INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods

5 May 2009

A Double Iteration1) research topic/questions

2) ‘corpus construction’

3) data gathering

4) analysis

5) write-up

4) more analysis

Field work

Writing Examples Turkle, (1995) “TinySex and Gender Trouble” Spitulnik, (2002) “Mobile Machines and Fluid

Audiences: Rethinking Reception Through Zambian Radio Culture”

Hutchins and Klausen (1996) “Distributed Cognition in an Airline Cockpit”

Heath and Luff (2000) “Documents and Professional Practice…”

Woolgar (1991) “Configuring the User: the case of usability trials”

“Tales from the Field” [Van Mannen]

Realist TalesDispassionate, third person voice (absence

of the author from the text)

Confessional TalesTechniques of fieldworkers, problems and

bumblings

Impressionist Tales Geertz – “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese

Cockfight” (also elements of a confessional tale)

Other Kinds of Tales Critical

Seeks to reconcile a blindness to political economy, institutional structuring of other tales. Draws from economics, history, poly sci, psychology.

Formal – theory testing

Literary – a more theatrical than analytical writing style

Multivocal – informants write some part of the story.

Questions about Writing

How do I handle quotes? What voice to use (1st person, 3rd person)?

Multi-vocality? What verb tense (past or present or

passive)? How do I give a sense of the whole (thick

description) while making a specific, narrow argument?

Boring Reports

Kvale, InterViews, chap. 14 “the subjects’ often exciting stories have –

through the analyzing and reporting stages – been butchered into atomistic quotes and isolated variables.”

Using Quotes

1. The quotes should be contextualized

2. The quotes should be interpreted – lead-in text shouldn’t just summarize the quote.

3. There should be a balance between quotes and text – edit quotes for readability (shorter is better) and for the main, important point.

[InterViews, Kvale - pgs. 226 – 267]

Using Quotes

4. Use only the best quote

5. Interview quotes should be rendered in a written style

6. There should be a simple signature system for the editing of the quotes (i.e. use of ellipses for what is omitted – a way of indicating pauses)

[InterViews, Kvale - pgs. 226 – 267]

Editing Quotes “there is something really about this

Internet, there is something that is really making my friends rich...”

“Internet love, it happens.” “genuine people use the same procedure

and it works.”

Editing Quotes Avoid quotes taken out of context. Maintain an awareness of the shifts in

meaning that result when quotes are edited – minimize this.

Don’t ‘clean’ quotes of qualifications, caveats, etc. to make your point stronger

Darwin a Creationist? “To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable

contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree…” [Darwin, The Origin of Species]

Darwin a Creationist? “…Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations

from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real.” [Darwin, The Origin of Species]

Referencing the Literature

Demonstrating ‘relevance’ to the community of researchers. What does your project say about some of the existing questions, issues raised by researchers?

Draw from readings from other courses Spend a little time in the library Look for material with a similar

methodological approach (ethnographies, sets of interviews, etc)

Beginning your write up [L&L] If there are no clear themes – start coding If you have a theme then work on a ‘memo’ Could find something that exists in more

than one interview (some similarity or a difference) and write about that

Refer back to your data to check your write up 5) write-up

4) more analysis

Summary Code to find and check themes Memo to develop interpretation Edit and use quotes thoughtfully,

strategically Write a realist tale but do consider your role

as researcher in the setting For Thursday: carefully reread Becker. What

jumps out at you on this second reading? What has new meaning at the end of the semester?