Abstract
In this article, we explore the concept of validity as it applies to transformative experiences, asking how can we know when individuals are transformed as the result of some experience? What criteria or principles might be used to assess the validity of claims made about transformation? We suggest that validity in this context—what we call transformative validity—must transcend existing understandings that emphasize validity as a “thing” to be “achieved.” Instead, we introduce a new conceptualization of validity to the qualitative inquiry community: We suggest that transformative validity is best conceptualized as a process that centers intersubjectivity, dialogue, and recognition and is always open and rooted in uncertainty.
Introduction
Qualitative researchers engaged in resistance to positivism and scientism are facing a new dilemma. In our current socio-political context, both scientific evidence and scientists have come under attack. We are now in a “post-truth” era where the notion of “fact” is blurred and corrupted by constant discursive (re)production and normalization of fabrications. In this context, social researchers may feel compelled to defend science, salvage objectivity, and reinforce evidence-backed rationality. But doing so places us in a dilemma: How can we resist the dominance of scientism while science as a whole is under siege? Is it possible to engage in genuine critical resistance that deconstructs and reconstructs what it means to produce knowledge, without either caving in to scientism’s dogmatic self-understanding of “objectivity” and “evidence,” or being co-opted by the anti-science agenda? Moreover, how can we resist attempts to shut down the pursuit of truth in ways that do not reproduce the dominant narratives and assumptions of knowledge production that we wish to critique and transcend?
In the context of this dilemma, we argue that the qualitative inquiry community should re-engage in the exploration of validity, a core epistemological and methodological concept for scholars from across all traditions, and which is the focus of ongoing complication, debate, and transformation (Denzin & Lincoln, 2017). In this article, we situate discussion of validity in the context of the potential for transformation, asking how we can assess the validity of individual’s claims about change they experience. Conscious of the double-bind imposed by the current “post-truth” atmosphere, we seek to engage in a critical dialogue about aspects of validity that defy objectification, without relinquishing the pursuit of truth.
Context
The impetus for this article comes from work we have both done related to transformation, in particular as focused on the transformative experiences of research participants in contexts including undergraduate multicultural education courses, spiritual practices, prison-based restorative justice programming, and Jewish-Palestinian encounters. In the context of exploring transformation, a central question we have grappled with is, “How do we know transformation has occurred, that is, that participants are changed or different as a result of the phenomena we study?” From a research perspective, what criteria might be used to assess the validity of claims made about transformation? We see the issues of validity and transformation as inextricably connected: Clarity about our knowledge of transformation is central to our understanding of transformation itself.
Grappling with these questions has led us to revisit the “validity debates” and, in the following pages, to offer one possible perspective for transcending them. Our focus in this article is an attempt to open up a dialogue about validity that emphasizes intersubjectivity as foundational to understanding, regardless of methodological approach. This suggests that validity is not just a way of representing “truth” or “accuracy,” but rather is a concept that develops dialogically. Such a conceptualization has implications for how we discuss validity and for defining validity criteria; it is these implications that we address in this article.
Before moving forward, we want to explain our use of the term “transformative validity.” As noted above, our understanding of validity has emerged from research about initiatives that are meant to create a platform for change, or transformation, among participants (and beyond). Although both of us engage with initiatives that emphasize emancipatory change or liberation as their goals, we are cognizant that not all initiatives are directed toward what we might call progressive or emancipatory social change. We use the term “transformation,” therefore, to acknowledge that change can occur either in the context of moving toward emancipation/liberation or in the context of change oriented toward different goals. Meanwhile, we also do not assume a relativist stance where “everything goes.” Instead, what we explore here is a critical space in which various aims of transformation can be examined and critiqued through power analysis, based on universally oriented principles of inclusivity and equality and the absence of distorting power.
We also note that “transformation” is itself a multifaceted concept. That is, change can happen at individual, interpersonal, community, and/or institutional levels. We recognize that these are inherently connected and that transformation in one realm has implications at other levels as well—thus, emphasizing one or another aspect of transformation reflects a foregrounding of that level and backgrounding of others, rather than a clearly delimited focus. In this article, we foreground discussion of transformative experiences as they occur at the microlevel: within individuals and in relational contexts. Specifically, we explore transformation as a phenomenon exemplified by articulation of some way in which individuals claim to be different, or changed, due to some experience in the context of phenomena we study.
Laying the Groundwork: Validity
Notions of Canon Validity
Validity has been a central concern of methodologists for more than 60 years of scholarship. As a meta-methodological concept, validity is relevant whenever we make knowledge claims. Historically, validity has been mostly discussed in the context of experimentation and measurement in quantitative research (see, for example, Humbley & Zumbo, 1996; Jonson & Plake, 1998), with an emphasis on such terms as internal and external validity (Bracht & Glass, 1968; Campbell, 1986; Campbell & Stanley, 1966), construct validity (Cronbach & Meehl, 1955), and content validity (e.g., Sireci, 1998), to name a few. As broad as debates within the quantitative sphere may be, understandings of validity become even more complex in the context of qualitative research. In fact, according to Onwuegbuzie and Leech (2005), there are more than 50 terms that have been used by qualitative researchers in reference to validity.
