QSR and NVivo 10 in Boston

I am having a wonderful time in the QSR NVivo 10 workshop in Boston.  It is being taught by two of my favorite people:  Cindi Jacobs--Director of Training for the Americas; and Stuart Robertson, Training Specialist.  Need I say, they are also UMass-Lowell Graduate School of Education Ed.D. graduates.  They are such excellent teachers. 

They have a tough audience here--1/2 newbies and 1/2 of us are very experienced wanting to see the new software from a training perspective--but leave it to them to integrate us together in a way that makes sense. 

It's exciting to meet people who are new and excited about the possibilities of using qualitative research with these sophisticated tools.  However, the opportunity to be with 'my tribe' of old/new friends are are NVivo afficionados is so exciting.  We are whispering behind our hands, grabbing each other at lunch, and generally geeking out about techie questions and ideas. 

The NVivo 10 possibilities for using social media data are very significant.  I am looking forward to working with projects that would find this kind of data useful. 

Looking forward to another great day. 

Qualitative Researchers: We have always been quantitative

One thing I really like about the blog is that I can circle back to topics as I enounter new aspects of them, and that is definitely the case with this notion of the quantitative reality of qualitative research.  The fetish I seem to have with this topic will seem very odd to those friends who know my number anxiety/number dyslexia or whatever you want to call it--add a number to it and I can't seem to do it--but as I work with the issue of interpretation, coding, describing findings--whatever it is that we do...I can't ignore the fact that there is quantification going on, even if it doesn't include numbers. 

I woke up this morning and had this on my mind.  I asked myself--why haven't you googled this?  So I pulled out my trusty Ipad and did so.  I was embarrassed by how much I found on the notion of natural mathematics, quantifyers in linguistics, the arguments philosophers have made, etc., etc.  Did I think I was the first person to consider these ideas?  Hardly!  It's well trampled ground. 

But the coup de gras came when I found that George Lakoff...co-author with Mark Johnson of my favorite books on the embodied nature of cognition, that is, how we learn to think through our bodies and experiences (love it!!)...well, that same George Lakoff has written a similar book on mathematics, which looks at the beginning points of mathematics understanding (how much we know, how early on, and how this knowledge is related to our embodied experience of the world). 

Where Mathematics Comes From:  How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics Into Being by George Lakoff and Rafael Nunez

OK--so babies understand something of numbers, sets, etc....what does this have to do with the sacred space we call qualitative research?  Aren't we supposed to be separated off from numbers?  Isn't that what makes us unique? 

Well, I am in the process of working on interpretation of a large number of transcripts by youth, parents, and educators talking about their views of sexting, and as I do so I am constantly reminded that although I am reading texts (not equations) and I am writing texts (not numbers), I am still working in a quantitative manner...and not only that--the people whose words are written in these transcripts are also constantly using a kind of natural mathematics--sets, comparisons, more than/less than, common, uncommon, marginal, central--all of these things speak to a kind of quantification that seems to come naturall to both of us:  researcher and researchee. 

Now, some would say that my problem is that I am working on this interpretation in NVivo, a kind of qualitative data analysis software (QDAS).  There are qualitative researchers who think that use of QDAS produces a kind of numerical mold on a qualitative researcher (you know how it is when you look at information on numbers of references or sources...it starts to grow on you).  Well, it is nice to know if I have put more items in one bin and less in another, but I am very aware and extra cautious about the dangers of assuming those specific numbers mean something in the way that they would in a nice cleaned up quantitative data base. 

Rather than fight this mold, I think I might want to become the blue cheese of the qualitative research field.  I'll go for the distinctive taste that only mold can bring.  I think that qualitative researchers should embrace the mathematical foundation this is part of our interpretive process.  We employ a kind of mathematics that is grounded in human, linguistic, embodied, natural processes.  I think that embracing this understanding will help us to be able to better explain what we are doing when we interpret.  I don't think it is enough to describe what it is we do (the process or the technique), but we also need to be able to explain how it is that it works. 

This time I will let the sheep have the last word.

QR Eras and the Implications for Archiving

I have been meaning to post this for a couple of days...This is a table I made to help me see the eras of Qualitative Research and its technology and the ways these eras raise implications for archiving. 

Eras of Qualitative Research Technologies and Implications for Data Archiving

I am building here on the three terms I defined in earlier entries: 

1) Disassociated (meaning before computers or the use of computers similar to off-line use).  This era is associated with the term "data"; technologies like file cabinets, notebooks, stand alone computers.  Archiving focuses on raw sources, handwritten, typed, kodak photos, film. 

