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: More Questions Than Answers

One of my series of twig and fiber 3-dimensional figures.

I continue to worry the topic of Qualitative Research Archiving.  I am that dog with a toy in my teeth, shaking it back and forth, up and down.  I won't let it go, and I won't let anyone take it away from me.  The more I think about it, the more questions I have.  I mean--archiving qualitative research materials can take you all the way to questions of existence (for qualitative researchers).  There is no telling where it will stop!

OK--here's an issue that has been raised about the value/non-value of the archived materials.  I will call it the "You had to be there" argument.  In other words, yes the fieldnotes exist and the memos, but these can never capture the full experience of the moment at that place and time.  This makes the researcher, as the embodied fieldnote absolutely critical.  As a non-participant, someone who is doing secondary analysis, your interpretation can never include these sensory, absorbed messages that only the fieldworker contains.  [Sanjek's edited volume on fieldnotes has that great article titled..."I am a fieldnote..."--you get the idea.]

Does this mean that archived qualitative research materials will always be invalid?  Does this mean that only the on-site fieldworker has the privilege to make sense of the material?  Should the fieldworker withhold her/his materials from the world in order to protect the world (and the materials) from mis-interpretation? 

A couple of issues this raises.  What about those senior figures who work with graduate students or other fieldworkers...or larger projects in which numerous underlings do the legwork observing and writing fieldnotes and someone else reads and interprets them.  This has been done for decades, and is considered a valid research practice.  Should we have been questioning this practice more closely?

FieldNotes in the wild (Photo credit: DragonGirl)

Another--what about this.  In anthropology, certainly, there is a tradition of archiving the papers of well known researchers.  I would assume that there are special collections of the materials collected by Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Victor Turner.  Are these invalid without the presence of the researcher?  Should others be allowed to read, study these materials, and make their own interpretation?  Is such an act a violation to the original participants?

Speaking of whom, what about the citizen ethnographers that Nigel Fielding from the UK is talking about.  (See the May 2012 issue of FQS for more on this).  If they are present at the same time and place as the qualitative researcher, and/or studying the same topic themselves, should they be able to file responses to the data base materials and interpretations?  Is this something like asking for a member check?  Or does this go too far beyond that?  Who would be allowed to file responses and deposit them in the data base?  What if cranks just started dropping comments in databases like they do in the comment box on Internet articles, etc.  Do these have to be stored or accunted for? 

If comments by participants are to be allowed, do we have to stop doing anonymous studies?  Will participants--like adopted children--be trying to seek out the truth of the studies done to them, so they can become engaged participants with the researcher and the data base?  Ooh...that makes the qualitative research archive sound a bit like a sperm/or egg bank...not sure I like that image! 

Another issue is the exploding use of data collected in virtual contexts--if everything is a stream of text--is there a "there" there?  Does "you had to be there" hold in the same way as it does in face-to-face exchanges, or is the technology capable of capturing the context now?  I am thinking of the MIT linguistic experiment into studying the birth of a baby's language (it is a TED Talk archived someplace.)...every minute of the day, from multiple directions, video cameras captured the life of the researcher's family and the baby's beginning sounds. 

The use of archived materials has a long and respected tradition in disciplines like history.  Silly historians--seem to think they can work with partial materials.  Indeed, I think they believe that understanding will always be partial, because you can never have saved everything, or know everything about an historical event.  I mean, "you had to be there".  But when historians say it, they mean it differently than the qualitative researcher.  They yearn to recreate that time and place to the best of their ability, but they don't fool themselves that they are or were ever really there. 

A major argument for archiving qualitative research materials has been that they are needed for training up-and-coming researchers, but if we believe these archives to be inherently incomplete, do we think they are OK for training purposes but inadequate for real (adult, mature, grown) research purposes?

That does force the question:  who will use these archives?  how?  why?  Will review of the databases of others come to be seen as a required component of the literature review?  Or will they be used as a quantitative researcher might use a cache of data, seeking out a database that is the right sample, variables, and questions to make use of for their purposes? 

Are views of qualitative research archiving going to be shaped differently in different disciplines?  Will anthropologists using the salvage view will their papers to museums (as happens now)?  But what about sociologists?  educators? Are differences of purpose, as defined by discipline, significant to how or if we should archive qualitative research materials? 