Discussions about validity in qualitative research have largely followed a trend where terms have been developed as alternatives to more established research traditions in quantitative research. In other words, the qualitative research community has created new validity terms to demarcate itself from quantitative research. This demarcation allows the qualitative community to use its own language to define its research practices and serves an empowering function that has helped move qualitative research from the margin to the center. However, rather than fundamentally challenging the way validity is conceptualized, these terms tend to reinforce the same underlying understandings of validity, even when attention is paid to the epistemological orientations researchers use (e.g., Creswell & Miller, 2000).
The following examples highlight the mirroring of validity terms in qualitative and quantitative research. First, the notion of “reliability” is central to validity in the context of quantitative research, although it is often discussed in contrast to validity (e.g., validity being the bull’s eye on a target, and reliability understood as consistency in terms of hitting the same place on the target). “Reliability” as a concept is based on precision of repetition, assuming a fixed sameness in time and across observations. In qualitative inquiry, this concept is mirrored in terms such as “inter-rater reliability” and “dependability.” Similarly, “internal validity” and “construct validity,” common terms in quantitative and experimental research contexts, find resonance in terms such as “trustworthiness” and “credibility” used in qualitative studies. In both cases, these terms relate to rigor and fidelity in terms of how well researchers represent the phenomenon at hand, although “trustworthiness” and “credibility” foreground the relational aspects of knowledge claiming. Finally, terms like “external validity” and “generalizability,” which originated in quantitative research, find echoes in “transferability,” a concept that refers to the degree to which findings from one study derive applicability in other contexts (Guba & Lincoln, 1982). Here, knowable changes in space and/or time are presupposed in both sets of terms.
In all three examples, new vocabulary challenges taken-for-granted universal applications of validity conception rooted in positivist and empiricist traditions. However, these still fail to fully dismantle the epistemological foundations of the way validity is understood. Terms adopted by researchers in the qualitative tradition retain an underlying assumption that equates perception of something to knowledge about something (what Carspecken, 2018, refers to as “picture thinking”). Knowledge remains external to the subject of that knowledge. Thus, while underlying notions of “truth” in this new vocabulary lean toward intersubjectivity, they fall short of a shift to a relational and process-oriented conception of validity.
Moving Beyond the Canon
The general conceptualizations of validity discussed above fall into what Cho and Trent (2006) refer to as transactional validity, defined as . . . an interactive process between the researcher, the researched, and the collected data that is aimed at achieving a relatively higher level of accuracy and consensus by means of revisiting facts, feelings, experiences, and values or beliefs collected and interpreted (p. 321).
Cho and Trent (2006) distinguish between validity terms that fall into this conceptualization and those that reflect what they call transformational validity: a progressive, emancipatory process leading toward social change that is to be achieved by the research endeavor itself. Such a process in qualitative research . . . involves a deeper, self-reflective, empathetic understanding of the researcher while working with the researched (p. 322).
Transformational validity, as Cho and Trent define it, consists of a range of validity conceptions that move beyond the canon to interrogate the very purposes of empirical inquiry. 1 Over the years, scholars have approached this alternative approach to thinking about validity in a variety of different ways, though often with a shared commitment to making the outcomes of research a focus of validity questions. Foundational to this approach is Patti Lather’s (1986) concept of catalytic validity, which is based on the argument that social knowledge must be “helpful in the struggle for a more equitable world” (p. 67). Rather than validity being oriented toward accuracy of the research, Lather suggests that it should be bound to the outcomes of the research, particularly in terms of the “conscientization” (Freire, 1970) of research participants that may result from the research process.
Other scholars have likewise taken up the idea of validity as related to social change. For instance, in their introduction to a special issue on impact validity, Massey and Barreras (2013) define the concept as “extent to which research has the potential to play a role in social and political change or is useful as a tool for advocacy or activism” (p. 615), thus suggesting that the use and usefulness of knowledge, as well as community engagement, are central concerns of valid research. Similarly, community psychologist Isaac Prilleltensky (2003, 2008) offers psychosocial validity as a set of two interrelated concepts: The degree to which knowledge about oppression is integrated into all aspects of a research study (epistemic psychosocial validity), and the degree to which liberation at individual, interpersonal, structural domains are an emphasis of action-oriented research (transformative psychosocial validity). Prilleltensky emphasizes the necessity of accounting of power dynamics at both individual and systemic levels as part of the research, as well as integrating political literacy and social change into both research and interventions in the field. Finally, Meagan Call-Cummings (2017) discusses communicative validity, which calls for explicit attention to, and negotiation of, the roles of various actors in participatory action research. While it is not focused on the outcomes of research per se, this conception of validity shares with psychosocial, impact, and catalytic validity an aim to make explicit generally taken-for-granted power dynamics as a basis for potential change.