; 2) Associated (QDAS and related ways of thinking); This era is associated with the term "database"; technologies like QDAS and word processing uses like QDAS, and early Internet experiments.  QDAS here seeks to be a comprehensive answer to qualitative computing.  Archiving focuses on text, rtf, word documents and jpeg, etc for photos.  Is QDAS going to be a useful tool for archiving? 

 3) Distributed (what lies beyond the first two).  This era is associated with "collection" or "curation".  Researchers are working in distributed manner and their tools are also often distributed around the internet.  Items get made into various kinds of collections--but there is a fluidity that characterizes the mixing and matching.  Archiving raises many questions...that have yet to be answered.

So I am still trying to get it right.  I may be repeating myself, but that seems to happen as I work on condensing an idea. 

Qualitative Research Data Bases

Today as I was coding in NVivo, which always gets me thinking now about--what is a qualitative research data base...and why am I thinking about this stuff as a database--a framework came to mind.  It's a way of thinking about our relationship to qualitative research data in our projects that is developmentally organized vis-a-vis our relationship to the technologies of qualitative research.

I described it to myself as three phases:  1) disassociated; 2) associated; and 3) distributed.  This is what I meant:

1.  Disassociated
This period refers to the pre-qualitative data analysis software period of qualitative research.  Thus, we are talking early 1900's to late 1900's.  During this time, we didn't actually think of what we had as a database.  At least, my own experience of my data was that I tended to think of it where it was put...and where it was put was different file cabinets and file folders.  I didn't imagine or experience it as close to each other.  Over time and many readings it became closer to each other, but I had a sense of physical separation, of size (and weight--try moving it!)

2.  Associated
This period refers to late 1900's to the present--we are living in it.  With the advent of qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) we can now experience this thing we call the qualitative research data base.  In the e-project, the materials are virtually associated and connected through hyperlinks.  The project becomes transparent and portable.  I can take it anywhere with me on a thumb drive...yes I have left projects in Dropbox...and then I can go find them on the Internet.  I can code in such a way that materials can appear to be mixed at similar levels. 

3.  Distributed
This is what we are headed into I think.  This is what Silvana diGregorio and I have talked about as beyond QDAS (see the Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, ed. 4).  It's not clear what shape it will take but like many things on the Internet, there seems to be fragmentation and new forms of networked connection.  I liken this in my brain to what people talk about as "distributed leadership".  Not all the intelligence is kept in the same individual brain.  I see this happening as people start to work outside of QDAS, using different networked capacitities (blogs, tumblr, vlogs, Survey monkey, wikis)...all kinds of ways that are available to capture data AND to reflect upon it.  Mash-ups bring these distributed parts together.

The distributed idea is still emerging and experimental so there are a lot of unanswered questions--like is it safe and ethical?  What about analysis?  Why would you give up the capacity for coding or creating analytical files as you can do in QDAS?  Are the mash-ups really going to work as we need them to?  It's sexy, it's new, but is it as robust as what you can get in QDAS--which is actually made for us?

Actually all three stages are active and present in today's world of qualitative research.  There are people who are determined to stay in disassociated...others who are try to work into associated...a larger group that is coming to accepted associated...some people always look for the new so they are happily experimenting with distributed...and there are people leaping from disassociated to distributed--it just seems easier to them.  We are all over the place.

So why do I keep worrying about this thing called a data base?  Maybe it is just an anachronism of the associated phase and I will shed it as I become more distributed...could be.  Miles and Huberman have that great section in their text (the big gray Sage volume) that talks about bounding a study, and why it is critical to develop boundaries around your study--what belongs in and what belongs out.  This is a conceptual issue, but also an issue of technique/technology.  How many things will you/did you collect?  Do these things belong together?  How do I construct relationships among them?

As I read over what I just wrote, I feel like I am moving from the notion of a fixed and contained data base toward the idea of curation--as in curating a collection.  Is this the metaphor that will go along with a distributed relationship to a collection of qualitative research data?  Instead of seeing ourselves as kings and queens of our little e-projects...will we begin to see ourselves as curators, creating different kinds of collections in response to different questions about the materials, purposes, etc.? 

The notion of curation has been playing a larger and larger role with me--thanks to more experience of it through art adventures...I have written about this idea in the recent article I had in FQS  http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1848/3375. 

Hmm....very interesting. 

QR Archiving yes? But Qualitative Software no? What gives?