Are the observations or fieldnotes of a master something we should study, but discard the run-of-the-mill examples?  Will studying Geertz's fieldnotes be like studying his articles?  Or will technology make fieldnotes a meaningless issue in the future?  [See the discussion of the MIT study above]

IRB's and the ethical issues--Consent Forms, etc. are always invoked when you raise the issue of archiving.  It's kind of like the vampire sleuth waving preventative herbs around or aiming at you with silver bullets.  Can we archive materials that were not originally described as materials that were going to be archived?  If the informed consent form didn't mention this, can you do it later?  If the materials are suitable anonymized is this acceptable?  A related set of issues is--are some qualitative research materials so precious that we need to waive the restrictions and make sure we save them for posterity?  If a collection is historically valuable, can it be archived for its significance and provisions made retrospectively to protect participants?  Are some collections too valuable to neglect? 

Archiving qualitative research materials is going to raise many of the same issues/prejudices that the discussion of qualitative data analysis software has raised to the field, because, essentially, they are the same thing.  Qualitative data analysis software creates a transparent, portable qualitative research data base--it was the first digital archive.  The fears its presence created are, for all intents and purposes, the same fears that the larger movement toward archiving qualitative research materials raises for qualitative researchers. 

What is going to be the role for qualitative researchers in the future?  A group that thrives on preserving the contemporaneous...having to come to grips with the tentacles of the past as they are preserved in the archive?  [How is that for strangled metaphors about time!]
Is "You had to be there" going to be like our own version of Custer's last stand? 
Will we make ourselves irrelevant by refusing to stare down the danger...enter the cave of the beast? 
Are we going to come to be seen as something like "the old magic"?  [If you are a Merlin fan you will understand this reference.]

Is qualitative resarch software an artifact of colonial social sciences?

Does qualiltative research software have a colonial dimension built into it?  That is, if it was developed by the Anglo/American/Euro block of qualitative researchers, embedded as they are in the histories of their field (colonial to colonized; center to margins)...does it stand, then, that the software they created from this context would also reflect this?

It's a question I've been pondering as I worked with Cesar Cisneros on editing the recent FQS issue (described below in the abstract). 

Qualitative computing has been part of our lives for thirty years. Today, we urgently call for an evaluation of its international impact on qualitative research. Evaluating the international impact of qualitative research and qualitative computing requires a consideration of the vast amount of qualitative research over the last decades, as well as thoughtfulness about the uneven and unequal way in which qualitative research and qualitative computing are present in different fields of study and geographical regions. To understand the international impact of qualitative computing requires evaluation of the digital divide and the huge differences between center and peripheries. The international impact of qualitative research, and, in particular qualitative computing, is the question at the heart of this array of selected papers from the "Qualitative Computing: Diverse Worlds and Research Practices Conference." In this article, we introduce the reader to the goals, motivation, and atmosphere at the conference, taking place in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2011. The dialogue generated there is still in the air, and this introduction is a call to spread that voice.
URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1202285

The conference that Cesar, in part, brought about--was to help create a more international sense of the use of qualitative research software, but at the same time, it had to raise the underlying issue related to the beliefs that we have about the way technologies may be developed, with embedded perspectives, and how this shapes the users.

A part of me thinks that this argument about the potential colonialized stance of qualitative research software is much akin to the concerns that were and are still voiced about the ways qualitative research software may be a tool for certain research strategies--grounded theory, ethnomethodology, narrative analysis, phenomenology, etc.  Software developers were accused of creating a software that reflected their methodological inclinations.  It was thought that innocent users would be unconsciously dragged into using that methodology, despite their intentions to resist.

Renate Tesch in her early book on qualitative computing, offered the best refute to this argument, but it still surfaces in conversation with researchers and in various writings.  We, Davidson & diGregorio, go back to Tesch's arguments in our chapter in Denzin and Lincoln Qualitative Research Handbook (4th edition).

When Cesar asks these questions, I listen, because he has long been a lone voice pleading for understanding of the international picture of qualitative research.  He has also been a leader in bringing qualitative research software into the Spanish context.  I am intrigued by the questions and don't think they should be dismissed immediately.  If we probe, we may find more here of interest. 

Keywords

CAQDAS; diversity; peripheries; global qualitative research

Full Text: HTML PDF

© 1999-2012 Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research (ISSN 1438-5627)
Supported by the Institute for Qualitative Research and the Center for Digital Systems, Freie Universität Berlin

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.

Arts Based Research Days in Spring 2012

Ryan Trecartin, seated and laughing in Miami, FL, inside the production house for Trecartin's Any Ever 2009/2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Kara Walker, Cut, Cut paper and adhesive on wall, Brent Sikkema NYC. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Adlestrop Church Adlestrop Church is dedicated to St Mary Magdalene. It is likely that Jane Austin would have visited this church during her three visits to Adlestrop in 1794, 1799 and 1806, she was related to the parish vicar. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This spring I was able to participate in two full-day arts-based research days. 

