Sage Publications and Methodspace: How has it evolved?

SAGE Publications logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I've been planning to take this road trip for some time.  The road trip is a look at what has been happening in Sage's Methodspace.  I haven't been there since it was first announced, and I was sure it had evolved and changed considerably since then. 

So I have just been poking around in there trying to get a sense of where things are, what works, who is involved, etc. 

The first thing I would say is that it is very blue.  Yes, blue.  They use blue for so much of the emphasis.  I love blue, but I also like some strong color contrasts.  I would try and perk things up a bit...but that is style, not content. 

Let me just say that the part I liked best were the videos.  I loved the video section.  There is so much there that I can think about using with my qualitative research courses.  I dipped into an interview with Sharlene Hesse-Biber on feminism and qualitative research, and I looked at some of the presentations that came from a UK ESRC conference.  This is great stuff.  Keep adding to this. 

I jumped into the group area, hoping to find some friends.  The narrative research group is definitely the heavy weight here with 269 members...but it seems like conversation has been sporadic and not of a sustained nature...but I am only a voyeur. 

In looking at the resources, I liked the idea of an article of the month--but I felt badly for the authors; there were few comments.  The articles touched on so many excellent topics, I wondered how I, as a methodologist, would actually be able to use these riches?  I mean, I tend to be rather self-centered.  I am not sure how I would use this if I chose to come here regularly. 

Blogs...I thought this would be my favorite area.  Surprisingly I really didn't get it at first--I think there was a bunch of spam in the recent entries...It took me awhile to figure out that I could look at groups of like topic blog entries, and then it made more sense.  But I didn't find anything to grab my interest...or maybe I found too many like me, asking the same questions to the Internet?  Hmm....At this point, I don't think I would want to move my blog into this space.  I have nothing against it, but I kind of like hanging out here on the outside, so to speak.  

Thinking about blogs in this environment, brought me around to the issue of the sponsorship of Methodspace--Sage Publications.  It's not this specific publisher, but the notion that the discussion of a particular disciplinary community would take place in a space organized by and for a private entreprenneurial venture.  I have nothing against commerce, but I am wondering if mixing the purposes of the publisher with the chaotic hodge podge of methodological discussion is going to work in the long run?  Do qualitative researchers need to think across publishers? Are we more lively and fiesty if we are forced to make spaces for ourselves (is too much given to us here)? What's the spark that will keep a space like this alive? 

I definitely think there is a place for Methodspace, and this was only a short visit on my part.  I think that Sage has done research methodologists a service in creating this spot, but I think how it can best be used by this community seems to be evolving. 

I look forward to another trip in the future. 

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.

Ethnographic Practice in Industry

I have been looking for a group like this for a long time...and have just discovered it!  What am I talking about?  Well, Ethnographic Practice in Industry, what else? 

I am probably just about the last qualitative researcher on the block to figure out its existence (it was founded in 2005), but I am glad I finally caught up to it. 

Business is such a rich place for ethnographic inquiry right now.  Marketing is leaping full force into the use of qualitative research.  As I wrote in an earlier blog entry, The Qualitative Report has done a great service by making us qualitative researchers aware of the expansion into business. 

I was excited to read that they have an upcoming conference (10/14-17/2012 at Savannah College of Art and Design), but then saddened to realize I have conflict.  However, I am looking forward to trying to go to a future conference (they say they are now up to about 300 participants--not bad). 

To situate them, their web page says that: 

EPIC works in partnership with the American Anthropological Association (AAA) through the sub-section of the National Association of Practicing Anthropologists (NAPA).

This is definitely a trend that is not going away. 

I'll give the dog the last word on this. 

Bud Goodall; Thanking a teacher

A recent facebook posting alerted me to the illness with which qualitative research guru Bud Goodall is now struggling.  With the immediacy that only the Internet can bring, I jumped from my Facebook page to Bud's blog and the powerful description of the cancer that is now his reality.  Goodall, Director of the Hugh Downs School of Communication at Arizona State, will not remember me, but I remember him.  I send him every blessing and good wish I can think of. 

In 2009, as I was preparing for the 5th annual meeting of the International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry, I decided that I needed to do something that would challenge me and help me to push through some barriers I struggled with vis-a-vis my journal project.  As I looked down the list of workshops, I noticed one titled "Writing Qualitative Inquiry: Selves, Stories, and Academic Lives", and I signed up. 

