Your Videos

So last time we worked on your videos using iMovie. As I think you have noticed, iMovie is a fairly user friendly tool for digital film editing. In class, I went over “20 tricks” for iMovie. (These aren’t tricks at all but i things I wanted to show how to do). Then we jumped in and started editing footage. Many of you asked how long the videos should be. I’m always reluctant to say too much about that because i wouldn’t want a good piece to be ruined by too much or two little editing. But I was thinking that they should be less than 5 minutes. What’s more interesting that how long the videos are is how well it teaches what it intends to teach. Remember that you can teach a concept, an attitude, or a procedure. 

One somewhat annoying thing about the new version of iMovie is that it is not so easy to walk out with the iMovie file intact. The iMovie project file itself is actually a text tile that tells the computer to compile and render many different files that make up your video. These are image files, sound files, and other information that the computer needs to show the project file the way we see it when we are editing the film. To walk out of the room with the file we need not only the project file but everything it points to. Not easy. So, instead, you will have to do all the editing on a machine and then “export” or “share” the video. Exporting the video will turn it into a new type of file that can be compressed to a nice small manageable size that you can then move from place to place using flash drives or other means. If you “share” the video, you can choose to upload it into YouTube, Facebook, or other popular video sharing or social media site. 

Your Videos

So last time we worked on your videos using iMovie. As I think you have noticed, iMovie is a fairly user friendly tool for digital film editing. In class, I went over “20 tricks” for iMovie. (These aren’t tricks at all but i things I wanted to show how to do). Then we jumped in and started editing footage. Many of you asked how long the videos should be. I’m always reluctant to say too much about that because i wouldn’t want a good piece to be ruined by too much or two little editing. But I was thinking that they should be less than 5 minutes. What’s more interesting that how long the videos are is how well it teaches what it intends to teach. Remember that you can teach a concept, an attitude, or a procedure. 

One somewhat annoying thing about the new version of iMovie is that it is not so easy to walk out with the iMovie file intact. The iMovie project file itself is actually a text tile that tells the computer to compile and render many different files that make up your video. These are image files, sound files, and other information that the computer needs to show the project file the way we see it when we are editing the film. To walk out of the room with the file we need not only the project file but everything it points to. Not easy. So, instead, you will have to do all the editing on a machine and then “export” or “share” the video. Exporting the video will turn it into a new type of file that can be compressed to a nice small manageable size that you can then move from place to place using flash drives or other means. If you “share” the video, you can choose to upload it into YouTube, Facebook, or other popular video sharing or social media site. 

Case Study & Phenomenology – Week 2

Now remember… in this class we do NOT believe in sympathetic magic! But…can you believe that we’re are actually half way through?! Yes, it is true. So I’ve had the pleasure to meet with some of you one on one and it seems that everyone is on track to do some really great work. Again, be open minded about what you’re doing and don’t get muscled by you’re pre-existing projects, agendas, conceptual frameworks, literature reviews, etc. Think in terms of your questions and figuring out:

1. What is the “case?” – For this it really really really helps to imagine the case as comparable to other cases or examples of whatever it is that you are studying.
2. “What is the essence of the experience?” – For this it really really really helps to answer for yourself not only what this is an experience of but also who has this experience.

I had to say that here we don’t believe in “sympathetic magic.” So instead we spent the week talking about phenomenology. The goal here is to write the experience of the “co-researchers” of a phenomenon. We also explored some interesting aspects of research such as figuring out what we’re researching! We also spent a bit of time talking about validity of qualitative studies. The highlight of the week was our guest lecturer! Thanks Dr. Roxanne Vandermause!!! Here a few of her more recent publications:

Vandermause, R. & Santucci, C. (2009, June). The hermeneutics of a transmethodological study on addiction and recovery. Institute for Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Acknowledging the Call: Conscience, Being, and Biotechnical Engagement, Indiana University School of Nursing, Indianapolis, Indiana.

