NVivo and Survey Tools: Making the Most of Open-Ended Data

This Friday, 8/26/16, the UMass Lowell Center for Program Evaluation is sponsoring a two-hour workshop (9-11 am) on ways to use NVivo with open-ended survey data.  NVivo can be mashed up with several of the popular Survey Tools to allow you to work more efficiently and productively. 

If you are interested in attending, you must be registered in advance.  Email Shanna_Thompson@uml.edu  for more information. 

Qualitative Research Play Day: Mission Accomplished!

In Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows, Mole, an earth dweller who is fleeing from his own spring cleaning, meets Rat, a river dweller, who is only too happy to wax lengthily and eagerly about the joys of messing around the river—on the river, in the river, anything to do with the river. 

Well, today was a day like that for a couple of us qualitative researchers on the UMass Lowell campus.  Like Ratty, we were only too happy to be messing around with our qualitative research data and tools, talking about it, reminiscing about projects and design.  Oh the glory of having such a wonderful, relaxing Play Day with Qualitative Research. 

The occasion was the workshop titled:  Help!!  I’ve got a boatload of qualitative research data—and don’t know what to do with it.  My compliments for the great title, which was supplied by fellow UMass Lowell faculty member Doreen Arcus of the Psychology Department.  It speaks to the circumstances so many of us face, whether you are a full-time qualitative researcher, part-time or accidentally-backed-into-it-unexpectedly qualitative researcher.  So little time, so much good qualitative data all around! 

Our day had some structure, but a lot of open-endedness.  As the leader of the day, I wasn’t sure what kind of qualitative research needs would land on my doorstep.  For that reason, I always plan to spend a lot of time up-front—listening to participants.  The questions I have for them are about:  the data, their knowledge of QR, their knowledge of QDAS and other digital tools, and what do they want to accomplish?  We create our goals from our answers to these questions.

Today, we spent a good amount of time thinking about QDAS (Qualitative Data Analysis Software—namely NVivo) and how it would help to organize a study and the different data that could be used with the tool.  A particular interest that emerged was the ways Endnote and NVivo could be worked together to make life easier for any researcher.

One of the participants has spent many years developing a professional literature database organized in Excel.  We realized it could be imported into NVivo and used productively there with qualitative research projects to be developed.  It could also be exported from NVivo into Endnote for use as part of a shared library.  Thank you Sarah Marks of the UMass Lowell Library for helping us with the Endnote ideas.  This is just one example of the kind of problem-solving for which Play Days are good. 

Thanks also to Shanna Thompson, administrator for the Center for Program Evaluation, who joined us and shared with us, as well as the Faculty Development Center people who also supported the workshop. 

For the full text of the Wind in the Willows—I just discovered Wikisource!! 

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wind_in_the_Willows

HELP!! I have a boatload of qualitative research data and don’t know what to do with it.

[This is a description for a workshop I will be leading this Tuesday, August 23, 2016 at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.  If you are in the area and interested--contact Shanna Thompson at the Center for Program Evaluation for more information:  Shanna_Thompson@uml.edu]  You must be registered in advance to participate.

If you can't attend, but are interested in taking in a workshop like this, please let me know.  I love to do this kind of day.] 

***** 

Are you a quantitative or mixed method researcher who gathered some open-ended survey data that is sitting around waiting to be written about?

Are you a qualitative researcher who had a great project that got derailed for some reason and want to return to write about that great data?

Are you a post-doc who has qualitative research data that wasn’t included in the dissertation that you want to give voice to? 

In other words, do you have qualitative research data that is eating a whole in your heart because you aren’t writing about it?  Then this workshop is for you!!

This day-long interactive workshop is designed to help you get back in the saddle with the write-up of those great materials.  You will

·        renew your confidence as a researcher and writer,

·        get energized to take new leaps into publishing,

·        learn strategies for identifying topics and developing articles from qualitative research data

·        develop outlines for three new articles (or more)

·        brainstorm where to place pieces and learn about journals specializing in qualitative research

·        Learn how new digital tools can assist you at many phases of the work

·        Develop writing partnerships that work

Bring your data and laptop along to this research playdate.  The day will be fast paced including full group discussions, quiet review and writing time, small group collaboration, and short informative lectures.  There will be a variety of handouts, as well as an online site where materials will be shared. 

Tools that MAY be helpful to have downloaded and set up on your computer:  NVivo11 and Endnote (UML has site licenses for both). 

Start the semester off, ready for success.  Join us for a new kind of writing/research day. 

 

 

 

Digital Tools and Qualitative Research: Looking into the Future

 

 

I am very pleased to announce the publication of a new article about digital tools and where it could all be going.  The article was co-authored with Trena Paulus (University of Georgia) and Kristi Jackson (QUERI), two good friends with similar interests in the topic of technology and qualitative research.  Below is the title and reference information. 

 

Speculating on the Future of Digital

Tools for Qualitative Research

Judith Davidson1, Trena Paulus2, and Kristi Jackson3

 

Qualitative Inquiry 2016, Vol. 22(7) 606–610 © The Author(s) 2016

Reprints and permissions:

sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/1077800415622505

qix.sagepub.com

 

Let us know if your imagined future looks anything like ours! 

Davidson and D-Space: Web-release of earlier unpublished materials!

Thank you to George Hart, Library Director at UMass Lowell, and his assistant Marguerite Grant for uploading several of my unpublished papers and presentations to our new D-Space area.  I am so excited to have these available through this online data base. 

Nine items are now available.  They fall into groupings that have much to do with who I am as a qualitative researcher. 

