Transcript Qualitative Methods

class 9: 11/12/12
field-based research
research is
• going beyond what is known (Bruner)
• making the inaccessible accessible
• getting smarter about the world in order to
make it a better place (Lee Shulman)
• explaining links in a system (Bob Pianta)
all researchers must attend to
funding
• which funders are funding what
journals
• which journals are publishing what
promotion
• what kinds of research and other
activities are valued in a given department,
college, university
all researchers must attend to details
more on theory
• theory needed to “see” data
– creative or invented spellings (Read, 1986)
• RUDF
• nooiglid, cwnchre, chrac, cidejches, adsavin,
cchin, feh, jopt, hrp, jrgn, bateg, ihover,
goweg
– theory: children use letter-name knowledge to
creatively & linguistically accurately spell
– not seen for centuries
• educators lack linguistic knowledge
• adults hear sounds not there
field-based research
• attitudes of a good fieldworker
– all people are smart (about their world)
– all people make sense (from their point
of view)
– all people want to have a good life (as it
is defined in their world)
(Ray McDermott)
characteristics
• occurs in “natural” setting (but many
settings, like school, not particularly
“natural”). better: “ordinary daily life”
• importance of understanding participants’
perspectives (emic view)
• prolonged and repetitive: generally takes 6
months to a year or more in the field
• focus on action rather than behavior
– behavior: what people do
– action: what people intend as they do
• search is for meaning constructed in daily
interactions
• data record is constructed from the
concrete particulars of everyday life
fieldwork cycle
• desk > field >desk >field >desk >field >desk
...
• observation >interview >observation
>interview. . .
• field jottings > fieldnotes > data record >
analysis > writing > field jottings >
fieldnotes > data record > . . .
generating data
• observing
• interviewing
• collecting artifacts
basic rules of fieldwork
• write it down
• write it down
• write it down
rules cont.
• observe carefully, systematically, with
discipline, and creatively
• keep interviews short: < 30”
• construct fieldnotes immediately—same
day
• back data records up (keep back-ups in
different place)
• write early, write often
• for every 1 hour in the field allot 2 hours
at the desk
field jottings
• notes taken in the field
fieldnotes
• constructed at the desk from field
jottings, from memory, from “head notes,”
reflection, etc
• fieldnotes become part of the data record
coding
• process of constructing categories from
data records:
– recurrences, patterns, salient events,
threads
• 2 kinds: top-down, bottom-up
• taking large data record and turning it into
something small enough and manageable
enough to work on
example of using statistics
in field work
Jefferson and Madison Combined
poor
not poor
total
2-year
24
34
58
1-year
6
65
71
total 30
99
129
chi-square: 19.4 (1 df) p < .0001
Jefferson and Madison Combined
non-white
white
total
2-year
10
48
58
1-year
9
62
71
total
19
110
129
chi-square: .530 (1 df) p < .5
Interpretive Methods
Frederick Erickson
What is General Nature? is there such a Thing?
What is General Knowledge? is there such a Thing?
Strictly Speaking All Knowledge is Particular
William Blake
• a central research interest in human
meaning in social life and its elucidation
and exposition by the researcher (119)
• basic validity criterion: the immediate and
local meanings of actions, as defined from
actor’s point of view (119)
• research interpretive as a matter of
substantive focus and intent, rather than
procedures in data collection (119)
central substantive concerns
• the nature of classrooms as socially and
culturally organized environments for
learning
• the nature of teaching as one, but only one,
aspect of the reflexive learning
environment
• the nature (and content) of the meaningperspectives of teacher and learner as
intrinsic to the educational process (120)
• My work is an attempt to combine close
analysis of fine details and behavior in
everyday social interaction with analysis of
the wider social context—the field of
broader social influences—within which the
face-to-face interaction takes place. In
method, my work is an attempt to be
empirical without being positivist; to be
rigorous and systematic in investigating the
slippery phenomena of everyday interaction
and its connections, through the medium of
subjective meaning, with the wider social
world. (120)
fieldwork
• intensive, long term participation in the
field
• careful recording of what happens in the
setting
• subsequent analytic reflection on the
record and reporting using detailed
description, vignettes, quotations, analytic
charts, summary tables, and descriptive
statistics (121)
interpretive methods useful to discover
• specific structure of occurrences rather
than general character and overall
distribution
• meaning-perspectives of particular actors
• the location of naturally occurring points
of contrast to be used as natural
experiments
• identification of specific causal linkages
not identified by experimental methods,
and development of new theories about
patterns identified by surveys or
experiments.
