Member Check - Pertinent Questions

Pertinent Questions

Before you begin "member checking," consider and answer each of the following questions:

• What is being checked? If it is simply a check that participants have the demographic characteristics you recorded for them, or recall a discussion as you do, the task may be simple, but this is hardly validating your interpretation. Most commonly what is being "checked" is how you have "seen" the situation. What account of this interpretation are you to give out for rechecking?
• With whom are you checking? Who are the relevant "members" and what is their relation to you and to your research topic?
• Who is checking whom? It is never appropriate to think in terms of an "us and them" dichotomy, in which you are doing research on "them."
• How would you interpret agreement? This is a crucial question. If the participants agree with your analysis, given that they are probably not researchers, this would be surprising. (It may be a matter for concern. One of the goals that can be set for a good project is that it showed something the participants could not see.)
• What follows if "they" agree? This is a major ethical issue. If a participant agrees to your account and even to its publication, this does not clear you of the responsibility of considering the implications of publishing. Perhaps they are unable to see future fallout from your report? Perhaps those consulted have an interest in your publishing a critique of others?
• How does one interpret disagreement? There are of course two different situations to consider: everyone disagrees with you, or (a different issue) there is disagreement between members on your interpretation. By now it should be clear that respondent checking does not establish truth of your report. Think before you start the feedback processes, all the different reasons why disagreements might appear. It is very likely that if you have made a good job of your research, the report exposes or even hurts some participants. You may have probed motives and interests, revealed the ways high intentions disguise messy politics or fear. Perhaps your task included confronting the participants with this analysis, but do you expect them to agree and if they did, what would that tell you?
• What was it they responded to? How partial was the interpretation?