I have become obccesed with interest in the new wave of work regarding the archiving of qualitative research data.  Once, a UK/Euro issue, it has now crossed the pond and is coming to be a US matter of interest. With many major federal groups now requiring that this material be archived, it is only a matter of time before it becomes a necessity for everyone--like the development of the Institutional Review Board.

 I am working on this concern with Joseph Fisher, digital archivist at UMass Lowell.  We have been a great time talking to many people in many places about this issue.  We will be discussing some of our findings at the upcoming QSR trainers conference in Boston in early August. 

Archivists are concerned with the overall notion of qualitative research data, but as a qualitative researcher with interest in qualitative research software--I am concerned with the issues that this software raises for archiving, in particular.  I have been surprised to find that many of the same prejudices researchers hold about qualitative research software sans archiving seem to be translating into the archiving issue.  In other words, the archiving issue is yet another place where these prejudices can be voiced.

Louise Corti illustrates this concern (she is reporting the concern) in her fantastic article about digital archiving and qualitative research in FQS  http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/498/1072, the 2011special issue on secondary use of qualitative research data.  Some qualitative researchers, she found, have concerns about using qualitative research resources that are in the form of an e-project, the neat little digital package that qualitative research software creates for the user.

I have been thinking hard about this.  It seems that such qualitative researchers are concerned that they need to approach the data afresh, look at it with clear eyes, and avoid being contaminated by the views of others.  Some worry, I suppose, that the technical shaping of the software package will itself skew their understanding of the data.  They seek freedom from the shackles of externally imposed standards of organization.

Here are some responses I would make to these arguments.

1.  Qualitative research software does not force the researcher to look at the data in the manner that it was formatted by a previous researcher.  You can simply choose to look at the sources themselves, and ignore the codes.  You have the flexibility, if you wish (and have knowledge of how to read that software) to look at the codes, to study the memos, and hyperlinks, but that is up to you.

2.  It is a fallacy to think that if you are using qualitative data sources outside of qualitative research software that you are free of standards and technical specifications.  When you read an interview transcript, we expect it to have the question and the answer...right?  Well, that's a technical specification.  You are never free of those specifications--we need them because they help us make efficient senses of text.  It is also true that these specifications are always evolving based upon new concerns re: genre and standards.  It is the same in qualitative research as in other forms of literate endeavor. 

3.  If you were studying an English novel or novelist (as a specialist in the field), wouldn't you read the novel AND everything you could find related to its analysis and production?  Why is it different in qualitative research?  For some reason when it comes to our qualitative research data, it appears that it has to be in pristine condition--a fresh site.  It's kind of like a perversion of the prime directive--now instead of leaving the field untouched, the people in their original state, now we have to enter the field in our own pristine mental condition. 

BUT, it is not only the user side that has got to examine assumptions--there is a desperate need for software developers to step up to the plate.  By that, I mean that they must accept standards for a meta-language that will allow flexible use of their packages across platforms and into the future.  I know this implies added expenses.  But if this is not done, they are adding yet another nail to the coffin.  Stand alone software developers know that their days are numbered, and they must jump to the mother ship of the Internet at some time in the future.  As they make this transition, it will add to their usefulness if they can also demonstrate their attentiveness to the needs of archiving qualitative research data for future generations.

Qualitative Research Network at UMass-Lowell: NVivo Tasters

Image via WikipediaThe Qualitative Research Network(QRN) at UMass-Lowell has revived the "NVivo Tasters". 

We did this several years ago when we had a bumper crop of doctoral students in the Graduate School of Education who were NVivo savvy.  Our site license was new and we wanted to get professional development out to the many people on campus who had been using the product on their own, sometimes unsuccessfully.  We offered a  1 hour session with an NVivo expert to all takers.  Your expert would help you where ever you were--if was project set up, project reshaping--whatever, you had 1 hour.  Well, it was like potato chips--most people couldn't stop at one. 

That group graduated, and things moved on, but with the shift of QRN to the Center for Women and Work, and new NVivo savvy grad students, we decided to try it again.  We are offering 12 one-hour slots to any takers on campus.  Myself and two doctoral students from the Graduate School of Education are the staff for this. Once the word tricked out, the response was immediate. 

I did my first taster last week with two faculty members from the School of Nursing, and WOW!!  did I have fun.  It's dangerous to loose a data hog like myself on other faculty members.  I so love to wander in the halls of data as they are available to one through qualitative data analysis software.  I twitch and slobber thinking about the thrills that are opening to me.  I don't care what the topic is, I just want at their data. 

