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.

Edward Hackett and Emergent Technologies in the Human Sciences

Hackett, E. (2011). Possible dreams: Research technologies and the transformation of the human sciences.  In The Handbook of Emergent Technologies in Social Research, edited by Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber.  Chapter 1:  pgs 25-46.  Publisher:  Oxford Press. 

Hackett has made a follower--me!  This was a great chapter to lead off this volume--BIG PICTURE!  I note that he refers to "the human sciences", a term that takes me back in my mind to Dilthey, but he brings a new twist to the idea with the notion of "complementary research in the social and behavior sciences" (p. 27).

Another term that brought back memories to me was "ensembles" as in "ensembles of research technologies".  Years ago when I was working on the Hanau Model School Partnership I wrote about the ensembles of school technologies (I presented this at AERA, wrote the paper, but never finished the revisions--such is life).  Hackett points to environmental studies and the ways they have made strides through assembling new "ensembles of research technologies", urging the human sciences to consider this model.

Hackett brings experience working at NSF to bear on the discussion.  Clearly it provided him with the opportunity to look across emerging areas of science/social science and consider the lessons that were being learned. 

I like the way he has integrated history (a discussion of the development of the survey) and the future (the new models described above) to provide a context for thinking about the integration of research approaches.

He identifies four critical domains that research in the human sciences must contend with:  place, scale, time, and engagement.  Here's the quote that ties this all together for me:

In sum, ongoing changes in the importance and nature of place (from local to virtual), the scale of phenomena (from genetic or neural to global), the scope of time (from briefer than a blink to evolutionary), and the terms of engagement with research subjects and users are combining to form the ensembles of research technologies that will be developed by the social and behavioral sciences (p. 35).

  He offers 8 "categories of innovation" (p. 35) that address these issues--not to be missed.

What I take away in my quest to understand what this all means to qualitative research is:
-he doesn't mention qualitative research (nor quantitative research specifically)...he is talking on another plane
-he doesn't mention qualitative data analysis software...and yet is talking about the next generation of technologies that build on the CAQDAS base

-he IS talking about the kind of inclusive (multi-disciplinary/multi-methodological) research that I blogged about not to long ago.
-he IS talking about constant experimentation and purposing/repurposing of technologies to support the goals of research

A very good start to the reading of this book.  

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.