• Vandermause, R., Chalmers, S., Harris, L., Kearney Converse, S., Kittell, L, Sameshima, P. (2008, October). Understanding paradox: The parallax of methamphetamine addiction and recovery. Qualitative Health Research 14th International Interdisciplinary Conference, Banff, Alberta, Canada.
• Vandermause, R. (2007, October). Women with alcohol use disorders: Experiences in primary care settings. International Nurses Society on Addictions: 31st Annual Conference. Arlington, Virginia.
• Vandermause, R. (2007, September). Multidisciplinary, multi-media, multiple-method interpretive research: Challenges in getting started. Advances in Qualitative Methods: The 8th International Interdisciplinary Conference, Banff, Alberta, Canada.
• Vandermause, R. (2006, April). The poiesis of the question in    philosophical hermeneutics: Questioning assessment practices for alcohol dependency. Qualitative Health Research 12th International Interdisciplinary Conference, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Day One

We started with a bit of a game that gets me accused of murder! I asked everyone to rip up a piece of paper into…(how many Sujata…??) sixteen little rectangles. I then asked you to write the most important things in your life on these little pieces of paper. Every little piece gets one thing. These “things” could be material objects, qualities you like about yourself, people…what ever! I then slowly asked you to throw them one (and sometimes more) at a time. Then I times I took some away from you. This is an exercise about prioritizing and loss. I generates in participants a feeling a draining away. It can make people sad and often results in feeling of resignation and rebellion. if you ever do this exercise, make sure that you ask your participants to talk about how they feel right afterwards. What I did was use this as a way to create an experience for everyone to collectively talk about. I asked you all to discuss the essence of the experience in pairs and then in larger groups. Are we able to bracket out the invariance between our accounts of the essence to come up with a more essential essence?

Day Two

So we started again by ripping up pieces of paper but this time it was not about killing off your loved ones, hopes and dreams, and so forth! (We don’t believe in sympathetic magic in this class). Instead we ripped up pieces of paper into 16 x 2 = 32 squares. I developed this exercise for nurturing theoretical and conceptual sensitivity. It’s really a sort of exercise I adapted/ adopted from the grounded theory method of sorting conceptual memos. Your notes, your memos, get sorted into categories. Instead, this “game” is simply sorting individual words. Anyhoo…  I have found it useful for helping myself and others “play” with ideas. I’ve found that it works well with topics. Here’s the important thing to remember: The categories are LESS IMPORTANT than the process of doing the sorting. The action is in the doing of the sorting and capturing what comes out of the sorting process.

So…. in case you missed it, here’s how it goes:

1. Write down single words or terms related to your study or research interest. (These could also be conceptual codes or names of categories in a study but Wednesday, we went with words related to one’s study as well as the “7 C’s” and typology and stages. Make sure you leave plenty of room between the words
2. Rip up the paper you wrote or types these words on so that you end up with lots of little pieces of paper with single words on them
3. Spread them out in front of you and say to yourself: “I am studying…”
4. Grab two or three or even four pieces of paper and integrate them into single sentences

That’s really it! Change the order of the words and constantly replace them with new ones from your pile and soon you

Rip them up into little squares….er… rectangles.

will see that all kinds of wonderful ideas will emerge before your eyes. Some will be better than others, but it ALWAYS works! Key to the whole exercise is (a) an open mind, and (b) a piece of paper on which to write down ideas that occur to you along the way. Without that piece of paper, you may quickly forget ideas that come because they will so easily and quickly be supplanted by other great ideas!  Be intellectually light on your feet and you will find yourself constantly challenged by the power of your own ideas. When these come from data, this is all the more powerful!  So with the example here, I just quickly drew “Schools,” “Policing,” “Computers,” and “Time.” And so I said to myself: “I am studying ways in which schools police the use of computers over time.” I might also consider how time is leveraged by schools for the policing of computer use in schools. I might also consider how computers are USED BY schools for the policing of time in schools! Do you see?! The possibilities are almost endless.

I included the 7 C’s as well as “stages” and the notion of “typology” in the mix. They help us to interrogate concepts.

What are the causes of Hazing?

In what contexts does Hazing take place?

What are the consequences of Hazing?

What conditions give rise to or impede Hazing?

What contingencies may be associated with Hazing?

What covariances may be ascribed to Hazing?

What cycles may be occurring with Hazing?

Now you may notice that a study could be a typology of Hazing. Hazing may be of different types and a study could lay out and elaborate these types. You might be able to produce the stages of Hazing. Many theories are stage theories such as Kohlberg’s stages of moral development.