These sessions start out with a description of the project from the person who has requested the taster.  As I listened I found my eye continually drawn to the computer where I could see the data set up.  Usually I start by looking at sources--but the real piece de la resistance--is always the node section.  I can't wait to get in there.  In this case there were lots of a priori nodes...that had an implicit connection to the protocols...but needed a push to make that explicit connection.  Piece of cake. 

But this let me talk about node trees, shaping and pruning your tree.  I remind myself of my mother's TV repairman who was possessed by model trains.  I have the same intensity about node trees--mine and every other one I can get my hands on. 

The hour flew by.  I was so disappointed to realize it was over (though my faculty friend may have been glad to be released to process the whole thing).

NVivo Tasters have been great for introducing faculty and graduate students to each other's work.  As you are discussing the set up of the project, you inevitably open up many other issues--from the problems with recruiting, hilarious stories about conducting research, and the struggles with interpretation. Sitting together looking at the project that is visible to both of you (thanks to the qualities of qualitative data analysis software) is like sitting around a campfire staring into the flames.  You are warm, relaxed, and available to sharing about something that is important to both of you. 

Long live the NVivo Taster!  And Happy Thanksgiving! 

Qualitative Research Network at UMass-Lowell: Brown Bag on using NVivo as a tool for organization and analysis with undergraduates

Image by Imajica Amadoro via FlickrOK--the title is way too long, but the presentation was just right.

Today:  Tuesday, October 25, 2011 from 12:30-1:30 pm Ellen O'Brien, Graduate School of Education and instructor in the undergraduate Honors Program, did a brown bag presentation on using NVivo software to help students prepare to write their honors theses (or capstone projects).

Ellen described her goals and tasks for the class and the way it unfolded.  Her class is a cross-section of majors on campus, but without significant experience with literature reviews, development of a thesis or in-depth research.

In this course, NVivo is an organizational tool.   Identifying a topic and developing an understanding of its components included drawing or modelling a "web".  These were imported into NVivo and students coded the ways that each "webbed" their ideas, leading to a rich discussion of how they used thinking tools. 

Literature searches were conducted, articles identified, and uploaded into NVivo where students used the query tools to further refine their understanding of the topic.  [This is a great way, I thought, to teach about the query tools using a nice, relevant little data base of your own selection.]

It was interesting to hear how engineering students brought in computer models and coded them--adding a new tool to their arsenal.  It sounds like in her class she has been able to generate some cross-campus, inter-disciplinary thinking in just a few weeks.

Her talk led to thoughts about--how could NVivo be used to help undergraduates develop electronic portfolios?  How can we help faculty who are not qualitative researchers, per se, to use this tool for things that are appropriate for their area?  What would make it safe for them to listen and get the message?

An undergraduate was actually at the Brown Bag, one of our "Emerging Scholars" and she said that if she had learned this tool early on in her undergraduate career... "It would have made me a more rounded 21st century student."   She is now learning about it in her senior year and considering developing an electronic portfolio of her undergraduate work that could help her in her bid for a doctoral program.  She hopes that knowing this kind of technology will help to set her apart on her application for graduate school in the social sciences.  

The next Brown Bag will be Tuesday, November 8, 12:30-1:30 pm in 513 O'Leary Library and UMass-Lowell.  I will be presenting on the Sexting Project.  I have a special request to think/talk about:  How do you generate theory?  Join us--it's fun. 

Discussion of NVivo Project with UMass-Lowell Center for Women and Work Research Associates

This morning I was privileged to be the object of attention of my fellow Center for Women and Work Research Associates at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.  We meet on a monthly basis to discuss our research projects and learn from the discussion of an interdisciplinary group of scholars.   This is my second tour of duty with this group.  [Meg Bond, CWW Founder to Right]

During the first tour (two years), I was working on my Journal Project.  Thanks to this internal research support, I was able to conduct some very risky and experimental research around the integration of arts-based research and qualitative computing...and that work is now being exhibited, published, discussed, etc.  Centers like this are critical on universities to provide encouragement for faculty to germinate new ideas, take those first steps, and work through a project--the in-kind support they offer is every bit as important as a financial award.

As I said, this is my second tour of duty, and in this period I am working on the sexting project, a three-state, interdisciplinary study of teens and sexting.  I am the official qualitative researcher on the project.  PI Andrew Harris from our Criminal Justice Department joined me.  We described the initiative, showed the NVivo Project, and shared our notion of the continuum of what sexting means in the teen mind.

As I explained to them in showing NVivo...leveraging the transparancy and portability of this tool--and showing you what the coding looks like--makes me vulnerable.  Most people don't publicly share their research in this way, but its a commitment we have that goes along with using the software.  [It is scarey...a project is like the inside of your brain, it's like letting people into your file cabinet, your closets.]