You can access them at:  https://libspace.uml.edu   under Judith Davidson in the Graduate School of Education.

I am particularly excited to have three papers from 2005 accessible on the Internet.  I refer to them by these short-hand names:  "Grading NVivo", "Genre and Qualitative Research", and "Learning to 'Read' NVivo".  These three were all presented in Spring 2005 at three different conferences (it was a marathon!).  Taken together they map out territory I was exploring in regard to the way students and teachers or researchers of qualitative research work through the task of understanding Qualitative Data Analysis Software (QDAS) functions and capacities.  I am excited to see that others are taking up the challenges described here (Woolfe and Silver and their 5 stages of QDA Teaching is one example). 

There are also two papers about teaching QDAS in higher education:  1) a 2008 presentation on "Teaching QDAS in a Virtual Environment"; and, 2) a 2007 paper on "Teaching and Learning with QDAS". 

Two papers provide evidence of my ongoing speculation about the big issues in regard to the nature of digital tools:  1) "Swimming in a Sea of Data" from 2013; and, 2) "Methodological Quandaries" from 2015. 

Finally, there are papers about specific projects.  "Teen Talk about Sexting" presented in 2012 discusses a completed project that is described more fully in my book:  Sexting:  Gender and Teens published in 2014 by Sense Publications. 

"Negotiating Digital Tools on Complex Research Teams" presented in 2016 is fast becoming one facet of a book in the making. 

Thank you George and Marguerite for making this possible. 

Digital Tools in Qualitative Research: ICQI 2015

Come to the International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry and get excited by the new strand--Digital Tools in Qualitative Research.  Hear about the ways researchers are using technologies in qualitative research, meet and share with like minded colleagues, and perhaps even win a raffle prize from one of our generous sponsors.

When you pick up your program materials at the conference, be on the look out for our raffle in the vendor area.  Put your name in to win a great prize. 

Look for our tables at the First Night Barbecue--join us, learn more about what is happening, and take part in the first raffle.

In the conference program, keep your eye out for the digital tools strand.  Our symposium on Friday will be the place to go to learn about what is happening in the digital tools strand across the conference.  Take part in our second raffle. 

The ICQI conference web page can be reached here:  ICQI 2015

AND, friend us on Facebook at Digital Tools for Qualitative Research

I know when we get to Champaign, Illinois everything will be in bloom.  Here's imaginging Spring! 

In 2008, I was part of the group that staged the "Day in Technology in Qualitative Research" at ICQI that took place over the Wednesday before the workshops and the beginning of the conference.  We thought that 2015 was the time for another strong long at what is happening in digital tools.  Kristi Jackson of Queri, Inc. (an independent consultant) and Trena Paulus of the University of Georgia (co-author of Digital Tools in Qualitative Research, Sage Press) are co-leaders--so what could go wrong!  

Hans-Ulrich Obrist: Where have you been all my life?

Recently I was stuck in a medical waiting room trying to amuse myself and picked up the 12/8/2014 issue of The New Yorker.  The New Yorker seemed a better choice than Parent Magazine, Modern Oncology, or whatever else medical staff had brought in to cheer us up as we waited.  

But what a gift this issue proved to be.  The profile, "The Art of Conversation: The Curator Who Talked His Way to the Top" by D.T. Max turned out to be one of those life-changing articles that only The New Yorker can offer. To my chagrin, I seem to be one of the last people n in the modern world to hear about Obrist. That will teach me to drop my subscription to the New Yorker! 

I had a long wait at the medical center, a blessing in disguise, because it allowed me to soak in every word about this amazing person who has revolutionized and popularized the notion of curation, not to mention providing important new models for understanding the the interview.  Both curation and the interview were of interest to me as a qualitative researcher.  Obrist offered new and exciting models for thinking about both. 

Naturally, I stole the issue from the waiting room and took it home with me.  I was sure I needed it more than anyone else who might have been there.  Then I spent most of the rest of the weekend reading about Obrist, listening to videos and interviews of him online, and ordering and reading his books from Amazon.  In fact, reading that Obrist had become a devote of Instagram, using this tool to capture glimpses of his many conversational encounters with artists, I returned to the Instagram account I had ignored for months (Artful_Inquiry) and began to follow Obrist through Instagram, I felt like a voyeur examining his photos of crumpled post-its written at various locations on his travels.

Pieces that struck me as I read:
-fascinated by the way he has thought about geography, space, architecture, placemaking as components of art AND curation
-his notion of the conversational interview with artists--a project he has been working on since teenhood--offers a new model of the interview for qualitative researchers.  (I intend to read more of these interviews...wondering if they would be good material to practice analysis on!)
-I like the fact he is publishing his interviews, but wish he would also release as audio items.
-I want to suggest that these materials should be carefully archived in a library where they can be accessed by the world.
-He helped me to understand how the artS, not simply art is what is evolving today. I realized that my eclectic approach to arts isn't that strange...why shouldn't poetry nourish felting or play with collage feed an understanding of architecture or gardening!
-I'm going to experiment with Instagram as a data collection tool--for creating various kinds of visual collections (just started with my meeting scribbles...we'll see where this goes)
-I am in the process of developing an applied anthropology project for my social anthropology final assignment...thinking of how Instagram data collection, conversation, and curation might be used in different parts.  (Oh dear--don't tell the Institutional Review Board!  I promise to get the paper work in before I do anything.)

Thank you to the New Yorker, D.T. Max, and, of course, Hans-Ulrich Obrist himself.