Day Three

We started by coming up with some questions to ask our guest speaker. She is a UW-Madison alum and was an advisee of Nancy L. Diekelmann in the School of Nursing. I did this pre-question session just to prep us a bit. Discussions of this sort usually go better with some preparation. Also I never heard her speak in a class before so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Everyone came up with very thoughtful questions. Among them were:

• So what is phenomenology?
• How did you become interested in phenomenology?
• How do we balance the notion of holistic accounts with theme generation and categorization in phenomenology?
• What does a good phenomenology look like?
• Who is the arbiter of the account and who is the consumer?
• What is the value of such accounts?
• How should reports be structured?
• When doing interviews, how do I know the most important things about the experience?
• How can we really accomplish epoche?

Thank you for that. I recorded much of her talk for my own benefit. We talked about this already but to me what was particularly striking about the whole discussion was her confidence and utter tolerance of ambiguity and even contradiction. She had a remarkably pragmatic take on this and she is firmly ensconced in the academy and so is very practiced in problems of research related to practicalities such as IRB, publishing issues, participant problems, and so forth. She also has been teaching this for a long time. She mentioned this book particularly that I haven’t read yet:

http://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/2557.htm

She mentioned Hans-Georg Gadamer (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/gadamer/) many times. He was a student of Heidegger who contributed greatly to the development of phenomenology.

Michael mentioned after the talk that he felt that she helped to clarify things. I agree but this happened I think by her NOT clarifying things but rather giving us confidence in a lack of clarity. Does that make sense??

Another point

When we talked about Heidegger, we talked a bit about his relationship to the so called Third Reich. Here is a rather new and comprehensive book on the topic.

• Faye, Emmanuel (2009). Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN: 978-0-300-12086-8.

I really didn’t intend for the controversy about his time in Germany during the Hitlerian era to be the loudest things about him. He is one of the most famous and influential philosophers of the 20th century and his name is closely associated with phenomenology. So for further reading please see:

• Heidegger, Martin (1982). The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. ISBN: 0-253-20478-X.
• Heidegger, Martin (1982). The Question Concerning Technology and other Essays. New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN: 0061319694.
• Krell, David Farrell (Ed.). (2008). Martin Heidegger: Basic writings. London: Harper Perennial. ISBN: 978-0-06-162701-9.
• Steiner, George (1989). Martin Heidegger. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 0-226-77232-2.

We spent some time comparing and contrasting vanManen and Moustakas this week. I also asked Roxanne to talk about this. It’s an interesting problem with some embedded contradiction. I hold to my initial assertion that Moustakas is more formal in his approach and vanManen is more “crunchy!”

This coming week I want to spend more time talking about validity in qualitative studies and we will also talk about the papers. I also hope to spend some time talking about qualitative research and computer programs designed for supporting this.

Some highlights

It includes all of our views. I’m not looking at my data from a position of whating to know what they have to say but also to understand the phenomenon of interest. We are co-creating a conversation that leads to understanding. We are co-creating a result. Heidegger moved away from finind something we could all agree on.

Truth is un-concealing an essence so all of the data collection and analysis took this tone. Gadamer continued this. Gadamer moves us a little more toward understanding text. A fusion of horizons bringing together various views. Heidegger is more complex. Heidegger is I guess the left wing phenomenologist and Husseral would be on the other end of this. Heidegger talks about what it means to “be.” All of the research that’s done from this standpoint points to common human experience and what it means to be and not what it is. The being aspect is a dynamic exchange.

About data analysis she mentioned in response to a question by Hyejung in writing the ontology she thought that Heidegger wrote himself out of the question. As soon as we grasp it, it isn’t interpretive phenomenology.  We are thinking about our material dynamically. We use a lot of “ing” words. Some of the themes are “being in the world of prostitution.” or “engaging” something. We define thing using dynamic language and a lot of repetition. We want to have a “useful” result so we end up with patterns, themes, categories, and such. The various traditions of qualitative research do that in different ways. I don’t think phenomenology looks all that different. Are the findings resonant? Present an audit trail. Describe your process. Make me believe that the findings you came up with are credible, trustworthy, applicable findings. Make be believe that your argument is sound. My answer to the question about distinctions is as muddy as the question.

 

Till next time…. be phenomenal!!!!

The Phenomenal Case – Summer 2012

Welcome!

Qualitative vs. Quantitative Research

Well…. We made it through week one and are about to start week two of this whirlwind methodological adventure! Welcome again!!!