to answer the following questions
• what is happening, specifically, in the
social action in this setting
• what do the actions mean to the actors at
the moment they took place
• how are happenings organized socially and
culturally
• how related to other system levels inside
and outside the setting
• how does organization of daily life here
compare to other places and times (121)
why answers needed (121-122)
• the invisibility of everyday life
• need for specific understanding through
documentation of concrete details of
practice
• need to consider local meanings
• need for comparative understanding of
different social settings
• need for comparative understanding
beyond the immediate circumstances of
the local setting
perspectives of actors often overlooked
(124-125)
• people who hold meaning-perspectives of
interest often relatively powerless, e.g.,
teachers and students
• meaning-perspectives often held outside
conscious awareness by those who hold
them, and not explicitly articulated
• meaning-perspectives viewed as peripheral
or irrelevant—needing to be eliminated in
order for objective inquiry to be done
action and behavior
• one cannot assume that the same behavior
has the same meaning to different
individuals. Thus the crucial analytic
distinction is that between behavior, the
physical act, and action, which is the
physical behavior plus the meaning
interpretations held by the actor and
those with whom the actor interacts (126127)
social action (127-128)
• Weber: a social relationship exists when
people reciprocally adjust their behavior
to each other with respect to the meaning
they give it, and when this reciprocal
adjustment determines the form it takes.
• standing is a behavior; standing in line is
social action
meanings-in-action shared by group are
local in two ways (128-129)
• they are distinctive to a particular group
who come to share certain specific local
understandings and traditions—a
microculture
• they are local in the sense of the locality
of moment-to-moment enactment of social
action in real time (e.g., today’s enactment
of breakfast differs from yesterdays)
meanings also non-local in origin
• the influence of culture (learned and
shared standards for perceiving,
believing, acting, and evaluating the
actions of others)
• the perception that local members have
interests or constraints beyond the local
group
goal: to discover how local and non-local
forms of social organization relate to
specific people interacting together (129)
• The search is not for abstract universals .
. . but for concrete universals, arrived at
by studying a specific case in great detail
and then comparing it with other cases
studied in equally great detail. Some of
what occurs is universal—across culture
and time; some is specific to the historical
and cultural circumstances of the
situation. Each instance a unique system
that nonetheless displays universal
properties. (p. 130)
• a central task for interpretive,
participant-observational research is to
enable researchers and practitioners to
become much more specific in their
understanding of the inherent variation
from situation to situation. This means
building better theory about the social and
cognitive organization of particular forms
of life as immediate environments for the
actors involved. (p. 133)
writing
lit review grading
• 20: writing—clear, explicit, concise,
grammatical
• 20: APA—citations, references, headings,
format
• 20: organization—necessary parts,
balanced
• 40: content—critical, convincing, clear
general hints
• do not write linearly, i.e., don’t start at
page 1, the 2,3,… to 30
• write sections and subsections—when you
get stuck, move to a different section
• think of the process as putting together
already written sections—like a puzzle
• get an entire rough draft done before you
start to rewrite and edit
• need to convince reader you have reviewed
a literature
– if part of a literature, specify
parameters and explain why
– if parts of different literatures, specify
and explain why
• not just a list of studies—organize them
and explain relationship of parts to whole
• make the weaknesses of your search
explicit—this is a beginning lit review, a
preliminary version, weaknesses inevitable
citations in text (207-214)
one work by one author
• Chen (2000) found that . . .
• Teachers reported that kids . . . reading
levels (Chen, 2000).
• do not repeat year within same paragraph:
Chen (2000) found that. . . . In the same
research, Chen also found . . . .
• repeat full citation in new paragraph
one work by multiple authors
• 2 authors: cite both names every time
• 3, 4, or 5 authors: cite all names first
time, after that, Chen et al.
• 6 or more authors: Chen et al. always
– exception, if two references would
shorten to same, e.g., Chen et al. (2000)
and Chen et al. (2000), include enough
names to differentiate them, e.g., Chen,
Martinez, et al. (2000), Chen, Zodiates,
et al. (2000)
groups, organizations, acronyms
• short name or unfamiliar abbreviation, cite
in full each time
• identifiable abbreviation, cite in full first
time then abbreviation
– (National Institute of Mental Health
[NIMH], 2000), thereafter (NIMH,
2000)
authors with same surnames
• include initials in all citations: J. C. Chen
(2000) and L. Chen (1999) . . . .
