). And
it is human experiences and situations that are the subjects of qualitative research. Human-as
instrument simply means that it is the person with all of her or his skills, experience, background, and
knowledge as well as biases which is the primary, if not the exclusive, source of all data collection and
analysis. Lincoln and Guba argue that a human instrument is responsive, adaptable and holistic. Further,
a human investigator has knowledge based experience, possesses an immediacy of the situation, and
has the opportunity for clarification and summary on the spot. Finally, a human investigator can explore
the atypical or idiosyncratic responses in ways that are not possible for any instrument which is
constructed in advance of the beginning of the study (1985:193–4).

Traditionally oriented inquirers or quantitative researchers, on the other hand, assume the
world can be broken into simpler parts and therefore observed by less complex, non-human
instruments. Those who follow the tenants of the positivist position believe that a standardized
instrument, a pre-designed study can capture the topic under investigation (including human behavior)
because they view reality as quantifiable, as objective and as divisible into smaller and smaller parts
without distorting the phenomena under investigation.

In a manner very similar to Lincoln and Guba, Michael Polanyi compares the complexity of
people to simplicity of inanimate objects: ‘Persons and problems are felt to be more profound, because
we expect them yet to reveal themselves in unexpected ways in the future, while cobblestones evoke no
such expectations’ (Polanyi, 1967:32). What people do in a given situation can never be fully predicted
or predetermined. Polanyi summarizes the complexity of observing the human phenomena as follows
‘…as we proceed to survey the ascending stages of life, our subject matter will tend to include more and
more of the very faculties on which we rely for understanding it. We realize then that what we observe
about the capacities of living beings must be consonant with our reliance on the same capacities for
observing it’ (1958:347). In other words, the subject matter is as complex as the observer. Human
situations and human beings are too complex to be captured by a static one-dimensional instrument.