Day One: We went around the room. Name… Rank…. Serial Number…. Everyone talked about his or her research and I asked what your case would be and what is would be a case of.   We discussed the notion of boundedness and about the issues that structure cases. I asked everyone to not only come up with a case but to go home and write 20 questions that might serve as issues to structure your cases.

I also talked about the syllabus and the books for the course.  I noted that in the case of the Stake book that you should read the case in the back first (Chapter 10).  Here is the list of books again:

• Moustakas, Clark. (1994). Phenomenological research methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. ISBN: 978-0-8039-5799-2.

• Stake, Robert E. (1995). The art of case study research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. ISBN: 978-0-8039-5767-1.

• Yin, Robert K. (2009). Case study research: Design and Methods, Fourth edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. ISBN: 978-1-4129-6099-1.

• van Manen, Max. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. London, Ontario, Canada: The University of Western Ontario. ISBN: 0-7914-0426-9.
• Maxwell, Joseph A. (2012). Qualitative research design: An interactive approach, 3rd Edition. Los Angeles, Sage Publication. ISBN:978-1-4129-8119-4.

The last of these is a suggested title for this course. In the syllabus I recommended a number of books that are closely related to the subject matter of this course. But this book by Joseph Maxwell I particularly recommend. It is a book that is framed by six parts of a qualitative study. in fact, it would be entirely appropriate to design a dissertation using the chapters in this book and mapping them on to your dissertation! On Tuesday I asked you about your research in these terms:

1. Goals: Why are you doing this study? (What is this about and why should we care)?
2. Conceptual Framework: What do you think is going on?
3. Research Questions: What (specifically) do you want to understand?
4. Methods: What will you actually do? (What procedures will you engage to actually answer your research questions)?
5. Validity: How might you be wrong? (How might we be confident that your findings are not arbitrary?)

I asked you to write about how your research would look as a case study. What is it that gives it boundedness? What are the issues that frame the case?

Day Two: We played a nice warm up game. TAKE A STAND ON THE ISSUE!!!  Abortion. The legalization of marijuana. Gay marriage. The death penalty. Are they wrong!? This got us talking about ontology, epistemology, and….  Phenomenology. How do know something is? We went through a PowerPoint I did on “An Introduction to Case Study.” This drew on both Stake and Yin. I also borrowed some ideas from others such as Creswell and Lincoln and Guba. We will talk more about triangulation and other related notions such as trustworthiness. This is really elaborated in the Lincoln and Guba book.

Here is the reference for the Naturalistic Inquiry book I mentioned (it’s really a classic now) as well as the Five traditions book:

• Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
• Creswell, J. W. (1998). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five traditions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.This popular book outlines (a) biography (b) ethnography (c) grounded theory (d) phenomenology and (d) case study traditions in qualitative research. Creswell does a good job of comparing these traditions and includes good examples of each in an appendix.

We spent a little bit of time on the business of IRB. Again, I emphasize that this is not something to worry too much about, over think, or over question. Just fill in the boxes with reasonable responses and everything will be okay. IRB is like your taxes. It’s a little bit of a pain but if you pay attention and follow directions, it will work out without a problem.

For this class, you won’t have time to actually get IRB approval but you should still apply. You’ll be glad later. Since you won’t have IRB approval for the data you collect in these weeks, you can’t disseminate the research. But no doubt it will get all kinds of new ideas about your research by going through this process…. AND you’ll enjoy it!!!

I mentioned that you will need two things before you put in an application for IRB approval.

You must pass the CITI Training to be eligible. Just Click here!

http://www.grad.wisc.edu/research/hrpp/edirb/ed.TrainingAndEducation.htm

And you will go to this page. I’ve cropped it quite a bit so you ca see the text without the Hubble Telescope. It says “Take the UW-Madison CITI Human Subjects Protection Training for Education, Social & Behavioral Science Researchers” (what a mouthful!).

Once you’ve done that, you go to http://www.grad.wisc.edu/research/wkshop/index.html#onlinetraining

Now there’s a heck of a lot of er…. what’s the word….ummm… POOP on this page. But the part to pay attention to is CLICK here to Login to CITI .

