Operationalizing member-checking: Restorative justice as relational accountability in qualitative research

• In Event: Restorative Justice as Reparative Research: Conceptualizing RJ as Methodology

Abstract

Member-checking is one of the most widely accepted methods for establishing trustworthiness in qualitative research (Lincoln & Guba, 1986). Its range includes participants reviewing transcripts for accuracy to providing analytical feedback on written manuscripts (e.g., Creswell, 2005; Stake, 1995; Yin, 2014). That said, while member checking has been viewed as the gold standard of qualitative work (Madill & Sullivan, 2018), some methodologists have questioned member-checking as a trustworthiness tool (Candela, 2019; Thomas, 2017). In a narrative review of 44 studies, Thomas (2017) argued that there was “no evidence that routine member checks enhance the credibility or trustworthiness of qualitative research” (p. 37).

In this paper, we consolidate that the latest methodological innovations in member-checking (e.g., Motulsky’s (2021) ‘reflexive participant collaboration’; Birt at al.’s (2016) ‘synthesized member checking’, Koelsch’s (2013) work on participant subjectivities change), arguing they are rooted in restorative justice (RJ). As an Indigenous epistemology, restorative justice is a philosophy of community-building that focuses on repairing relational harm when wrong-doing occurs (Sellman et al., 2013; Zehr, 2015). It stands in contrast to the punitive justice found in many Western colonizing cultures (O’Brien & Nygreen, 2020). RJ has become increasingly popular in education, mostly as a way to conceive of school-level discipline and cultural transformation (e.g., Davison et al., 2022; Gregory et al., 2018). Restorative justice, however, as a philosophy and as a set of practices, has the potential to guide how qualitative education researchers can interact with participants at multiple stages of the research process. This paper makes a conceptual argument that RJ philosophy and practices can work to uphold the value of member-checking as a trustworthiness procedure during qualitative projects. There are two central tensions that we debate throughout the paper, after which we demonstrate methods to operationalize RJ-as-member-checking.

The first and main tension centers the potential of restorative member-checking processes to mitigate the potential harm of traditional research relationships. How can we organize restorative member-checking experiences to reduce harmful experiences? To address the tension, we must understand the harms that social and educational research have produced (Goldblatt et al., 2011). While a complete exploration of this issue is beyond the scope of the paper proposal, our full paper investigates how restorative member-checking can remedy past research harm and prevent future ones.

The second tension is articulating the difference between participatory research stances (i.e., PAR; YPAR) and member-checking as a restorative philosophy and practice. Some researchers have attempted to remedy the historic harm of research by adopting a participatory stance. Participatory researchers have informally embedded member-checking throughout their projects (Cornwall & Jewkes, 1995). So, what is the value in distinguishing RJ from a generalist participatory stance throughout the research process? The full paper attempts to resolve that tension.

Following the (tenuous and likely perpetually incomplete) resolutions of these tensions, the full paper demonstrates ways in which member-checking, as a restorative process, can be actualized. It describes three member-checking procedures from a ten-year collaborative project with a predominantly Black high school in the midwest.

Authors

• Alexander Parker, Johns Hopkins University

• Olivia Marcucci, Johns Hopkins University