A reason offered for the traditional lack of use of life stories within sociology
and other fields was offered by Becker – that the dominant, ‘scientific’ hypothetico-deductive
method produced the notion that hypotheses were to be
constructed for testing and that life stories did not provide the ‘findings’ that
sociological researchers were required to obtain (Becker 1970). Biographical
research was alleged to be wanting when measured against criteria of
reliability and validity: life stories perhaps provided insights, sources for
possible hypotheses before the formulation of ‘real’ objective research, or
more emphasis had been placed on validity rather than reliability. (It may be
worth noting here that writers have observed that qualitative methods differ
on the balance between reliability and validity; see Kirk and Miller 1986;
Perakyla 1997.)