Interpreting hidden meaning in qualitative research interview data: opportunities and challenges

Abstract

ABSTRACT Hidden meaning, understood as relationally constituted unformulated or defended experience, presents both opportunities and challenges not adequately theorised and explored in the qualitative research literature. This paper outlines weaker and stronger forms of hiddenness and discusses the epistemological and methodological difficulties that hidden meaning presents. Many qualitative approaches claiming to accommodate hidden meaning are significantly flawed because of their attenuated conceptions of intersubjectivity and consequent reliance on interview transcripts, rather than the rich intersubjective data co-created in the interview process. If the researcher’s subjectivity is the primary research instrument, we need to work with both verbal content and affect-laden embodied experience, reflexively observing its manifestations and intersubjective impacts. The disciplined use of reflexive subjectivity involves paying close attention to our affective resonances, reveries, and/or researcher countertransference, which signal implicit research manifestations of the relational unconscious. I propose an interpretive process model, underpinned by a critical realist ontology and epistemology, and illustrate this with reference to some interview material. I conclude with an overview of the ethical challenges of interpreting hidden meaning and the crucial role that rigorous and holistically conceived reflexivity plays as an interpretive and ethical resource.