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marginalized group (e.g., the homeless), to representing a group’s distinctive world view
for policy makers (doctors, welfare recipients), and/or to providing a critical, even
potentially emancipatory, perspective on group meanings and practices (see Pierce, 1995,
on litigation lawyers and feminist researcher Kaufman, 1989, on deeply religious
women). Thus, the technique of “member checks” is entangled with additional
interpretive criteria such as “voice” or “authenticity” and “critical subjectivity” or
“criticality” (see Lincoln 1995 and Brower et al. 2000 in Table 2) and well as techniques
such as front-stage and back-stage representation (see Brower et al. 2000 in Table 3).
Crossing researcher purpose with the in-between positioning of the researcher may result
in seamless agreement: the member agrees that the researcher has “got it right” and then
the researcher provides compelling “thick description” so that the audience, say a policy
maker, understands the members’ world view. Alternatively, a member may protest the
critical elements of a researcher’s representations and such protest should be factored into
the research report and assessed against member quotations and other “thick description”
meant to convince audiences that the researcher has taken members’ meanings seriously,
if not at face value. As Atkinson et al. express this point, “informants’ accounts should
neither be endorsed nor disregarded: they need to be analyzed” (2003, 194).
The technique and practice of member checks also bears a family resemblance to
what is called “grounded theory” (Glaser and Strauss 1967). While there have been a
number of twists and turns in the evolution of this technique (Cresswell 1998; Atkinson
et al. 2003, especially 148-154), what is germane here is the similarity between the
impulse to “go back” to members and the desire to “ground” theory; each technique—
though very different in detail, stage of analysis, etc—emphasizes inductive analysis as a
Convention