These conceptions of validity move us beyond an approach in which validity as a concept corresponds to truth or accuracy and focuses instead on an understanding that the “goodness” of research (Hostetler, 2005; Tracy, 2010) is linked as much to outcomes and awareness as it is to precision. Yet, even as these concepts challenge orthodox approaches toward conceptualizing validity, they remain externally oriented, with an emphasis on changing the research context through the research process, rather than on understanding the internal transformation of individuals. Moreover, these conceptions of validity privilege understanding and awareness on the part of the researcher; they miss the opportunity to re-orient validity in terms of an intersubjective understanding that transformation has occurred.
Two recent discussions of validity help us begin this shift toward a focus on the research process itself. Dennis (2018) emphasizes praxis as the basis for validity, looking inward on the researcher as engaged in self-reflection with praxis as the validation of self and identity through recognition by an other. Similarly, Freeman’s (2011) discussion of validity as constituted dialogically, that is, as a process of ongoing dialogue rather than a static “thing,” emphasizes position-taking, self-reflection, and openness as key elements of validity in the context of communicative research endeavors (see also Dennis, 2013). These conceptualizations help move us away from representational thinking that characterizes concepts of validity even in the “transformational validity” sphere.
Conceptualizing validity as linked to the research process itself also moves us away from thinking of validity as an “add-on” procedure or technical consideration, which is often how the concept is portrayed. For example, in quantitative research contexts, procedures exist to calculate inter-rater reliability, convergent/divergent validity, or to control for confounding or extraneous factors (Messick, 1995). In qualitative research contexts, triangulation, thick description, member checking, and negative case analysis are among commonly accepted procedures to enhance validity (Carspecken, 1996; Guba & Lincoln, 1982). Although these procedures are important, they can be better understood methodologically in tandem with a sound epistemological and methodological conceptualization of validity itself. We believe this is necessary to deepen methodological thinking and to break down silos that separate validity discussions across quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research communities.
With this intention in mind, in the remainder of this article we develop a conceptual and methodological understanding of one particular aspect of validity, which we refer to as transformative validity. In our discussion, we deconstruct the idea of validity as based on a representational or correspondence theory of truth, which is characteristic not only in positivist/post-positivist conceptions of the term but also comes to the fore in existing conceptions based in an understanding of validity as being oriented toward some “thing”—that is, being able to point to change resulting from research as an “indicator” of validity. Following on the work of Phil Carspecken’s (2018), characterization of this conception of truth as “limited picture thinking,” we suggest that validity is primarily a hermeneutic concept, a process in which researcher and participant are in dialogue (Freeman, 2011). Our discussion sheds light on the transformative aspect of validity as nested in an overall epistemological overhaul from the canon conception of validity outlined above. Our key argument is that transformative validity can be better understood when we take an intersubjective approach rather than maintaining the deep-seated subject-object framework prevalent in social inquiry.
Research Moments: Experiencing Transformation
To make the concept of transformative validity more concrete, we draw on two empirical examples that illustrate moments of transformation. In our discussion, we then explore implications for conceptualizing validity as related to these moments.
Example 1
Our first empirical example comes from one interview conducted as part of an ethnographic study focusing on graduate students’ experiences and identity development during a multicultural education class (Li & Banks, 2019). Students were interviewed three times throughout the semester and contacted for a follow-up interview 1 year later. During the 1-year follow-up interview, one participant, a White female student in her 20s, reflected on her experiences of the class, its impact on her current life, and her experience of herself. The transcript below captures a moment toward the end of that interview. We were engaged in a meta-reflection on a few critical moments in class, which she identified as helping her to “find my voice” to join in the struggle for social justice as a “white ally.” Peiwei asked questions to facilitate this participant’s reflection on the meaning of those changes for herself and how she experiences the affiliated emotions:
I (Peiwei) still vividly remember this exchange that carried visceral experiences for both the participant and myself. Even though I could not be sure we experienced the same thing, it felt like a shared emotional moment. For instance, when the participant said, “Feels like fulfilment. And just . . .,” she paused and her face, voice, and eyes all had visible changes. Grasping her verbal and especially nonverbal expressions tacitly, I could feel that strong feelings might be coming up for her. As she continued, stating “But just reaching my potential. I guess. Just doing what I’m supposed to be doing,” I found myself deeply moved by what was happening. I noticed that my heart softened, my body felt warm and open, and I felt a sense of connection with the participant. If I further unpack that moment, it felt like some kind of universally oriented desire and aspiration that transcended the concrete individual experiences between she and I. I was able to tap into a tacit shared understanding of this. It felt as if what the participant was experiencing was for herself but also for all of us. I could also differentiate this feeling of being moved from more surface level positive, cheerful feelings that I also experience sometimes. Similarly, I felt enough clarity and confidence to rule out the possibility that the feeling was primarily a self-congratulatory pleasure that might come from an ego-based or self-centered place (e.g., “Wow, you are so good at interviewing, and you helped this participant to connect with herself in such a deep way!”), which I certainly catch myself doing sometimes.
