Upper Merrimack Redevelopment Committee Goes on a Fieldtrip

Tuesday of this week-- August 16, 2011--I had the pleasure of joining UMass-Lowell officials, Lowell community activists, and members of the Lowell city government--on a fieldtrip to Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts to learn more about the incredible community redevelopment work that has been going on there over the last couple decades.

UMass Lowell has just purchased the old St. Joseph's Hospital which will become a new hub at the end of Merrimack Street--University Crossing.  We wanted to learn how Clark University had used their presence and property to engage with the community to make things better for everyone.

I was so inspired by the commitment of the various individuals we met--how long they had been working, how many steps it took, and how they cheered each other on.

Clark is a beautiful campus.  This is where we pulled up.   Not bad, huh?!

One of the really wonderful people on the trip was the Director of House of Hope in Lowell, which works with homeless women and young families.  (sorry I didn't write down your name!!)










We had a really royal welcome--beginning with an introduction from Clark's President David Angel, who talked about the guiding vision for the long partnership work that has been going on to renew the Kily Gardner Hammon Neighborhood. 

That is Dr. Angel on the left with Marty Meehan, Chancellor of UMass-Lowell to his right.

We also had the opportunity to hear from the Mayor of Worcester, Joe O'Brien--Mayor O'Brien is on the right...to his left is Micki Davis, Director of Clark's Center for Community Engagement and Volunteerism.

The person who shepherded us through the visit was Jack Foley, Clark's Vice President for Government and Community Affairs--he needs to be cloned and distributed to all universities--his commitment was so deep and so real.  It was really a pleasure to learn of the long attention he has given to the issues of community/university partnership.

 Jack Foley is the man with the open computer.  To his left is Barbara Haller, District City Councilor for the area (and another long time champion of the neighborhood). 








During lunch we heard from a panel of people engaged with the Worcester schools in the area.  Here's the line up:

 The man on the left is Tom ElPrete, Director of Clark's Hiatt Center for Urban Education...to his right is an official from the school district.  The woman next to him is the Superintendent, Melinda Boone, and she is flanked by Ricci Hall, principal of University Park Campus School.  The Hiatt Center is endowed and focuses specifically on issues related to urban education.  They have taken on the schools in the neighborhood for a long term commitment--a lot to learn here, too.

Finally, we wrapped off the day with a visit to the neighborhood--to look at the extensive real estate development that Main South Community Development Corporation as been spearheading...and to visit the Worcester Boys and Girls Club, smack in the middle of the formerly notorious Kilby Street neighborhood.

 The Boys and Girls Club was the piece de la resistence.  The director was so enthusiastic--and knew his club inside and out.  I was impressed with the fund raising that comes from so many committed volunteers... Many Clark Work Study students are used at the Center...more food for thought.


I came away pretty excited for what we could do in Lowell.  I live blocks from the University Crossing area, so this has a lot of importance for me--above and beyond being a faculty member.  It seemed like we have many of the pieces that they have initiated in Worcester, but the question for us is--what's the glue?  How do you bring it together?

Thank you Paul Marion (Communications) and Bob Forrant (Center for Family, Work, and Community) for making this experience possible. 

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!!  

Qualitative Research: What is a project? What are mixed methods?

Image via WikipediaI began to ponder these questions recently as I was comparing my two current projects in my head:
1.  The Journal Project:  A study of 18 months of my personal journals using qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) and arts-based approaches; and,
2.  Sexting and Teens:  A 3-state multi-disciplinary, mixed method study of teen...and adult view of teens views of sexting.

I was thinking about the characteristics of the two.  The Journal project is very internal--individual--inside of me. It's insular, no doubt about it.  No teamwork, no communal nothing.  It's very QR, meaning that it doesn't use cases and attributes in QDAS...it focuses on written texts and coding. 

The Sexting project is extroverted, communal and interactive.  A team project that uses mixed methods--meaning it uses cases and attributes in QDAS, AND written texts and coding. Quantitative data is organized in SPSS.  

Comparing the two got me thinking first about:  What is a project?  And this led me to think about:  What is mixed methods--and how is QDAS re-defining that term?

In re: project:  I asked myself--How do we live a project?  Where do we find projects?  How is a project like a family, relationship, book?  How near or far do we place ourselves? 

Then, the inevitable comparison to computer methods came up:  What is a project vs an e-project?  Are they different?  How does QDAS circumsribe the project?  Is a project a question?  a case? a place? a people? a culture?