2 or more works within same citation
• same author: (Chen, 1995, 2000, in press)
or (Riley, 1995, 2000a, 2000b)
• different authors—alphabetical order
separated by semi-colons: (Chen, 1995,
2000; Suzuki, 1995; Vasconcelos, 1999)
margins
• 1-inch (2.54 cm) margins at the top,
bottom, right, and left of every page
• left justify only—ragged right
best getaways
• state parks with lodges: hiking etc
– Turkey Run (60 minutes east on I-74)
– Starved Rock (2 hrs—north from
Bloomington-Normal on I-39)
– Brown County (3 hours—near Bloomington,
Indiana)
– Giant City State Park (3 hours, near
Carbondale, IL
• with kids
– the children’s museum of Indianapolis
(www.ChildrensMuseum.org)
day trips
• Homer Lake (17 miles east of Urbana)
• Allerton (southwest of Monticello) (30 miles)
• Tuscola outlet mall (south I-57) (32 miles)
• Arcola/Arthur: Amish country: shops,
woodworking stores (south I-57) (41/47 miles)
• Peoria River Front (east I-74) (92 miles)
Chicago
• Art Institute
• “Sears Tower” or John Hancock
observation decks
• walk Michigan Avenue from river to Oak
Street beach and back
• Watertower Place
• Aquarium, Field Museum
• Museum of Science and Industry
• no-longer Marshall Fields (Christmas
windows)
•
•
•
•
Lincoln Park Zoo
Lincoln Park
Navy Pier
walk Lake Front from Aquarium to Navy
Pier (dress warm on windy cold day)
• lunch at Billy Goat’s tavern (under Michigan
avenue near Wrigley Building)
Seiber 9: maximizing benefit
• risks to subjects (must be) reasonable in
relation to anticipated benefits, if any, to
subjects, and the importance of the
knowledge that may reasonably be
expected to result.
• look carefully at the hierarchy of
benefits and hierarchy of beneficiaries
Becker 5: learning to write as a
professional
• point is that no one learns to write all at
once, that learning, on the contrary, goes
on for a professional lifetime and comes
from a variety of experiences academia
makes available (91)
• I began to see that finishing a paper didn’t
mean you were done with it (92)
• “Stink! Stink! Stink!” (93)
• knowing you are essentially right takes a lot
of pressure off your writing (95)
• I have spent relatively little time at the
typewriter. I would begin what eventually
became a paper by talking, to anyone who
would listen, about the topic I was going to
write about (101)
• I added up my production frequently and
announced to anyone who would listen that
I had done 6 pages . . .2500 words (102)
• after a second or third draft, I have
something I can send to some friends (103)
• . . . that the most important thing a
photographer can do is photograph and
that making thousands of bad photographs
is no disgrace as long as you make a few
good ones too and can tell the good from
the bad (104)
iv: vulnerable populations
ch 10: children and adolescents
10.1 legal constraints
• IRB approval
• documented permission of parent or
guardian and assent of child—consent of
both parents may be required
• no greater risk than usual, unless IRB
finds risk justified by anticipated
benefits
• exempted research (but one must still go
to IRB)
– research in normal educational settings,
involving normal practices
– use of educational tests if subjects
anonymous
• waiver of parental permission
– minimal risk, will not adversely affect
subjects, cannot be be carried out
without waiver
– if permission will not protect child
– see 4 other circumstances on page 113
• waiver of assent
– if IRB determines children incapable of
assenting, or if assent would render
research impossible
• research with greater than minimal risk
– possible but one must be very careful
10.2 risk from developmental perspective
• discussion based on outdated
developmental theory, but one must
consider the issue
10.3 privacy and autonomy from
developmental perspective
• be aware of children’s right to privacy, and
their lack of control in general
• parents’ desire to know not a right
10.4 assent, consent, and parental
permission
10.5 high risk behaviors
institutionalized kids
• unlikely to believe research independent
of institution or that she can decline with
impunity
• unlikely to believe promises of
confidentiality
• issues of privacy, normally salient for
adolescents, heightened for these kids
• maltreated kids likely to experience
research as more stressful than normal
kids
researchers (of high risk kids) should
• anticipate ethical dilemmas—keep detailed
logs
• hold frequent staff meetings—address
problems early
• secure assent and consent when possible—
avoid parental consent only when it would
jeopardize kids
• take special precautions to protect
confidentiality—collect data anonymously
if possible
• involve community in design of intervention
10.6 schools
• Buckley Amendment: protects records
• school permission must come from district
• avoid coercion
– minimize coercion in request to
participate
– minimize peer pressure or fear of
ridicule for not participating
– keep rewards small and not valuable