Meanwhile, more backgrounded is a quandary about the nature of our relationship dynamics and our respective positionalities. By the time of this interview I had known the participant for more than a year. First, I was an observer coming to her class every week for an entire semester. Then she became a research collaborator after she volunteered to join the research team observing the class the following semester. Over the year, I conducted a few interviews with her as a participant, as well as a series of research debriefing meetings as coresearchers. We had opportunities to build trust and comfort with one another. I wonder if and how she would have shared her experiences and feelings differently if this were the only interview we did. I also wonder how power dynamics played out between us in terms of racial identities and roles, for example, she being a White woman and me being a Chinese immigrant, and she being a student and me being a professor. Did the moving moment that we both experienced transcend the power line momentarily, or it was my illusionary wish that may risk flattening the “hyphen” that simultaneously connects and separates us (Fine, 1994)?
This feeling of being moved continued to unfold for me in the conversation that followed. As the participant articulated how she experienced that very moment, there was a trace of unfinishedness of her process. For example, she articulated that reaching her potential was not an end or a static state, but a process and the act of ceaseless striving. What she aims for is “the feeling, continued feeling” to keep “moving up” and changing. It seemed that her sense of fulfillment had something to do with recognizing this infinite nature of being and becoming, beyond a sense of achievement. My feeling of being moved by her and my speculation of her own experience of being moved by something prompted me to check with her if my interpretation was on track. So I asked her, “May I ask you the feeling, the emotions you feel, like, was that the sense of being moved by whatever just came to you?” As the participant responded, “Yeah. I feel like being moved by myself . . . I just feel like I’m inspiring myself,” I experienced a mutual recognition between us that we might be sharing the same experience. It was a moment of validity, but not primarily in the sense that two people’s claims corroborate with one another regarding some experience. Instead, the experience was primarily a felt sense of certainty of the sharedness itself. This felt certainty was visceral, primarily known through my body-feelings and my “read” of the participant’s possible body-feelings. Of course, I cannot be sure about the sameness of our experience or the meaning of what we tried to articulate. Yet, I had enough certainty to know something profound had just happened.
This experience can also be understood as multiple interlocking layers of recognition, which are always open to be questioned and challenged. These layers can be articulated as follows: (a) The participant might have felt a sense of self-recognition, being moved by her new revelation and a sense of certainty rooted in her body-feelings; (b) The participant might have experienced recognition from me as we shared that emotional moment and her feeling of being understood based on my responses and questions; (c) A possible mutual recognition existed between us as we tapped into a shared understanding of an experience implicating both of us but that was also beyond us; and finally (d) I experienced a moment of self-recognition inspired by the participant’s self-recognition and my recognition of her. This experience allowed me to touch something deeper: a desire for and the experience of self-actualization that is beyond (my/her) individual self. Thus, recognition has an intersubjective constitution: One recognizes oneself when one is recognized by the other; the one recognizing also experiences recognition of their self; this involves mutual recognition that requires a recognition of both the “I” and “you” but also of a “we” that holds sameness and difference between us at the same time.
Example 2
The second example comes from an interview Karen conducted recently as part of a participatory research study about a restorative justice project implemented at two correctional institutions in New England (Ross, 2019). The excerpt is from a part of the interview where the participant was describing his experiences in the restorative justice project and how he felt he had changed through that experience:
In the conversation I had with this participant, I (Karen) felt that more strongly than in other interviews I was conducting, I had a sense of experiencing alongside him the change he had gone through. In other words, through the conversation, I could almost viscerally feel the significance he attributed to his sense of transformation. I also sensed multiple levels of recognition interwoven into our exchange. At one level, he explicitly articulated the shame he had previously felt about his identity as Dominican and Puerto Rican and how that had changed: “I was ashamed of this and I can address it.” This self-recognition of both his previous emotional state and how that changed was clear in that moment. And I could sense (though I cannot be sure), that he also felt recognized by me in his sharing of this experience and the transformation he attributed to participating in this program. This was in part simply because of the explicit nature of the emotions expressed while discussing his identity and shame about that identity. However, it was also due to how those emotions were expressed—particularly in the context of our physical location. Correctional institutions are spaces where vulnerability is not encouraged. In fact, expressing vulnerability can be risky for incarcerated men. This particular interview took place not only in a prison, but specifically in a concrete room with no door, in a building filled with correctional officers. In this context, expressing vulnerability, especially through the emotional nature of his speech, was indicative of the significance of the participant’s experience.