 

You see? Then you get asked for a UW-Madison ID which you have. It’s the ­same as your wiscmail and MY UW ID and password. So after you click on that Yes button, you end up here:

I won’t talk you through the rest since at that point you’re in the training modules. Just follow directions. Try to enjoy it. A lot of the information really is interesting and important. Once you have passed the required modules you will magically be permitted to be on IRB applications. Sometimes the database takes time to recognize you. If this becomes a problem, just send the IRB a friendly e-mail explaining that you’ve taken and passed the required modules and will be doing research and your P.I. wants you to be in the database. Remember also that IRB is REQUIRED for your Ph.D. Thesis. After all, your thesis will be published and that counts as dissemination of research. Again, don’t fret about IRB. It’s really not the pain people make it out to be.

The next thing you need to be able to get IRB approval is a faculty member or UW Staff scientist to serve as P.I. (Primary Investigator). This does not HAVE to be your advisor but I strongly recommend that you talk to your advisor about all of the research you’re doing and all of the IRB applications you make. This is polite and it helps to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings. They basically will get the SUBMIT button that I showed in class and you, as a student, will not. This system is still fairly new and some faculty may not be used to it yet so you may have to be prepared to show them where it is. Again, it’s not hard once you get the hang of it.

Day Three:

I spent a bit of time on Thursday showing some examples of dissertations and dissertation proposals. I thought to do this because as you write for this course, I hope that you are able to “feed” your own dissertation. Having what I call a “master document” will help you do this. I will share the actual word document of one of the proposals I showed. Some special features I highlighted were (a) the front matter; (b) the automatically generated table of contents; (c) the sections of the manuscript that appear in the table of contents; (d) the literature review tables as appendices; (e) the glossary of terms; (f) the literature review map; (g) contact and document summary forms; (h) the interview protocol; (i) the coding scheme; (j) the IRB protocol informed consent form. I’m NOT saying that this is THE way to do dissertations. I’m not even saying that this is the way that YOU should do your dissertation. I’m just offering this as a guide for making your way through the somewhat mysterious process of preparing a dissertation.

Thanks Bander for bringing snacks on Wednesday and thanks Diana for bringing snacks on Thursday! Yum!

Final Project Presentations

Well… we’re coming down to the wire. here is the schedule for the final project presentations:

May 3rd	May 10th
Curtis	Bandar
Jonathan	Philip
Jieun	Christiane
Kristine	Emily
Rachel	Kyle
Sonia	Mei-Juen
Zaher	Tammy

Here AGAIN is a SAMPLE outline for your 20 page paper:

Introduction

What is this about?
Why should we care?
Generally speaking, what are you trying to explore about this concept?

Context

Why is the context of this study?
Who/ what is involved?

Methodology

What is grounded theory?
Why is it appropriate for this study?
What are the essential elements of grounded theory
What exactly did you do in this study for your analysis

Your concept (core category)

Elaborate the concept
Connect it to the literature

Discussion

Implications
Limitations
Directions for future research

References

Appendices

So that’s it for now everyone! See you Thursday and remember… “Stay Grounded!”

Resources for other Qualitative Methods

Grounded Theory Institute Home Page

This week, I want to spend some time talking about the Grounded Theory Community and about Qualitative Research more generally. For the Grounded Theory Community, I have to point you to the Grounded Theory institute: http://www.groundedtheory.com/

Basically I want to explore how grounded theory fits in to the broad tapestry of qualitative research. I also want to suggest some resources for learning more about other traditions of qualitative research.

The first resource I want to mention (somewhat sheepishly) is my own courses in qualitative research. This summer I’m teaching C&I 675: Case Study and Phenomenology in Educational Research (July 17^th – August 7^th) and in the Fall, there is C&I 719 Introduction to Qualitative Research course with Nancy Kendall which meets Tuesday and Thursdays 1:00-2:30.

The next resource is a list of books.

General works on Qualitative Research:

• Denzin, N. K. & Lincoln, Y. S. (2000). Handbook of qualitative research (2nd. ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA. Sage. I
  

  Handbook of Qualitative Research (2000)

  talked about this book in class and I included some chapters below. The chapters cover many of the traditions in qualitative research and the editors did a great job of choosing people who are well respected in these fields. Gloria Ladson-Billings from this department is one of the authors. Robert Stake is another who is well known for his work on the case study methodology. Kathy Charmaz who was a student of both Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss did the chapter on grounded theory and I think it is very good. This book is big, fat, and expensive but I think it’s excellent. There is a 3^rd edition out but I haven’t examined very carefully yet so I don’t know how it compares with the 2^nd edition.