Shortly before the conference, I received an email from Goodall, providing me with an agenda and a request that I write a short memo for discussion.  I don't think my memo was memorable...but Goodall was definitely memorable.  In the short space of that half-day workshop, he communicated with ease and comfort, sharing insights and struggles he had faced with learning to link the parts of his self--academic, qualitative researcher, and human being.  He listened, affirmed, and moved us forward.  It was a remarkable day. 

So impressed with his knowledge of the academic process--its possibilities and pitfalls--for qualitative researchers, I purchased his book of the same title:  Writing Qualitative Inquiry: Selves, Stories, and Academic Life (available from Left Coast Press).  I shared it with others in my program concerned with the road to tenure, hoping it might ease their fears. 

But the most telling reminder of having encountered Goodall...is that I write this blog.  I was so impressed that a senior academic would speak to the value of blogs, as at my university, like most,  the blog has not gotten much respect.  I love my blog, and what it brings me--a place to practice writing, a place to begin the ideas that might become articles, and a place to think about qualitative research when it doesn't fit into a neat pre-formatted category.  Goodall served as outside confirmation that I was not insane to explore this tool.  I am so grateful to him for this. 

While I saw him in the crowd at subsequent ICQI conferences, I did not have an opportunity to speak with him again.  His teaching, however, remains with me.  He gave me, as he has given so many in the field, a piece of himself that we can carry with us--a piece of knowledge, an afternoon memory, a renewed commitment to keep on trying.  Thank you Bud.  I really appreciate it.  I want you to know that I am thinking about you and what you have done for me and others. 

Fibreculture Journal: Coding? Tagging? and Qualitative Research

I have just discovered a very interesting online journal called Fibreculture Journal  (fibreculturejournal.org). 

I am not even sure how I found my way here...but what I have been looking at is an article titled:

FCJ-083Tag-elese or  The Language of Tags   It was written by Jan Simons of the Universiteit van Amsterdam.  It's another step in trying to understand what is coding (the official qualitative research term) versus tagging (the official Internet term). 

Silvana di Gregorio and I have written about this issue in an article that appeared in Qualitative Inquiry, but we were only scratching the surface. 

Take a look and see what you think. 

QR Eras and the Implications for Archiving

I have been meaning to post this for a couple of days...This is a table I made to help me see the eras of Qualitative Research and its technology and the ways these eras raise implications for archiving. 

Eras of Qualitative Research Technologies and Implications for Data Archiving

I am building here on the three terms I defined in earlier entries: 

1) Disassociated (meaning before computers or the use of computers similar to off-line use).  This era is associated with the term "data"; technologies like file cabinets, notebooks, stand alone computers.  Archiving focuses on raw sources, handwritten, typed, kodak photos, film. 

; 2) Associated (QDAS and related ways of thinking); This era is associated with the term "database"; technologies like QDAS and word processing uses like QDAS, and early Internet experiments.  QDAS here seeks to be a comprehensive answer to qualitative computing.  Archiving focuses on text, rtf, word documents and jpeg, etc for photos.  Is QDAS going to be a useful tool for archiving? 

 3) Distributed (what lies beyond the first two).  This era is associated with "collection" or "curation".  Researchers are working in distributed manner and their tools are also often distributed around the internet.  Items get made into various kinds of collections--but there is a fluidity that characterizes the mixing and matching.  Archiving raises many questions...that have yet to be answered.

So I am still trying to get it right.  I may be repeating myself, but that seems to happen as I work on condensing an idea. 

QR data bases and QR archiving

Tetsubin 2005 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This morning as I was having my tea, I realized that this nifty little three-part developmental framework I produced yesterday raised unsettling questions in regard to the issue of archiving qualitative research data. 

To use the framework in regard to data archiving, current solutions are pretty much focused on the disassociated state of the qualitative research materials stage.

Data archiving isn't quite sure how to deal with materials in the associated state.  They will put the e-project items away in the vault and hope there will be some way to open them in the future.  Software developers are not looking forward to solving the problem themselves.

But what happens when you move into the distributed phase of qualitative research work?  How will you archive material that is distributed across the internet...not located at one set location?  Do you whack off pieces of the Internet and hold a copy in the safe?  Or do you simply have a list of url's that take you to the items?  Does the common language--html or whatever--solve the problem that exists at the associated level of archiving?  What are the ethical issues that this raises? 

I have raised more questions than I can answer.  I think the dog needs a walk...