Then the group asked us questions--really good questions (as they always do).  The group ranged from psychology and sociology to economics; there were qualitative and quantitative researchers.  They were awestruck by the size and amount of materials--number of sites, focus groups, students involved (9 schools; 3 states; 123 students...and that's only part 1...I know we went "data heavy"...but when you are a data hog--it's hard to set boundaries!)  They were pleased with the way we were building up from the emic perspective.  That struck them as important.  And, they asked for some things we need to dig for in the data to better set the cultural context for understanding the responses:


1.  What are the opportunities at each school to hear messages about sexting?  Where do they occur?  Are they in separate places or integrated in any way? 
2.  What are the school's written policies about technology use?

They, like the students we interviewed, had a range of views about what sexting was--"Is it this?"  "Is it that?"  Everyone gets confused, whenever we start talking about the project...but they asked very astutely, what do these messages/photos actually look like?  That's not for this study--we are looking at views expressed in interviews (and I hate to think of the IRB issues related to procuring young people's sexting examples...), but it was an excellent thing to think about--because that is truly where the rubber meets the road! 

Thanks to CWW for providing opportunities for this kind of discussion! 

UMass Lowell Emerging Scholars and Qualitative Data Analysis Software NVivo

Last night I had the wonderful opportunity to be present at an NVIVO training workshop for the Center for Women and Work's (CWW) Emerging Scholars Program (undergraduates working with faculty mentors).

My former doctoral student, Stuart Robertson, NVivo trainer par excellence, led the three hour event. It is so exciting to see our UMass-Lowell graduates taking on the qualitative research world as consultants, trainers, and leaders in the NVivo world (In addition to Stuart, Stacy Penna, and Cindi Jacobs are also NVivo experts working for QSR).

The software continues to grow and complexity but Stuart makes it seem so easy and natural. He calms all fears and answers all questions--but he was doing this even as a graduate student. What a gift.

I am excited to see undergraduates thrown into the NVivo soup pot and seeing what happens. It doesn't seem to hurt them to start their learning about qualitative research from this place--a software. One told me that he hadn't been formally been introduced to qualitative research before, but from figuring out the software he could extract the ideas about qualitative research. [This would be anathema to some researchers...but really do we need to have all that theory and philosophy before we start doing it?]

My two emerging scholars have been working for the last few weeks in the software...same way...here's what you need to do, here is how the tool works...and I wrap in comments about qualitative research as we go along. They don't seem to be the worse for it, and I feel like I am teaching in a very fluid and natural way. Focusing on the project (sexting) keeps us organized. It makes me wonder how could I move classes that are formally named "Qualitative Research" more toward this model of "do".

An exciting evening. But then any time spent with our Emerging Scholars is time well spent.

Qualitative Research Brown Bags on the UMass Lowell Campus

The Qualitative Research Network (QRN) on the UML campus is going to sponsor a series of brown bags across this year. For the Fall 2011 semester we are meeting the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of the month. For the first few sessions we are in Rm 513 O'Leary Library from 12:30-1:30 pm.

These are meant to be informal, not polished, opportunities to discuss research in the rough.

Our first presenter was Alan Williams from the music department. In addition to being a skilled musician and sound recording expert, he is also a darn good ethnomusicologist. We had a fascinating discussion with him about work he is doing to build an international group that will examine the dynamics of sound recording (something he looked at for his dissertation). It's so much fun to hear about qualitative research in other realms.

Coming up next week Tuesday 10/25/2011, Ellen O'Brien from the Graduate School of Education will be talking about how to use qualitative computing software (NVivo) to support undergraduate honor's students to learn to conduct a literature review and write academic papers based on that review.

On Tuesday November 8, I am going to be talking about the Sexting project I am working on and showing what an NVivo project can look like in a mature stage. I hope to be joined by some of my colleagues on the project...and our Emerging Scholars who have been working in the NVivo Data base.

We have two dates for the end of the semester 11/22/11 and 12/13/11 that I am looking to find presenters for.

Every time I attend one of these I get goosebumps again, to think of how many good and innovative qualitative researchers we have on campus. If you are in the area, come join us!

