The softness of hard data: discursive psychology, conversation analysis, and psychological science

Abstract

Qualitative methods are sometimes criticised on the grounds that they do not provide ‘hard’ data. But, on inspection, ‘hard’ data turns out to be produced by unavoidably ‘soft’ human interaction and activities. That means that psychologists must work directly with what people do and say, and either transform it into abstractions – with potential distortions along the way – or stay with the raw events to see what questions they may answer. We argue for the latter: using discursive psychology and conversation analysis to ground claims about human sociality in the evidence that it provides, unfiltered, in everyday interaction. But, taking this argument further, we demonstrate how discursive psychological and conversation analytic scrutiny may reveal the ‘softness’ of both quantitative (experiments, standardisation) and qualitative (interview and survey questions) research tools, with implications for the production, openness, and validity of psychological knowledge.