• Schwandt, T. A. (1997). Qualitative inquiry: A dictionary of terms.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Like the title says, this is a dictionary of terms related to qualitative research. The author has an interest in philosophy so many philosophical terms are included that are helpful for dealing with those “ontological” or “hermeneutic” issues.
• Silverman, D. (2001). Interpreting qualitative data: Methods for analyzing talk, text and interaction (2^nd Edition). London: Sage.
• Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry.Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.This one is a bit of a classic now. It has a great section on validity in qualitative research.

• Glesne, C. (1999). Becoming qualitative researchers: An introduction (Second Edition ed.).New York: Longman.This is a fairly short book but it is an excellent introduction to qualitative methods.
• Creswell, J. W. (1994). Research design: Qualitative and quantitative approaches.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.John Creswell of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is a well respected methodologist who writes about how to design, conduct, and write up research in education. He is particularly interested in mixed methods approaches and he knows quantitative and qualitative paradigms very well. This particular book does a good job on understanding the use of theory to underpin research.
• Creswell, J. W. (2005). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (Second Edition). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.This is a text book on research in education. In 18 chapters, Creswell goes through all sorts of research design approaches breaking them down for the lay researcher. It includes many graphics and study questions which give it the feel of an undergraduate textbook but the quality and depth of the material should not be underestimated. The amount of material here could easily fill about four methodology courses (qualitative and quantitative) but there is a certain practicality about his work that I find refreshingly useful. Check this one out! Chapter 14 deals with grounded theory.
• Creswell, J. W. (2007). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.This popular book outlines (a) narrative research (b) ethnography (c) grounded theory (d) phenomenology and (d) case study traditions in qualitative research. Creswell does a good job of comparing these traditions and includes good examples of each in an appendix. Considering all that we’ve read in this course, I think you can skip the sections on grounded theory but the example in the back is very helpful. There is a 1998 version of this book that goes after “biography” rather than narrative research.

On Qualitative Data Analysis

• Miles, M. B. & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded Sourcebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.I mentioned this one in class. This book contains many tables and charts and examples that can be used to develop formal methods and procedures for qualitative analysis. It’s totally on the other end of the anal retentive spectrum from Glaser! J

• Janesick, V. J. (2004). Stretching exercise for qualitative researchers (2^nd Edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

On Case Study Research

• Merriam, S. B. (1988). Case study research in education: A qualitative approach. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Although primarily about the case study approach, this is an excellent introduction to qualitative research generally.

• Stake, R. E. (1995). The art of case study research.Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage.Stake and Yin are the ones to read on case study research.

• Yin, R.K. (1981a). ‘The case study as a serious research strategy’. Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization 3:97-114.
• Yin, Y.K. (1981b). ‘The case study crisis: Some answers’. Administrative Science Quarterly 26:58-65.

• Yin, R.K. (1983). The case study method: An annotated bibliography. Washington DC: COSMOS.
• Yin, R. K. (1989). Case study research: Design and methods (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

• Yin, R.K. (1993). Application of case-study research. Newbury Park CA: Sage.

On the philosophy of Qualitative Research:

• Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (2000). Paradigmatic controversies, contradictions, and emerging confluences. pp. 163-188 In N. K. Denzin & Yvonna Lincoln (Eds.) Handbook of qualitative research, second edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Interested in all that ontology, epistemology, and axiology stuff we talked about in class? Read this chapter in the big blue Handbook.
• Barab, S., Thomas, M., Dodge, T., Newell, M. & Squire, K. (2004). Critical design ethnography: Designing for change. Anthropology in Education, 35(2) 254-268.Shameless plug of my own work from when I was a graduate student. This is on doing ethnographic work in the service of the design of a technology-rich learning innovation for children. The methodology works to integrate a critical approach to research with traditional ethnography for the purpose of design.  
  

On Design-Based Research
Design-based research is an approach to research generally associated with the “Learning Sciences” community. This is a field that is sort of a cross between educational psychology and educational technology. People in the Learning Sciences are interested in designing, developing, and implementing technology-rich learning tools and environments and building theory about both learning and the process of doing this work. Findings from this research are then cycled back into the design process so as to further refine the work they do. They are interested in doing research in “real” contexts and so often favor qualitative methods such as observation, interviews and document analysis.