Qual/Quant Dilemma: Post 2

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeI just deleted my last post, because as I continue to think about this issue I am beginning to create a more readable understanding of it.  What I am trying to do is understand how quantification is part of all thinking...from the most emic to the most etic perspective.  So here is my framework:

1.  Emic/Lived/Insider:  Embodied/Narrative quantification or logic

2.  Qualified Perspectives:  Semi-formalized quantification
-sits at the boundary between the emic/insider and the etic/outsider, meaning that it has privileged access to insider accounts AND to disciplinary and methodological discourses
-Semi-visible quantification or numerical accounts

3.  Quantified Perspectives:  Formal/Disembodied Logic
-this kind of research sits outside and at a distance from the naturalized account
-it focuses meaning within disciplinary and methodological accounts
-Fully visible quantification or numerical accounts

My notion of narrative or embodied logic/reasoning/theories is drawn from Lakoff and Johnson's work on the role of metaphor as the basis of thinking.  They demonstrate how metaphor is built from bodily experience of time, space, distance, speed--the very basics of being and organism moving in space...and this leads to metaphors and comparisons that undergird all thinking from the most mundane to the most complex.

My argument is that narrative or embodied reasoning is an act of quantification, meaning, thus, that all thinking is...we are identifying more and less, and from that forming patterns, describing size, shape, connection,  intersections--this is both algebraic and geometrical...underneath it all.  This ability to quantify (mathematicize) is in natural settings embodied, narrative, visual/observed...and is increasingly more formal, drawing upon resources of literature/methodologies/ and disciplines--what others have observed about what it is and how to understand it. 

An issue for qualitative researchers is that we are trying to distinguish ourselves from the pack--it's very clear what the difference is between the subject/participant...and the quantitative researcher, but we are sitting in the middle...with permeable margins on either side. 

Part of this difficulty is that on the margin/boundary between them (the participants/natives/subjects/objects of investigation) and ourselves...there may be very little difference.  People have always observed other people and commented upon their behavior.  People have studied social issues from the beginnings of time.  We are quite good at it...

Qualitative research formalizes this capacity with knowledge and tools related to a particular era.  It takes us a step away from the other, a slight bit of distance.  But in today's world, many people are serving as "lay" anthropologists and sociologists and doing a very good job of it.   They have access to the thinking/logic of qualitative research and they employ it, with or without a Ph.D. 

Rather than despairing about the fact that we may, as qualitative researchers, be actually indulging in a sport of quantification, I think we can exploit it to our benefit.  But it will require that we talk openly about our analytic processes.  Our tendency is to say--"It's a different paradigm."  "You couldn't possibly understand."  "It emerges."  "This is not quantifiable."  A lot of our arguments are recursive in nature.  I think we need to turn ourselves around and head back into the thicket where we think that lion is located...and see if it is really real? 

For instance, how do we locate patterns?  How do we translate text into code?  How do we move from emic understanding to the first 'qualified level' of distanced understanding?  What are we actually doing?

Critical to being able to do this is leveraging the new possibilities of transparancy that are available to us through digital tools.  Qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) offers us this opportunity, and so do other tools.  What would REAL transparancy look like in qualitative research?  

The Truth about Qualitative Data Analysis Software

Image by yorkville via FlickrI am up to my eyeballs in two very large sets of data--both stored in NVivo 9:  1) the Journal Project; 2) the Sexting Project.

The Journal Project is large with journal entries and photos of art pieces as primary items.  The Journal Project was a one-woman show (me).

The Sexting Project is an effort of a whole team and includes focus group transcripts, a literature data base, and memos from many people.

It's unusual to have projects in Qualitative Data Analysis Software (QDAS) of relative size and complexity.  From what I can tell a lot of people give up before they get to this place.  We don't have many sizable examples to look at, poke around in.  Thank goodness for the doctoral students I have worked with--and the projects they have produced.  That's given me a lot of ways to 'look into' the shape these things take and the ways they look at various points.

I was thinking about this issue this morning as I had my tea, and I realized that qualitative researchers who don't use QDAS think (this is what I think they think) that QDAS organized projects are somehow neat, streamlined, efficient, like an industrial kitchen--approved and 'up-to-code' (get it...that's a joke...code?!).

But this is not so.  No matter how many standards are set they tend to become idiosyncratic, individualistic, unique (inefficient).   The labyrinth is a better metaphor than the industrial kitchen.  Or maybe they are like software packages that have developed over time and has old code in different corners...and then I stumbled on what really seemed like the right metaphor:  a Victorian home with backstairs, window seats, and closets that are surprisingly large.  I lived in such a house as a child and the metaphor suddenly connected to experience. 

In my QDAS projects I have certain ways of putting things for reference.  I have redundancies.  I have shelves and furniture that I hide away in some pretty expansive closets.  I keep things I don't need...just in case.  Basically it is like me.  Like my office.  Like my brain.  

