Folks, my plans for sailing through the semester are crumbling.... OK, so that's a bit dramatic. In fact, I am just missing the constant availability of my committee chair due to her health concerns. We are progressing, but my updated project proposal (posted less than an hour ago on BB) is a far cry from the lofty goals I originally set for myself this semester. Alas, slow motion is only my favorite in dancing!
I look forward to sharing with the group over the next several weeks through our workshops and presentations. I'm looking forward to our first group of presenters tonight and will focus on some synthesis of my recent readings from here on out in this blog.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
The Business of Research
Saldana has given us a sort of “chart of accounts” for coding qualitative data. I’m choosing this analogy because my brain is divided between the research world of graduate school and the financial world of business (yes, it’s tax time again!). In a chart of accounts, companies first list the assets of the business: cash on hand, buildings or land, accounts receivables, and equipment. These relate to the data in a qualitative research project. We have piles of documents, hours of audio, related theory, and the work of our predecessors – the assets of the project which we will use to turn a profit (yes, we do receive benefits for our research). Then, we list the liabilities of the company: loans payable, payroll liabilities (like taxes and accumulated benefits), customer advance payments and other accounts payable. This relates to the limitations of the research project. Here we have the goals and biases of our committee members, our presentation or journal audience, and generally some time constraints. We also have limitations of the study itself: our research frame, our ability to ask the right questions of our participants, the ability of our participants to understand themselves and their motivations and communicate that to us. – is this analogy getting old yet?
The “fun” in the research project and the chart of accounts comes in the three hundred and four hundred level accounts: the “retained earnings,” “income,” and “owners’ draws” in business or the results, findings, and conclusions in our research. But how we achieve these benefits in business or research relies on the “cost of goods sold,” which is the next level in our chart of accounts. Here we do all of the “work” of either the business or the research. Here we buy the raw materials that we will use to conduct our business, pay others to help us accomplish larger projects, and sometimes rent equipment that we use less frequently. Here is also where Saldana has his way with us: through the time, care and thoughtfulness of our coding and analysis.
Two little words captured my eye too often when reading the end of Saldana’s manual, “if needed.” Why would he give us this out and then go on for 35 pages demonstrating the purpose and benefits of second cycle coding? It’s like telling the business owner that preparing quarterly reports will provide them with valuable information and save them a lot of time at the end of the year, but this is not a requirement for successful operations. Some of the gems of this part of Saldana for me are:
“…creativity is essential to achieve new and hopefully striking perspectives about the data” (p. 150).
“Explaining ‘why’ something happens is a slippery task in qualitative inquiry (and even in some quantitative research). Gubrium & Hobstein (1997) put forward that ‘the whats of the social world always inform our understanding of the hows. …Taken together, these reciprocal what and how concerns offer a basis for answering a variety of why questions’ (p. 196)” (p. 154).
“The analytic memo is an uncensored and permissibly messy opportunity to let thoughts flow and ideas emerge” (p. 160).
A note from Clarke (2005):
“We need to address head-on the inconsistencies, irregularities, and downright messiness of the empirical world – not scrub it clean and dress it up for the special occasion of a presentation or a publication.” (p. 167)
Things I’m trying to understand:
Longitudinal coding – it doesn’t make sense to me to call qualitative research longitudinal. It is either redundant or conflated in my mind….By definition, we are not collecting a one-time survey result… this is something I need to think about some more – longitudinal data are implied in ethnography, anthropology, case studies, but I guess not all qualitative research… I can’t picture a longitudinal phenomenological study.
Things I really liked:
I really appreciate Saldana’s extra chapter on post-coding and pre-writing. This is another area where I sometimes rush or miss an opportunity for more insightful reflection. I particularly like the “Top Ten list” and the “touch test” and feel sure I will use one or both of these strategies as I put the finishing touches on an AERA paper that’s due for uploading next Monday! – I know, Saldana tells us to this pre-writing actually pre – the writing – it just came to me later…
Questions:
- What does it mean to say that a category “holds,” really? (p. 158)
- How is the idea of data “saturation” taken up by the various research traditions? (p. 161)
- How does Saldana’s clear passion for grounded theory fit with his pragmatic orientation?