• Brown, A. L. (1992). Design experiments: Theoretical and methodological challenges in      creating complex interventions in classroom settings. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 2(2), 141-178.
• Brown, A. L. & Campione, J. C. (1996). Psychological theory and the design of innovative learning environments: On procedures, principles and systems.  In L. Schauble and R. Glaser (Eds.), Innovations in learning: New environments for education. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

The Properties of Grounded Theory

In class we have discussed other qualitative research methodologies and tried to draw similarities and differences with grounded theory. To do this, we first tried to list the “distinguishing characteristics” of grounded theory and then do the same for other methodologies such as case study research, ethnography, narrative inquiry, and phenomenology. Well… we didn’t really get to phenomenology. The point of this exercise is NOT to nurture orthodoxy. Rather it is to delimit the methodologies. This is the same sort of exercise we do in research when we are working to build categories. There are always platypus problems in such an exercise but categories can help us to compare and to see things that we wouldn’t see otherwise.

In this course, we have studied about the properties of grounded theory. A grounded theory study should have certain elements that make it a grounded theory study. We know that, among other things:

• there should be the inductive discovery of theory
• there should be no explicit, preformed theoretical framework
• there should be data
• there should be open and selective coding
• there should be memoing
• there should be constant comparative analysis
• there should be sorting
• there should be theoretical coding (we had a good discussion of this last time!)
• there should be an emergent core category
• there should be no literature review in advance

What we worked on last time was doing the same for other methodologies so that we could make comparisons. Part of this is also what I call the “neighborhood” of the methodology. Grounded theory came up in the nursing neighborhood. Its lineage is one from sociology and symbolic interactionism. It is grounded (rim shot) in what Charmaz calls “mid-century” positivistic empiricism. It is now firmly ensconced in the literature of qualitative research though Glaser insists any data may be used.

Ethnography, for example, hails from a somewhat different neighborhood and comes with different assumptions. An ethnographic study should have certain elements that make it an ethnographic study. We know that, among other things:

• there should be the writing of a culture or a culture sharing group
• there should be extended contact with the culture (usually participant observation)
• there should be extensive fieldwork
• there should be description or interpretation of a culture sharing group
• there should be a holistic cultural portrait incorporating both emic and etic perspectives
• there should be some troubling of the positionality of the researcher(s)

I don’t want to go very far in a discussion about ethnography because its not what the course is about and we haven’t read about it. Also I lack the expertise to do it well. But you can see how the differences emerge (rim shot) and thus we can get a clearer picture of these methodological traditions.

Remember the Goal of Grounded Theory

Remember that the goal of grounded theory is the generation of theory rather than testing hypotheses and the formation of theory as a conceptualized, integrated set of hypotheses. Unlike other research methods in the area of qualitative data analysis (QDA) that seek to provide “rich-thick description,” the goal in grounded theory is inductively building theory that has (a) fit, (b) workability, (c) relevance, and (d) modifiability (Glaser, 1998, pg. 18 – Doing Grounded Theory).

Fit means that the theory should match the substantive area from which it was derived. The conceptual theory should be valid in that it accounts for the patterned variation observed in the data. In the grounded theory approach, theory is not taken from pre-existing literature and is not just “thought up” by an arm chair theorist. Rather it is discovered in the data. While it is very common in the social sciences for researchers to bring a theoretical framework to the data and to use it as a lens to make sense of it, this is not done in grounded theory where fitness is earned through its relationship with the data. In this way, theory is GROUNDED in the data.

Workability means that the theory should function with explanatory and predictive power in the substantive area. It should explain how the main concern of the research participants is continually resolved. It must specify relevant properties, categories, and dimensions of the phenomenon.

Relevance means that the theory should be important to someone. It should be interesting and non-trivial. A good grounded theory has grab in that it grabs hold of the person who reads it or hears about it and compels them to offer their own personal examples or indicators of the theory. They can’t help but to engage in competitive parlance about it saying things like “Oh ! If you think you have good examples of that idea, just wait until you hear mine!” A grounded theory should be expressed in ways that are readily understandable to the layman. For a theory to be relevant and applicable, it must have significant relevance.