Qualitative Research in a World of Big Data: Debunking the isms of Qualitative Research

Image via WikipediaOK--I am going to take a flying leap into space.  Qualitative research had its beginnings in the late 1800's with the first steps of anthropology, sociology, and related areas in which non-numerical studies were being conducted.  As often happens in the early stages of a field, many of the conversations about methods and terms occurred in silos--disciplinary and otherwise.  Thus, ethnography was seen as separate from phenomenology.

As time went by and the field of qualitative research matured, more connections were made across fields, and yet methodological discussions were still emerging as separate 'isms'.  So now we have case study, grounded theory, ethnomethodology, discourse analysis, narrative analysis--you name it!

Today researchers, graduate students, reviewers of articles and proposals--try to sort out these various isms.  I have graduate students who spend hours trying to differentiate case study from ethnography in hopes of answering the questions of an ardent dissertation committee member.  I get email from fellow faculty members who want help answering a reviewer who thinks their piece should be described as grounded theory.  I know of proposals rejected on similar grounds--lack of specificity about the qualitative research method being used.

Over time, exposure to these various conversations, and most important long experience with qualitative research software--I am coming to realize that all these isms are bogus.  Yes, you heard it right here--they don't really amount to a hill of beans.  Rather they are artifacts of our colonial and post-modern past.  They were needed to flesh out the field of qualitative research, but we are at the point of a major paradigm shift which will allow us to consolidate these ideas and reorient ourselves in a more productive way.

The impetus of this change is big data, computers, globalization, and everything that is going along with this data revolution.  I am coming to believe as Tim Berners-Lee, the so-called founder of the Internet, has suggested--that it's all about data.

What I've learned from qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) is that these various isms are critical background, they give us the pieces that we can now ask about from a more synthesized perspective.  The question is not whether the work is ethnographic, case study, grounded theory, or phenomenology...those were the old questions--the new questions are more generic:

• What is the unit of analysis?  A cultural group, a geographic location, a case (meaning an event, a particular issue, an instance, a specific problem), a role group (teachers, nurses, etc.)...Does the analysis incorporate several connected units?  
• What kinds of data will I collect?  
• How fine or gross will my analysis be?  
• What kinds of sorting mechanisms will be involved--do I need cases and attributes?  Or will simple thematic codes be appropriate?  
• What kinds of numerical data will I be integrating with the non-numerical data, if at all, and how do I need to strategize my use of tools?  

Quite frankly--the isms of qualitative research--are, at this point, antiquated relics.  They are artifacts of the build up to where we are now.

I am often told that these isms are essential because they determine how I will analyze and what I will find--prove it!!  What the isms often mean is that my jargon will be different.  I will couch my presentations in different styles of the professional genre.  After having overseen many studies, I don't find that the studies turn out so differently because of the ism that is assumed, rather they turn out differently because they have a different unit of analysis, they collect different kinds of data, they rely on different forms of sorting, and they work at a gross/medium of fine level of analysis.  Seeking and creating patterns is informed by reading about various isms...but in the end it all kind of comes down to the same thing.

What we need now is to collapse the isms into a system that will place us within the conversations that are occuring about data of all sizes, all units, all forms.  The discussion is about data.  The discussion is global.  The discussion is jumping around in and out and making hash of the isms.

I've reached the end of my patience with these isms--individually I love them in their own way--but I (and others around me) are being strangled by the isms of qualitative research.  Let's take a stand against ism madness in qualitative research, and join the bigger conversation that we have been avoiding through our technophobia.  Come on qualitative researchers!!  

The Beginning of My Artist's Statement

For the most recent newsletter of the Center for Women and Work, I was asked to write about the role of creativity in my life as an academic--how does creativity serve me personally and professionally.  Here is that statement.

My creative endeavors lie in the arena of fiber and mixed media.  From childhood on, I have been interested in fiber in all its forms – weaving, basketry, sewing, knitting, crocheting.  Several years ago, I discovered felt—one of the most ancient of human fiber forms-- and in doing so found a home base for my creative activities.  Felt draws on all my knowledge of fibers and their unique characteristics.  The process of felting is akin to paper making and ceramics, and felt itself can be marked upon like cloth or paper.  The possibilities seem endless to me. 

            Bringing this artistic interest in closer alignment with my ‘real job’—as a reading specialist, literacy researcher, and now qualitative research methodologist—has been a project of many decades.  Only in the last few years have I been able to formalize the relationship between the hands-on maker and the thinker/writer through the development of  ‘The Journal Project’, a study of an 18 month period of my personal journals that blends qualitative research software, arts activities, and autoethnography.  This project central to my work as a Faculty Associate at the Center for Women and Work. 