At another level, the tears that rose up into this participant’s eyes as he spoke about the shame he had felt about his identity, and the long pauses in his speech, were significant for my recognition of his experience—as significant as the actual words he spoke. I remember not knowing exactly how to respond to him so as to show that I recognized the depth of what he was articulating in that moment, but noticing in myself at that moment that I could feel the authenticity of his statement, something that was reinforced when he said, “by speaking on it, somebody else, maybe they felt the same way . . .” In this moment, I sensed the significance for my participant of sharing his experience with others and realized that it was also a broadening of recognition at multiple levels: his self-recognition, others’ recognition of his experience, and his recognition of the potential need for others to be similarly recognized.
At a deeper level, the sharing of this example and my recognition of the context of that sharing were also significant for transformation. In other words, it was through the experience of the dialogue about this experience that transformation was claimed. Indeed, the intersubjective dimension of this experience occurred at three levels: first, at the level of my participant sharing how he came to realize his shame through the intersubjective experience of participating in the restorative justice program; second, at the level of sharing how that realization came about; and third, in terms of his articulation of the importance of including social identity in the revised restorative justice program curriculum as a way of helping others address similar experiences.
Of course, the visceral recognition I felt in that moment and my sense of a shared experience between myself and my participant in that moment is characterized by a lack of certainty. In contrast with Peiwei’s example, where a relationship between herself and her participant had been built over time, allowing for trust and openness to develop, this was the only interview I conducted with my participant. We had met previously through some of my work with the restorative justice program independent of this research, and he knew that I had previously facilitated the restorative justice program at another institution. However, this was our first and only individual encounter. Furthermore, I was a White woman entering (and leaving) a men’s prison and interviewing him about experiences that were salient to him as a person of color—I do not know how these aspects of our identity shaped or possibly distorted our interaction. On the other hand, my involvement with this research and more broadly with the program it focused on occurred in the context of a program meant to humanize in a space—prison—that is overwhelmingly dehumanizing. Thus, even as I felt a certainty about the significance of the shared connection we had in that moment, I cannot be certain whether this humanizing space was sufficient to transcend the power imbalance between us.
Discussion and Reflection
The two examples above foreground the intersubjective nature of knowledge claims pertinent to experiences of transformation. In the following pages, we further reflect on several conceptual and methodological issues that emerge from these examples. Specifically, we call attention to the intersubjective dimension of transformative experience; the interconnections between transformation, validity, and recognition; and the insider role of the researcher for experiencing and knowing transformation. We then discuss implications for assessing validity claims related to transformative experience.
Transformative Experience as an Intersubjective Process
The two examples highlight both the dialogic and intersubjective foundation of understanding transformative experience and the subjective domains of body-feelings and emotional experiences. In our view, transformative experiences are never purely individual, subjective, or private, although this is how they are commonly perceived. We contend that transformative experience foremost has an intersubjective basis; it is from both the subjective and intersubjective contexts and their interactions that we can better examine claims to validity related to transformative experiences without falling into the trap of a subject-object binary.
In both examples, we simultaneously observed and participated in moments that the researcher understood as transformative for the participant and for herself. We had enough certainty (though always questionable) to believe that our participants might have also experienced the moment as transformative to them, although perhaps even they might not have been sure, since the context always creates possibility for self-deception and/or pressure to perform in certain ways. We came to our understandings through body-feelings and our intuitive grasps of the participant’s emotional states, to which we as researchers only had partial access (from a second-person position in interaction with the participant, and simultaneously from a third-person position monitoring the interaction). Even attempts to conduct informal member checking with the participant during the interview (e.g., when Peiwei checked with the participant about her interpretation of participant “being moved”) only served to “verify” the researcher’s interpretation—to the point that the researcher and the participant assumed they had a shared understanding. On the other hand, the participants’ subjective experiences were also not purely subjective (e.g., completely private 2 ). Once the experience was felt and reflected upon, it entered a communicative and intersubjective realm when language was applied, even though it is also true that only the participant has access 3 to their experience (Habermas, 1984, 1987).
The two encounters featured above were highly intersubjective in the sense that each of our basic communicative competencies in position taking allowed us to resonate with the participants’ experiences in semantic, pragmatic, and visceral ways. Intersubjectivity enabled momentary horizon fusion in a hermeneutic sense (Gadamer, 1979), during which there was a felt fluidity between the positions of “she/he/they,” “I,” “us,” and “we.” Each position was bounded and yet fluid in the sense that the participants’ experience as revealed in dialogue with the researcher was simultaneously subjective, intersubjective, and transpersonal, pointing toward a universal dialectic where difference and sameness coexist dynamically. What seemed to transcend the researcher and the participant in both cases was a shared recognition of something that is not a reified entity or something “positive” that can be named and objectified, but instead is universally oriented.