One of the things that irritates me about working with people who know a little about qualitative research, enough to get themselves into trouble, is the inordinate amount of concern they expend on trying to define what kind of qualitative research a project is:  Is it case study?  Is it ethnography?   Is it grounded study?  These concerns never seem to make sense to me, and I realized that one problem is that I am more focused on "the project" or "the e-project" in my case.  My focus leads me to ask, how am I going to best organize within this tool?  What is the best granularity in terms of analysis--should this be broadly or finely coded?  And, most importantly--is this a study that will need cases and attributes or am I going to stick in the texts and codes area?

This morning I woke up and realized that, in part, what I am thinking about regarding the e-project is actually a discussion of the continuum of mixed methods as it is shaped by QDAS.   Discussions of mixed methods have to date been pretty much siloed, in that you can't actually connect the two because the quantitative piece is done with software and the qualitative piece is done with manual methods.  So the notion of the two "informing" each other can only be very loosely applied.  This is pseudo-integration. 

Only with full computerization for both quant and qual do you get mixed methods.  Without QDAS you cannot leverage variables against text(s), which is the real hallmark of what 'mix' could mean.  You do this in QDAS with cases, attributes, and searches.

Here is a simple continuum of the three methods (it runs top to bottom not left to right because of the funkyness of Blogger--sorry)

Quan/SPSS or other computer tool
-cases
-attributes
-numerical texts
-fixed information/
pre-assigned

QDAS/Mixed Methods
Cases
Attributes
written, visual, and audio texts
codes (pre-assigned and/or emergent)
memos

Qual/QDAS or Manual Methods
-written, visual, and audio texts
-codes
-memos
-preassigned codes....evaluation
-emergent codes...ethnography, phenomenology, etc. 

In looking at the continuum, it seems to me that the sorting approach is the critical piece and the form of text one uses.  With the quantitative perspective, you are using numerical texts and sorting by case and attributes; With the mixed methods approach you are using both numerical and non-numerical data and sorting by cases and attributes AND coding.  In a truly mixed method approach, you are importing the cases and attributes from the numerical data into the non-numerical data base and using those as a means of sorting the non-numerical data (or using a QDAS package in which numerical data can also be handled).  In a more strictly qualitative approach, you are sorting without reference to cases and attributes but focusing primarily on coding (which can be pre-assigned or emergent). 

My two studies represent two aspects of the continuum.  The Journal project is deep into the qualitative research end of things--code and retrieve, baby, forget cases and attributes.  The Sexting project, on the other hand, is shaping up to be an excellent example (if I do say so myself) of the truly mixed method approach in which computer technology is leveraged on both sides of the divide--quantitative and qualitative.  We are using SPSS and NVivo 9...and the SPSS numerical data is being imported in Excel to serve as the cases and attributes for the non-numerical data--connect it to the coding, and you have a data base that has real search capacity.  You can ask questions of many sorts.

This brings me to my final point, which is that, efficiency increases (and you significantly extend your reach) when you stop doing it all in your head and transfer some of the heavy lifting to a reliable tool.  This is a warning to both quantitative and qualitative researchers.  It's a well known fact that qualitative researchers have been ducking the use of QDAS, but it is less well understood that mixed methods researchers are doing the same.  In marketing and other forms of evaluation, quantitative data is being organized in Excel or SPSS, but qualitative data related to the study are processed entirely by manual methods.  This leaves no technical pathway by which to connect the two and do meaningful comparisons.  The comparisons can only be gross, intuitive, and guesswork.  What I am saying is that QDAS is the elephant on the table for both mixed methods and pure qualitative researches.

Hmm...I think this bears more consideration.  

Visual Memos Again...The Family History Memo

 Visual Memos Again...and again...and again...

As I have been wandering through my stored images, I realized that I had another visual memo to add to the collection I've already put on the blog (at least I think I haven't shared it before).  This one was created early in the work on the Journal Project.  Actually I think it was produced during the Fall 2008 Qualitative Research course where we were all getting on board with autoethnography and arts-based research. 

This memo examines my early life, describing the experience of growing up in the particular household into which I was born.  I'll forgo commentary. 

Technologies and Art in Qualitative Research: How they are similar

Today I had a productive dog walk.  Yes, there she is--the little minx. 
Where the walk took me, in my head, was about the issue of working in technology and working in art--design problems--and how I solve them in both. 

