Auto/biography: conferences, seminars, talks

Re-use of qualitative data can be seen as a very common practice. Almost every qualitative researcher engages in it, though usually not in a planned, explicit and systematic way. If we want to support more organized and methodical modes of data re-use (e.g., via the institution of data archives) we should try to understand this practice in all its diversity and complexity. In this paper we contribute to such an understanding by discussing some methodological, ethical and technical problems of secondary analysis from the users’ perspective. We do so in three steps. First, using examples from our long-term research work on the problem of communist power we describe some difficulties arising from shifted interpretive contexts of the data we worked with - those data had not originally been collected for our current purposes and by both of us. We show that and how the difficulties, related to secondary analysis in general, can be overcome (or even turned into advantages) by means of research collaboration between data providers and data re-users. Second, we complicate the picture a bit. We discuss diverse sources of possible reluctance, both on the side of the provider and on the side of the re-user, to engage in such collaboration. Third and finally, we make few summary remarks on data archives themselves. On the basis of previous discussions, we argue that if specialised data archives are to attract and make sense for the diverse and growing community of qualitative researchers they should allow, in their politics and designs, for a broad, open and flexible view of the data re-use.

In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, there are still no life history archives with wider access for social scientists. Nor the ethical and methodological problems of re-using documents are discussed. However, the authors as well as many other scholars often re-use their collections of life stories. They use the data for studying new topics that are sometimes far from the original research questions and objectives. In this paper we will discuss some methodological problems arising from such practice. We argue that, on the one hand, ethnomethodological perspective is especially demanding on the quality and pinpoint accuracy of the transcripts (insufficiency of transcript can be corrected by the use of archived audiotapes) and descriptions of the interviews by which the narratives were elicited (field memos). On the other hand, however, the ethnomethodological perspective orients the scholars to formulate their research objective according what the materials themselves offer. Therefore the problem of relevance and reliability can be never resolved in advance and on a general level.