10 things I have learned about qualitative research

 I took a writing workshop not too long ago and one of the tasks was to brainstorm a list of things you know about doing the work you do.  Here are the first ten items on my list when I brainstormed with myself regarding what I know about qualitative research.  Interesting to see what pops up first when you are in a timed situation.

1.  It can be hard.
2. Not everyone appreciates QR in a quantitative world.
3. You have to be as organized as an Information Specialist. 
4. Two-thirds of the project is often in the planning...data collection is actually the least of your worries.
5. Don’t get hung up on the kind of research or research tradition you are following—ground yourself in strong notions of inquiry...research traditions are like salad dressing; who wants to eat a salad without it.
6. Think with...not at...your participants.  Think about relationships, partnering, learning. 
7. Ethics are a process...they are always with you; you are always interacting with them:  Don’t leave home without them! 
8. More is less.  Use qualitative research for what it does well—going deep; understanding perspectives; deciphering context.  Don’t make it do the job another kind of methodology could do better. 
9. Make timelines realistic and flexible. 
10. Make analysis ongoing; question yourself when you find that you are doing massive data collection...followed by processing...followed by analysis—why did it happen that way; was there another way to stage the work?

Chip Bruce: New Book

Chip (Bertram) Bruce is co-editor of a wonderful new book describing work he and others have been doing with youth in community groups around projects that marry inquiry and new media.

Bertram, B.C., Bishop, A. P., Budhathoki, N. R. (Eds.) (2014).  Youth community inquiry: New media for community and personal growth.  New York: Peter Lang.  

ISBN Hardcover:  978-1-4331-2404-4

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-4331-2403-7

ISBN e-book:  978-1-4539-1201-0

I reviewed the book for Qualitative Research in Education:  http://qre.hipatiapress.com  Jump on over here and you can see the review for yourself.  

It’s a great read and brings forward many good ideas about the trio of concerns here:  youth, community, and new media. 

Gender: Sexting and Teens Announcing my new book!

Yes, it has finally happened.  Sexting has taken wing! 

You can read more about the book, and even order a copy if you like at:

http://tinyurl.com/mrphst6

Thanks to everyone who had a hand in the creation and production of the work. 

Darolyn Jones: Hope Takes Practice

Because I am an eclectic sort, I am often reading about diverse topics for all sorts of reasons that would not make sense to anyone but myself.  Which is why I found myself reading an elder rights blog, which mentioned a new Caregifted award that was being instituted for bloggers who are also caregivers, which led me to Darolyn Jones and her blog:  Hope TakesPractice.  
 

Darolyn Jones, is the mother of a special needs child and advocate for families with special needs children, but what really caught my attention was that she is a qualitative researcher who studies this topic.  

Her blog was riveting, and I found myself reading with no thought to the time and how I would feel the next morning.  Assistant professor in the English Department at Ball State University, Director of the Memoir Project at the Indiana Writers Center, she is as passionate about writing as she is about the experiences of parenting a child with special needs.  She has been involved in many community writing ventures that have reached out to help the silenced find voice.  

The blog provided me with clues to her methodological interests—autoethnography, narrative study, case study.  All well and good, but over and above the methodological strands what will capture your attention is the way she tells personal stories, exploring experience to bring the reader deep into the feelings of a parent with a special child—the tiredness and fears, the joys and jubilations.  

While I will now look forward to reading professional articles or books by this woman, I am very happy to have found such a great blog by a qualitative researcher.  Blog on, Darolyn Jones!  Just by blogging, your contribution to qualitative research is significant.  Qualitative research needs voices like this, shouting authentic experience from the digital rooftops. 

QRfrag Returns!

Welcome to the return of QRfrag (Qualitative Research Fragmented), a blog about qualitative research.  I am interested in diverse aspects of qualitative, and this blog will be as eclectic as I am.  It is a place to think aloud about the new directions in qualitative research, to ponder the questions students ask about qualitative research, and to consider books, articles, and other products and artifacts of this field. 

                When I made the decision to resurrect QRfrag, I thought hard about the shape it could take.  Part of that work was subscribing to a number of blogs of interest to me and reading blogs about blogs.  There is a lot of information out there on the topic of blogs.  I sifted through the advice trying to decide what approach would work best for me.  Some bloggers insisted on 500 words, others called for articles of 1,500 words.  Some bloggers schedule regular postings, others posted irregularly. 