This illustrates that recognition is not primarily a subjective phenomenon, but is intersubjectively constituted at bottom (Honneth, 1996). It is a shared sense of the potential for transformation. Moreover, this shared sense only has a “negative” quality in the sense that it escapes any attempt to objectify what it is, this is, in nature it is infinite (Carspecken, 2018). This means any attempt we make here to express what it is cannot fully capture this shared sense of transformative potential. This poses an ultimate limitation on naming a namable ground for validity regarding knowledge claims to transformative experiences besides grasping an intuitive insight about the fundamental uncertainty of this validity.
The Connection Between Validity, Recognition, and Dialogue
When the object of knowing is transformative experience, we know it through recognition that cannot be purely observational or cognitive, but rather that it occurs primarily through body-feelings, where our interpretation lies on the borderland between knowing and being. Body-feelings can be (partially) accessed subjectively through privileged access, and known intuitively whenever they become a subject of knowing. Body-feelings might include the feeling of being moved or inspired, a sense of expansion and transcendence, recognizing previously unknown feelings and emotions, and so on. We argue that recognition becomes the validity principle for this form of knowing: in other words, to validate is to recognize. This involves an intersubjective endeavor that taps into felt (and ultimately assumed) “sharedness,” which is articulated and confirmed (always partially) through dialogic communication at large enabled by a desire to understand and an openness to reveal. Validity via recognition in this sense has a strong ontological feature and is largely fused with the experience itself. It is accessed intersubjectively and reflexively in the act of recognition, primarily on the being level. In this context, validity cannot be understood as independent of the experience itself, or as an “outcome.” Instead, we argue that validity claims as oriented toward transformative experiences are an ongoing process of unpacking that occurs through dialogue, an unfolding process that emerges and evolves in a form of increasing certainty, grasped subjectively and intersubjectively. A certainty-uncertainty dialectic is involved: We simultaneously know something and do not know it with certainty. This unfolding carries a telo of uncertainty, a built-in resistance to be fully known and objectified.
The Researcher’s Role in Transformative Validity
In the two examples above, we, researchers, are not outsiders, distantly evaluating claims of transformation. Instead, we are inevitably involved as active participants. We have the potential to intimately engage in a validating process through the endeavor of recognition, made possible by a dialogic/communicative context. As dialogue partners, both the participant and the researcher’s being-in-the-world (Heidegger, 1962) are implicated in the experience of understanding meaning. Moreover, although the research moments foreground individual experiences and interpersonal interactions, these experiences and interactions are never divorced from backgrounded social norms, cultural patterns, and social and institutional structures that are saturated with power imbalances and oppressive mechanisms. In these encounters, we are always tacitly and inevitably conditioned by those dynamics, even as we are also recursively contesting, resisting, and potentially transforming them. Yet, we resist a dichotomous demarcation between the individual/agency and social/structure and assume a dialectical and recursive relationship between the two (see Giddens’ (1979) conception of structuration or Weis and Fine’s (2012) vision of critical bifocality). We also resist a naive humanistic stance that reduces transformative experience to the confines of individual development or self-actualization where the “self” is divorced from its situatedness in relation to larger historical, social, and political struggles.
Thus, transformative experience is not to be romanticized without acknowledging that massive suffering and oppression continue to exist. Recognizing transformation is not to declare triumph over struggles, but to simultaneously hold tension, contradiction, and the duality of subjugation and resistance, which characterize the process toward liberation and emancipation. For instance, the participant in our second example grasped powerful insights and transformative experience through the vehicle of accessing his deeper emotional experience of shame. His sense of self and of reality was understood anew. And yet, he continues to endure dehumanizing experiences behind bars for the time being and, likely, ongoing assaults of structural violence rooted in racism and other intersecting “isms.” Similarly (and differently), in the first example, a moment of transformative experience for a White woman did not take away the privileged positions that the participant still continues to occupy as a middle-class White person. Indeed, although both participants seemed to have experienced transformative growth (in quite different contexts), they likely continue to be disproportionately subject to structural injustices. The individual and the structural are always entangled: The struggle for true solidarity and justice must continue, folding in those moments of micro transformation and yearning for structural changes.
The same dynamics reflexively fold back onto us as researchers. We are situated and positioned in intersecting power lines of dominance/marginalization, privilege/dispossession, insider/outsider, while living with both benefits and consequences of those hierarchies, personally, interpersonally, and in institutionalized forms. Our own marginalized experiences may give us intersectional access to recognizing struggles and thus to transformation. Meanwhile, occupying dominant positions likely camouflages what we are able to understand and recognize as dominance. It is inevitable that researchers occupy various dominant positions at the fluid intersecting nexus of positionalities. For instance, how does Karen’s positionality as a White, nonincarcerated woman who can leave the prison and return to the comforts of her home at the end of the day, in many ways living a privileged life, both open and close the potential for understanding and recognizing her participant’s experience? Similarly, how might Peiwei’s positionality as a highly educated East Asian woman, perceived as a “model minority,” and as a trusted professor, enable a White female participant to feel comfortable with disclosure and vulnerability, while possibly constraining a more critical analysis of transformation and more nuanced identity exploration?