            Fiber work connects me to the deepest places in my soul.  It allows me to make tangible the issues of meaning making that are at the heart of qualitative research.  The characteristics of fiber—color, texture, twist, feltability—become tools for expression.  Fiber allows me to honor the process of inquiry, playfulness, spirituality, and the value of making.  With the culmination of ‘The Journal Project’, I am creating an art exhibit that presents felt in the context of discussions of qualitative research methodology, allowing these two powerful sources in my life to join forces.  

River:  A piece that will be shown at the International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry:  May 2011

Interior Conversations:  Technology, Art, and Qualitative Research

Judith Davidson, Ph.D.

Graduate School of Education

University of Massachusetts-Lowell

Judith_Davidson@uml.edu

Women at the Well Gathering:  2011

Qualitative research is a social science approach grounded in unstructured, non-numerical methods.  A hybrid of anthropological and sociological approaches, it has gained increasing acceptance in the 20^th and 21^st centuries.  In the last quarter of the 20^th century, qualitative research has been the site of two competing strands of interest: 1) a humanistic approach nourished by interests in the arts and literature; and 2) a focus on qualitative computing tools.  These two approaches have, for the most part, continued on parallel but separate tracks into the 21^st century. 

As a qualitative researcher with interest in both strands, I have been hard put to find a way to integrate the two, causing serious tension for me as a researcher.  It was this tension that led me to develop “The Journal Project” in which I undertook a qualitative research study that would build a bridge between autoethnographic and arts-based approaches and qualitative computing tools.  The Journal Project was a study of 18-months of my personal journals during the years of 2006-2008.  My goal was to examine these materials making full use of qualitative computing tools and arts-based methods of reflection.  I wanted to show how arts and computing can play a role in every stage of the interpretive process. 

In this small exhibit I focus on two of the art works that have emerged in response to the Journal Project:  “My Diagnoses” and “What Happens When You Drop Your Socks”. 

Interior Conversations:  Technology, Art, and Qualitative Research is the tentative title of the book that is emerging from this study. 

My Diagnoses:  (Upper Left Hand)

My diagnoses is a mandala shaped felt crafted from three natural colors of Navaho churro, a primitive sheep brought to the Americas by the early Spanish.  I like its historical ties and its rough quality.  On a white background, I needle-felted the numbers of my diagnoses in dark brown churro:

300.04:  Dysthymic Disorder—a medium level depression lasting a minimum of two-years or more.

309.81:  Post-traumatic stress/chronic. 

These numbers are jumbled in the center…and sorted out around the rim.  In between winds a circuitous path of light brown churro that works its way from inside to outside. 

Interior Conversations probes the lived experiences of these diagnoses over the period of 2006-2008. 

The felted piece is displayed against a piece of cotton hand-dyed with bits of old metal using India Flint’s eco-colour method.  I am interested in the tension between felt, the most primitive of textile methods, with woven, manufactured cloth. 

What Happens When You Drop Your Socks (Far right)

During the period of the journal study, I married my husband Bob,.  As this screen shot from the NVivo E-Project demonstrates, there is significant material devoted to discussion of Bob in my many journal entries.  

In contemplating what would best symbolize the good and the bad of the experience of intimacy referred to in 118 entries I was reminded of Bob’s habit of dropping his socks by the side of the bed.  This led to the creation of a piece of felt in which Bob’s socks are embedded as if they were growing out of the dark wood of the floor by his bed.  The felt is displayed on a background of homey lace figures, which are themselves displayed against a beige floral background.  The words “What Happens When You Drop Your Socks” are written in handcarded, hand-dyed, hand spun yarns that I created.  I liked the whimsy of the handspun that formed the cursive letters.  Again, I am exploring the tension between the primitiveness of felt and the machine-perfect quality of today’s woven cottons.  

In contemplating what would best symbolize the good and the bad of the experience of intimacy referred to in 118 entries I was reminded of Bob’s habit of dropping his socks by the side of the bed.  This led to the creation of a piece of felt in which Bob’s socks are embedded as if they were growing out of the dark wood of the floor by his bed.  The felt is displayed on a background of homey lace figures, which are themselves displayed against a beige floral background.  The words “What Happens When You Drop Your Socks” are written in handcarded, hand-dyed, hand spun yarns that I created.  I liked the whimsy of the handspun that formed the cursive letters.  Again, I am exploring the tension between the primitiveness of felt and the machine-perfect quality of today’s woven cottons.