                As I took part in these forays into the thickets of blogging, I found myself coming back again and again to a single blog to which I had subscribed:  Studio and Garden, the work of artist Altoon Sultan.  There are several things I like about this blog. 

                First is the simplicity.   Studio and Garden is really about studio and garden.  Sultan, who lives in a farmhouse in Vermont’s rural Northeast Kingdom, blogs about studio—her studio work and the work of others who inspire her—and garden—her vegetable garden and the plants, ponds, and matter surrounding her home. 

                This brings me to the second reason I like her blog:  It is restful and refreshing.  She asks the reader to slow down and look carefully, be it the ice formations in a puddle or the work of artists at the Metropolitan Art Museum.  When I read her blog I breathe more deeply and find myself attending to new details. 

                I also like this blog for the new information it brings me.  She talks about objects, artists, colors, and materials in ways that are totally new to me.  Her reviews of the art shows she visits make me want to go immediately—stop that bus, I am on my way! 

                Four is authenticity and questing.  She appears to be true to whom she is.  From what I’ve read, she started the blog as part of the remaking of herself as an artist.   After many years as a painter with successful gallery sponsorship in New York City, her style and focus began to change.  She and the gallery parted ways, she moved to Vermont, and began the process of working through new artistic problems.  I like the thought that her blog, as well conceived as it seems to me, is still about figuring out the meaning of her work. 

                So my list of key words for what I would like to emulate from the Studio and Garden blog are:  simplicity, restful and renewing, new information (inventive, creative, compeling), authenticity, and the quality of questing.  I hope I can achieve some part of this in the new version of QRfrag.  Thank you for joining me. 

East Pawtucketville Neighborhood Project: A Public Ethnography Emerging

 

 

Call for Participation in the Neighborhood Project

Over the next year I will be conducting a public ethnography, exploring the pathways of connection and disconnection in one urban neighborhood. A special focus of the study will be the ways the community and its educational institutions interact. 

The neighborhood is East Pawtucketville in Lowell, Massachusetts, where I have lived since 1999. 

In undertaking this study, I am unabashedly an activist for the neighborhood.  I approach this project from a very embedded, action research perspective. 

I invite you to join me on this journey!

 

 

 

 

 

Shaping the Study

The study will be conducted publicly through a blog and wiki.  The

blog will be the place where I report on events, conversations, musings and reflections about the neighborhood and my ongoing interactions with organizations and individuals.  This will also be a place where I can consider theory of value to the methodology and substance of the study.

The wiki will be a place to store more extensive resources:  neighborhood plans, photos, historical artifacts, and theoretical resources related to the study.

You can participate in the study by following the blog and visiting the wiki.  The site will be available soon.  Let me know if you are interested in taking part! 

East Pawtucketville

East Pawtucketville is a small dense urban neighborhood founded, in large part, by Franco-Americans who moved to Lowell, Massachusetts for jobs in the textile mills.  Today it is a diverse neighborhood including people from many cultural backgrounds.  It lies along the northern bank of the Merrimack River at the spectacular Pawtucket Falls.  UMass Lowell’s North Campus is located here and two elementary schools—one public and one parochial. Author Jack Kerouac writes extensively of this neighborhood—his childhood home.

If you are interested in participating in the Neighborhood Project Public Ethnography, please provide me with your email so I can let you know when the official site is up and running and/or watch for more information on my blog:  QRfrag.blogspot.com. 

 

 

Graduate School of Education

UMASS Lowell

61 Wilder St.

Lowell, MA  01854

Judith_Davidson@uml.edu

http://qrfrag.blogspot.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Join me over the next year as I explore the neighborhood, learn about connections and disconnections within the community, and seek ways to encourage and nourish this world.

International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry: 2013 Conference is almost here!

The 2013 ICQI conference is almost here, and I am getting very excited. 

I will be making one paper presentation.  The title is "Contextualizing the Changes New Technologies Raise for Qualitative Research Methodologies:  Case Example--Perspectives on Youth and Sexting".  It is part of panel #1017, which is titled "Small Data in a Big Data World".  We are slotted for Friday morning (5/17/13) from 9:30 to 10:50 am in 1051 Lincoln. 

As usual I am working like crazy at the last minute on my paper.  It's been an opportunity to bring a lot of disparate pieces together--from sexting...and all that this has to do with new technologies to notions of archiving qualitative research, visualizing data, and many other topics.  I am hoping it will all cohere by the time I get to the University of Illinois. 

Please come by and say hello if you are in town too!