What got me started on this was thinking about the ongoing argument between NVivo and Atlas-ti (and probably others of these forms of software).  Atlas-ti insists it is not hierarchical, but works in a more phenomenological way.  NVivo says--"I can do that too.  Try my free nodes."  As I watched Suzanne Freise demonstrating Atlas-ti at the Qualitative computing conference in Istanbul, I realized she was using naming strategies to achieve what NVivo does with tree nodes.  It was a work around that I used once upon a time in NVivo 2 to create categories and lists in the forms I wanted.

I'm not bringing this up to argue one direction or the other, but more to muse on the role of work arounds in technology.  What happens when we come up against a barrier or a limit with a tool?  How do we manipulate it, reshape it, do something to get to our desired goal? 

This reminded me of the challenges that had been set for me in art class (Contemporary Practices at the Essex Art Center with Cathy McLaurin).  We were presented with many design challenges.  I remember when we had to bring in a kitchen object.  I brought in a kind of European vegetable grater.  I had to draw it multiple times--the little holes, their shadows, the handle--it was a lot for someone with limited drawing skills.  But then I was required to make the object in a different material--I chose cardboard and aluminum foil, and it never really resembled the original. 

However, this process--of a design challenge--has much in common with what happens when I try to work out a technology work around.  AND, it also closely resembles what happens in coding in qualitative research.  I have to focus in on the features, analyze what is there, look at it from many angles.  I must extract what appears to me to be the significant feature for the task I am trying to accomplish.  This is a choice, that sets other choices aside.  It puts some features in one box and some in another--I don't call this hierarchical, I call this selecting, boxing, containerizing, clustering.  My mind can only deal with so much. 

So that's what happens on a dog walk.  

Sexting, Cell Phones and Arts-Based Research

I am currently serving as qualitative researcher on a three-state study of youth views of sexting.  We are just finishing up the youth focus groups, moving into analysis, and getting ready to plan for the adult focus groups in the fall. 

In working on this project, I can't help but think about it from the perspective of arts-based research.  What are the possibilities for thinking with arts-based approaches to this subject.

My primary medium is felt--one of the world's oldest, slowest, most primitive textile techniques.  [And some mixed media].  This is the antithesis of the world that the cell phone typifies (the technology most closely associated with sexting).  Cell phone worlds are fast, quickly shifting...I would even say 'itchy'.  Click, click, click, move on.  Felt is fuzzy, soft, foldable, rollable, of many shapes and sizes.  Cell phones are small, hard, and while they have variety--they most often appear in our minds as little rectangles with shiny digital surfaces. 

My interest in applying art to cell phone got me looking online for what is out there.  I didn't realize how much cell phone clip art exists.  I didn't know anything about cell phone charms...and cell skins (some designs I found were taken from Miami Ink artists!).  I found artists that were making new kinds of installations with discarded cell phones, people who were creating drawings inspired by the inner workings of cell phones, and gallery installations that were created through cell phones--photographs or other capacities.  I cllipped out all the pictures and cartoons of cell phones from copies of my old New Yorkers (as you can tell I was really getting serious!)

I thought about the ways that cell phones and bodies interact.  At first I focused on hands--how do hands hold the cell phone.  I thought of the way that bodies appear in cell phones.  Self-pictures that leave our faces and smiles distorted.  The way that we accidentally snap a part of us (half a head, a foot, etc.) as we try to figure out the camera. 

So, I am clearly on my way to the next, new thing--the cell phone project.  How is it going to intersect with youth views of sexting?  I'm not sure...but it is ready to evolve. 

The Future of Qualitative Research

I have been playing around with a diagram of the issues I have been thinking about in relationship to the future of qualitative research.  Here is the really messy drawing that I made in my journal.

 I think you might need some translation help.  That messy circle in the middle is qualitative research.  It is standing at the intersection of vast changes we are facing in numerical, spatial/geographical, and sensory technologies.

I think I have come to the same conclusion that Tim Berners-Lee did--it's all about data.  Big data, little data, data displayed visually, tracked geographically, understood on a visceral body level through probes that provide feedback on every sense.  We can do all this--at the broadest and finest levels. 

These worlds of expanding data are bringing together the virtual and the non-virtual...in ways we could not have imagined even a few years ago.

So what will qualitative research look like in the near future?  How will it be practiced?

When I think about the people and movements that point us forward in these areas, these names come to mind:


Numerical--Big Data--Nathan Eagle

Cultural Geography--Mei Po Kwan, Marilyn Cope

The sensory and qualitative research:  Walter Gershon, Alex Ruthmann

These are random names in a sea of much activitiy that is emerging within and around qualitative research.

This is the picture I will be thinking with--what is that future going to look like?