In April I attended the pre-conference day of the Arts-Based Research Special Interest group of the American Educational Research Association on the University of British Columbia Campus.  I had the opportunity to learn about the founding and history of this group, to hear a presentation from a Vancouver artist who works in public sustainable art, and to think with a great group of old and new friends with interest in this topic.

In May, there was an Arts in Qualitative Research pre-conference day at the International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry at the University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois.  This was the first such event at ICQI.  Organized by Liora Bresler, it brought together a diverse group of researchers. 

I presented a paper that brought together my art interests with the sexting research.  Here is the title and abstract.  A paper will be forthcoming!

Gender, Technology, Power, and Sexuality:  Jane Austin, Kara Walker, and Ryan Trecartin as Social Theorists for Making Sense of Teens Views of Sexting

For the past year I have been engaged as the qualitative researcher in a three-state, focus group study of teens views of sexting and adults perceptions of those views.  Findings from this study demonstrate the complex ways in which gender, technology, and social power are intertwined with young people’s developing sexuality and their notions of status and intimacy.  As I searched for theoretical frameworks to understand the materials I was analyzing, I began to consider three artists—Jane Austin-novelist; Kara Walker-visual artist; Ryan Trecartin-video artist--as theoretical mentors to my analysis process and what I was learning about the issues of teens and their private and social worlds.  Questions that these three artists raised for me in regard to the focus group material included:  How is social role set in place by the performance of race/class/gender and the mediation of technology?  How is sexuality and technology combined to position the subject and object of desire?  What are the contexts in which one’s desire can be performed?  What are the aesthetics of such performances?

In this paper, I will provide a brief overview of the study of teen views of sexting.  Then, I will discuss the three artist’s and the ways their work provides social theory that is applicable—both individually and collectively—to the analysis of the materials I have been examining.  Of particular interest to me is the reflexive way in which I worked with analysis of the focus group materials and my three artist theorists and how this process deepened my understanding of teens’ views as it expanded my understanding of the artist theorist’s social message.   In concluding the paper, I champion the arts-based research view that artists’ works be considered as theory with equal weight to the theory presented in social science textual resources (for example:  Bakhtin, Giddens, Marx, etc.), as opposed to being relegated to the role of illustration. 

American Educational Research Association Presentation 2012

A Japanese cell phone with various stickers and charms attached to it. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sexting and teens continues to be a focus of my qualitative research work, as I continue to work with the "Building a Prevention Framework to Address Teen Sexting Behaviors" project funded by the US Department of Justice.

I presented a paper on the topic at the 2012 American Educational Research Association Meeting in April in Vancouver BC--Sexting, teens, and education:  What teens have to say and the implications for education policy and practice (Davidson, Harris, Paternite, Tusinski-Miofski, and Thompson).  The presentation was an opportunity to share the first round of findings that have emerged from the project (analysis of youth data) and consider the ways the findings apply to the concerns of educators. 

I enjoyed the opportunity to discuss the work with a great table of co-presenters. 

FQS--Qualitative Computing: Diverse Worlds and Research Practices

I am very pleased to announce the publication of the FQS issue devoted to the 2011 qualitative computing conference held in Istanbul,  Turkey.

You can link to that issue here:
FQS June 2012
(Vol 3, No 2, 2012)

It has been an intense year, working with Ceasar Cisneros (an FQS editor) to develop this issue. The introduction provides a good description of the focus of the conference as an opportunity to think about qualitative computing from an international context, that is, outside the boundaries of the American/Anglo picture that often dominates the discussion of qualitative research, and, hence, qualitative computing. 

At the conference I presented a piece about my Journal Project, and the related article is available in this publication.

The Journal Project: Qualitative Computing and the Technology/Aesthetics Divide in Qualitative Research


I loved the experience of the conference (you can read about that in postings from Istanbul in this blog--February 2011), but I found the experience of editing the work of a diverse group of international scholars to be equally interesting.  I had to think through their concerns from a new perspective. 
 
Finally, working through the introduction with Cesar brought the experience around full circle as we rethought the ideas that brought the conference into being in the first place.  Cesar has long been a champion of the world of qualitative research that is emerging outside of the Anglo world.  He continues to raise provocative questions about the classical qualitative research myoptic view of how our work has evolved and how our traditions can be applied to every national or regional location. 
 
Thank you Cesar and all the other great participants and organizers.