The validity of recognition relies on researchers turning back to ourselves and constantly wrestling with our own social and structural localities. This may mean sitting with our emotions/reactions/body-feelings to understand the gaps between knowing and being; engaging in ongoing reflection on our identities/positionalities in shifting contexts; and constantly gaining more complex and nuanced understanding about structural issues and policies that disadvantage and harm others while supplying us comfort and privileges that we (un)consciously hold onto. We need to ask the questions: Who benefits from gaining an understanding of transformative experiences? How do we know what we know? How might we be wrong?
Validity Criteria Versus Principles for Validity
The three issues we address above, along with our empirical examples, illustrate the need for a distinction between validity criteria as a common approach to traditional thinking about validity, and what we conceptualize as principles for validity—such as the principle of recognition referenced above. An important point that we emphasize here again is that there is a fundamental uncertainty to validity, in terms of clearly defined limits of understanding and/or verification of understanding. This underlies our assertion that we cannot pin down criteria that allow us to determine whether validity “has been achieved.” Simultaneously, validity has an infinite quality that resists a presupposed separation between knowledge and being—that is, between knowing as experiential/being, and knowing as having knowledge of something.
The fundamental uncertainty of validity is much more foregrounded in the context of transformative experiences, as the object of knowledge moves from the objective realm of multiple access to the blurry boundary of knowing and being. In these situations, validity is highly reflexive and embodied: It can only be gauged from within a dialogic process that the researcher themself is embedded in, where their being-in-the-world (Heidegger, 1962) encounters the being-in-the-world of the participant. In other words, it is not possible to assert, from outside of the dialogic experience, a set of fixed or standardized criteria that might be used to assess validity. Likewise, the infinite nature of validity can be seen in the fact that this dialogue always holds the potential for expansion and further development, if it is not constrained or closed up. In fact, this potential for keeping a dialogic space, one that exists for its own development and is driven by pure willingness to understand and be understood, while simultaneously recognizing power differentials that distort understanding, itself reflects the spirit of validity. Validity as seen in this context is as much about being as about knowing.
Ultimately, in the context of a dialogic/hermeneutic understanding of validity as it relates to transformation, we believe it is important to think about key principles and facilitating conditions for validity. Here, again, we draw on the work of Jürgen Habermas (1984), in particular his concept of the ideal speech situation as discussed in The Theory of Communicative Action. Habermas perceives ideal speech as a limit case that can be defined as “action oriented toward reaching understanding” (p. 25) rather than oriented toward instrumental or strategic ends. The limit case of ideal speech is governed by the following principles: First, rational argumentation depends solely on the “force of the better argument” (p. 25), where no coercion distorts what is expressed. Ideal speech is also governed by sincerity: that is, authenticity in one’s expression, or absence of deception in what is said. Third, ideal speech is characterized by equality among actors: Every participant in the communicative context must have the same right to speak to the matter at hand. Finally, important in the context of communication oriented toward mutual understanding is an openness to criticism and willingness to listen/understand. This principle is what Brandom (2019) characterizes as a recognitive attitude; as we discuss above, we believe this can be cultivated through reflection on our own positionalities and how these might/might not distort our understanding of others’ experiences, as well as through attention to our own body-feelings in the context of interacting with others and discussing their transformative experiences.
We draw on these principles in considering conditions for transformative validity to illustrate what we believe should characterize the intersubjective, dialogic process that enables an understanding of transformation. In other words, given the fundamental uncertainty of validity and its embeddedness within a dialogic process, we suggest that conditions for transformative validity are inherently linked to the quality of the intersubjective dialogue process within which knowledge and understanding emerge. Furthermore, as Melissa Freeman (2011) points out, “our undertaking is to hold open the door of possibilities, keeping the conversation going, as long as is possible” (p. 549). In other words, the goal of validity in the context of transformation is not to arrive at truth in a manner that closes off the conversation, but rather to do all that we can to keep the conversation open so that further opportunities for dialogue can arise. Authentic intersubjective recognition of transformation is facilitated by the conditions that characterize ideal speech: equality, lack of coercion, sincerity, and openness/willingness to listen. The body-feelings, emotional reactions, and possibilities for further dialogue that characterize recognition emerge as communicative contexts most closely reflect these principles.