Just as a business must pay for its expenses (you thought I forgot about this, didn't you); the researcher must wrestle with matters of ontology, epistemology, methodology, coding, categorizing, analysis, writing up the paper... The previous questions and musings will surely cause me to read more, think more, and continue to pay the bills for the rewards of understanding.
The “fun” in the research project and the chart of accounts comes in the three hundred and four hundred level accounts: the “retained earnings,” “income,” and “owners’ draws” in business or the results, findings, and conclusions in our research. But how we achieve these benefits in business or research relies on the “cost of goods sold,” which is the next level in our chart of accounts. Here we do all of the “work” of either the business or the research. Here we buy the raw materials that we will use to conduct our business, pay others to help us accomplish larger projects, and sometimes rent equipment that we use less frequently. Here is also where Saldana has his way with us: through the time, care and thoughtfulness of our coding and analysis.
Two little words captured my eye too often when reading the end of Saldana’s manual, “if needed.” Why would he give us this out and then go on for 35 pages demonstrating the purpose and benefits of second cycle coding? It’s like telling the business owner that preparing quarterly reports will provide them with valuable information and save them a lot of time at the end of the year, but this is not a requirement for successful operations. Some of the gems of this part of Saldana for me are:
“…creativity is essential to achieve new and hopefully striking perspectives about the data” (p. 150).
“Explaining ‘why’ something happens is a slippery task in qualitative inquiry (and even in some quantitative research). Gubrium & Hobstein (1997) put forward that ‘the whats of the social world always inform our understanding of the hows. …Taken together, these reciprocal what and how concerns offer a basis for answering a variety of why questions’ (p. 196)” (p. 154).
“The analytic memo is an uncensored and permissibly messy opportunity to let thoughts flow and ideas emerge” (p. 160).
A note from Clarke (2005):
“We need to address head-on the inconsistencies, irregularities, and downright messiness of the empirical world – not scrub it clean and dress it up for the special occasion of a presentation or a publication.” (p. 167)
Things I’m trying to understand:
Longitudinal coding – it doesn’t make sense to me to call qualitative research longitudinal. It is either redundant or conflated in my mind….By definition, we are not collecting a one-time survey result… this is something I need to think about some more – longitudinal data are implied in ethnography, anthropology, case studies, but I guess not all qualitative research… I can’t picture a longitudinal phenomenological study.
Things I really liked:
I really appreciate Saldana’s extra chapter on post-coding and pre-writing. This is another area where I sometimes rush or miss an opportunity for more insightful reflection. I particularly like the “Top Ten list” and the “touch test” and feel sure I will use one or both of these strategies as I put the finishing touches on an AERA paper that’s due for uploading next Monday! – I know, Saldana tells us to this pre-writing actually pre – the writing – it just came to me later…
Questions:
- What does it mean to say that a category “holds,” really? (p. 158)
- How is the idea of data “saturation” taken up by the various research traditions? (p. 161)
- How does Saldana’s clear passion for grounded theory fit with his pragmatic orientation?
Just as a business must pay for its expenses (you thought I forgot about this, didn't you); the researcher must wrestle with matters of ontology, epistemology, methodology, coding, categorizing, analysis, writing up the paper... The previous questions and musings will surely cause me to read more, think more, and continue to pay the bills for the rewards of understanding.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
It's Called a 'Manual' for a Reason
OK, so Saldana has earned a permanent spot on my book shelves. It would take a lifetime (or at least the half a lifetime I have left) to experiment with all of the coding methods outlined in chapter 3. As a reduction of choices for my present research interests, I find that I am most attracted to the grammatical and elemental methods of coding. I’m sure this is due in part to the types of data that I have “stacked up waiting for my attention” and due in part also to the subjects of my research interest: namely, teaching and teacher education around the education of students with special learning needs.