Closing/Opening
To keep our implicit dialogue with readers open, we are inclined not to provide closure in this piece. Instead, we would like to touch on a few themes and antitheses to our arguments, to open them for further conversation and counter arguments. First of all, the impetus for this methodological exploration, in a larger sense, is to undermine binary conceptions such as positivist-truth versus anti-truth, subjective versus objective, knowing versus being, and so on. To do so, we return to the context of communication, the structure of dialogue, and the very foundation of intersubjectivity to grapple with the transformative aspect of validity. And yet, there is much more to explore and articulate with more precision regarding the very nature of intersubjectivity. For instance, we can anticipate one criticism of our work might be the emphasis on dialogue and the principles that foster ideal dialogic unfolding. A counter-argument could be that to achieve transformative social change, dialogue is not enough nor desired in certain situations (e.g., it is necessary to focus on structural and legislative/policy changes and not just interpersonal conversations). This exact view pushes us to better theorize the notion of dialogue and intersubjectivity, particularly in ways that hold the potential to transcend binary views that fail to connect agency/individuals with structure/systemic patterns. One example is a conception of dialogue that is not limited to the interpersonal context but includes collective dialogic practice in the public and political sphere (see Seyla Benhabib’s (2002) work on deliberative democratic models). Similarly, in this article, we connect the subjective and intersubjective realms both to the phenomenon of transformation and recognition, yet where do those two fuse and diffuse? How can we better understand this relationship epistemologically and methodologically?
Second, our discussion of validity for knowledge claims of transformative experience shifts our understanding of validity from a traditionally epistemological apprehension to an ethico-onto-epistemological one, to borrow a more holistic term from new materialist Karen Barad (2007). To recognize transformative experience requires an acknowledgment that knowing, being, and becoming are inseparable. In transformative experience, knowing accompanies the experience of being: knowing as being or being as knowing, with a deep relational root. Thus, validity cannot be a “thing” to “achieve” or “threat to address”: It is an ongoing process of dialogic reflection. Validity also carries an ethical and moral responsibility necessitated by relationality, which “is not an obligation that the subject chooses, but rather an incarnate relation that precedes the intentionality of consciousness” (Barad, 2007, p. 34). What the researcher recognizes (or not) of participant’s experience (or more precisely, what the researcher recognizes with the participant) and what the researcher chooses to represent and write about the participants’ experiences are both validity concerns. Meanwhile, our research practices always have the potential to perpetuate epistemological violence (Teo, 2010) and/or enact through a colonial gaze. Limes-Taylor Henderson & Esposito (2017) poignantly call for an ethic of humility, stating, As qualitative researchers interested in resisting oppression where we find it, we must understand how we currently enact that oppression in our own work. Rather than imagining ourselves as the saviors of the downtrodden and oppressed, as the intellectuals charged with speaking for the uneducated, and as society’s true knowledge-keepers, we should see ourselves as we really are. (p. 13)
Again, there is much more to do to unpack the methodological implications here to understand the onto-ethico-epistemological responsibility carried by validity. Such responsibility necessarily foregrounds ontological aspects of being a researcher, and researchers’ full being-in-the-worldness, and moves beyond epistemological reflection alone. This also calls for direct participation and action in the world that we hope to research and transform (Freire, 1972).
Third, if recognition is key to validity, what is recognition? In our theorizing-in-progress, we see recognition as a set of multifaceted intersubjective endeavors, which may involve the researcher’s recognition of the participant’s experience, participant’s recognition of their own experience and the recognition from the researcher, researcher’s recognition of themselves, and so on. Offering new readings of Hege’s Phenomenology, Brandom (2019) asserts, “I cannot be properly self-conscious (recognize myself) except in the context of a recognition structure that is reciprocal; insofar as I am recognized by those I recognize” (p. 246). His work and that of others (e.g., Nancy Fraser, Alex Honneth) may provide insights to further build on a methodological theory foregrounding the concept of recognition, in relation to other concepts such as validity, intersubjectivity, and ethical/moral responsibility.
Finally, the ultimate uncertainty of the grounds for validity, which we have examined in relation to transformative experience (almost as a limit case), points to the infinite aspect of knowing and being. Phil Carspecken (2018) calls this 4 the “missing infinite”: “The infinite is missing when we have a way of understanding knowing and being in which everything is positive, everything has determinations, nothing escapes . . . The infinite is what escapes. It is missing in most methodological discourses” (p. 44). Like the Buddhist’s notion of the finger pointing at the moon, 5 how can we attempt to theorize a concept such as transformative validity that resists being known in a totalizing way or with certainty, while we still need to make efforts to do so in an open and reflective manner? How can we put the openness to uncertainty and the infinity of validity into methodological terms even though we know this is only the finger and not the moon? We certainly have more questions than answers in this pursuit, and we know this can be unsettling for many readers. However, as Sara Ahmed (2007) poignantly articulates, “If we want to know how things can be different too quickly, then we might not hear anything at all.” It is our intention in this article to hold the tension of in/finity, hoping this will lead to generative space for further dialogue.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Meagan Call-Cummings, Susan Opotow, and Pengfei Zhao for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