I have decided, following the Atlas.ti training and the projects I am working with at present, to attempt to apply both elemental methods of descriptive and in vivo coding to the reflections of course participants in a study of the experience of participating in the seminar on existential phenomenological psychology last fall. This subset of the data is in the form of written reflections in which the students responded to phenomenologically structured questions on a worksheet. The opening prompt is, “Please list 2 or 3 things that stood out for you in class today,” followed by three numbered and lined spaces for the three things. Half way down the page is the second prompt, “Describe what you were aware of at one of these moments.”
Using Atlas.ti, I have completed a first cycle of descriptive and in vivo coding of the student reflections. I am struggling with the warning from Tesch (1990) as cited in Saldana, that I take care to code the “topic, not [an] abbreviation of the content” (Tesch as cited in Saldana, 2009, p. 70). This is a struggle for me in existential phenomenology where so often the topic is the content. Alas, I will continue to struggle and memo about this growing understanding.
I am also interested in exploring ways of using magnitude coding in a comparison of the student reflections to those of the instructor, Howard R. Pollio, following each of the classes. I interviewed Howard following each class meeting and asked him to answer the exact same questions as the students, “What are two or three things that stood out for you in class today.” The major difference with Howard’s interview is that we went into a description of each of the things that stood out for him instead of just one item like the student reflections. Several of the examples of magnitude coding (p. 58-61) gave me ideas of how I might include a comparison of the topics and magnitudes of Howard’s reflections with those of the students. This is of particular interest to me pedagogically.
Just for kicks, I went to the OCM website at Yale to check out what my ethnographic friends might be coding in their studies of culture. Wow! Who knew that there were nine different ways to code for “marriage” or eight codes under “drink and drugs?” Now, I see why so many anthropologists earned a reputation as hippies – go easy, it’s just a little ethno-humor. I also want to talk to the folks at Yale about why just seven codes exist for “education.” We’ll leave that for another day…
I get the feeling that Saldana’s pages will be turned many times in the next year of dissertation data coding, analysis and interpretation. I’m glad to be able to have this resource to re-examine data in ways that I would never have thought of on my own.
I have decided, following the Atlas.ti training and the projects I am working with at present, to attempt to apply both elemental methods of descriptive and in vivo coding to the reflections of course participants in a study of the experience of participating in the seminar on existential phenomenological psychology last fall. This subset of the data is in the form of written reflections in which the students responded to phenomenologically structured questions on a worksheet. The opening prompt is, “Please list 2 or 3 things that stood out for you in class today,” followed by three numbered and lined spaces for the three things. Half way down the page is the second prompt, “Describe what you were aware of at one of these moments.”
Using Atlas.ti, I have completed a first cycle of descriptive and in vivo coding of the student reflections. I am struggling with the warning from Tesch (1990) as cited in Saldana, that I take care to code the “topic, not [an] abbreviation of the content” (Tesch as cited in Saldana, 2009, p. 70). This is a struggle for me in existential phenomenology where so often the topic is the content. Alas, I will continue to struggle and memo about this growing understanding.
I am also interested in exploring ways of using magnitude coding in a comparison of the student reflections to those of the instructor, Howard R. Pollio, following each of the classes. I interviewed Howard following each class meeting and asked him to answer the exact same questions as the students, “What are two or three things that stood out for you in class today.” The major difference with Howard’s interview is that we went into a description of each of the things that stood out for him instead of just one item like the student reflections. Several of the examples of magnitude coding (p. 58-61) gave me ideas of how I might include a comparison of the topics and magnitudes of Howard’s reflections with those of the students. This is of particular interest to me pedagogically.
Just for kicks, I went to the OCM website at Yale to check out what my ethnographic friends might be coding in their studies of culture. Wow! Who knew that there were nine different ways to code for “marriage” or eight codes under “drink and drugs?” Now, I see why so many anthropologists earned a reputation as hippies – go easy, it’s just a little ethno-humor. I also want to talk to the folks at Yale about why just seven codes exist for “education.” We’ll leave that for another day…
I get the feeling that Saldana’s pages will be turned many times in the next year of dissertation data coding, analysis and interpretation. I’m glad to be able to have this resource to re-examine data in ways that I would never have thought of on my own.
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