Modifiability means that the theory should be changeable so that it retains its validity and fit with data. No theory is permanently written in stone. Rather it is a somewhat tentative conceptual assertion that must be flexible, adaptable, and malleable. A theory is never right or wrong. It only has greater or lesser fit with data. Further, a grounded theory is informed by any related data. The theory must be able to change to fit the data and not visa versa.

It is also important to mention that a grounded theory must be abstracted from time, place and people. It must be non-particularistic and should have enough generality to be moved between contexts within a substantive area. A theory that has these characteristics will be powerful and useful and will be easily recognizable as such to researchers and practitioners alike.

Here AGAIN is a SAMPLE outline for your 20 page paper:

Introduction

What is this about?
Why should we care?
Generally speaking, what are you trying to explore about this concept?

Context

Why is the context of this study?
Who/ what is involved?

Methodology

What is grounded theory?
Why is it appropriate for this study?
What are the essential elements of grounded theory
What exactly did you do in this study for your analysis

Your concept (core category)

Elaborate the concept
Connect it to the literature

Discussion

Implications
Limitations
Directions for future research

References

Appendices

NVivo and other Qual Research Software

Well…. you may already know from our text that NVivo is sort of a play on words. It comes from the Latin phrase “In vivo” meaning “within the living.” NVivo has been around for a number of years now. I first used the qualitative research software NUD*IST in 1999. NUD*IST (Non numerical Unstructured Data Indexing Searching and Theorizing) was made by the same company that now makes NVivo, QSR (Qualitative Solutions and Research). NUD*IST was native to Mac and it was really a cool thing when it came out but if you had the icon on your desktop, you sometime had a little explaining to do! So Mike…. “What’s this nudist thing on your computer?” …sigh… Oh my.

QSR has a cute little Flash ditty on their webpage that explains qualitative research with four overlapping circles. QSR Director Gill Ereaut states, “Qualitative research has multiple focal points:  (1) What people say, (2) Mean, Need or Desire, (3) What People Do, and (4) Culture.

Qualitative "focal Points" on the QSR website

You can check it out along with the full on QSR sales pitch at: http://www.qsrinternational.com/what-is-qualitative-research.aspx

But all consumerism, technological messianicism and glorification of the technological sublime aside… QSR NVivo is a tool that many qualitative researchers have found useful in their analysis. As I emphasized in class though, please always remember that it is only a tool. It does NOT do your analysis for you. As a tool, it can only extend your reach. At the same time we must remember that all tools, a hammer, a termite fishing pole, a gun, a whatever… has affordances. This means that it has characteristics that encourage or engender certain types of use. If you were to put a red and yellow plastic bat on a playground populated by thirty 7-year-old boys, you can be sure that someone is going to get hit with that bat! I mentioned in class that one of my friends warned me against getting a sledgehammer. He said that since he got one he has just been searching for something to bash with it. I also mentioned that I think that guns seem to have an almost magical quality. On seeing one, it is just impossible not to want to handle it… to wield it… to fire it.

NVivo is no different in that you will find that it encourages or engenders certain types of uses. In this way, it encourages or engenders certain types of analyses and analytic behaviors. This is why I am very careful not to start coding with NVivo straight away. Too many people begin to think that coding is something that is supposed to be done electronically. In reality, it is the conceptual dimension of analysis that is important in research and NOT its particular mode or medium. NVivo is a piece of software and as such, the only way to really learn how to use it is to use it. Its capabilities should be discovered as you use it in situ and en vivo! I want to point out that there are many other software packages that have also been designed for qualitative research.

1. XSight (Also developed by QSR – http://www.qsrinternational.com/products_xsight.aspx)
2. ATLAS.ti (http://www.atlasti.com/) is another one that is also available to us here at the UW-Madison School of Education by way of SSCC (more on that in a minute).
3. Hyper Research –  I’ve tried and liked (http://www.researchware.com/products/hyperresearch.html)
4. The Ethnograph (http://www.qualisresearch.com/)
5. ALCESTE (Analyse Lexicale par Contexte d’un Ensemble de Segment de Texte) combines textual analysis with statistical modeling. A very powerful tool!
6. QDA Miner – Made by Provalis Research (http://www.provalisresearch.com/QDAMiner/QDAMinerDesc.html)
7. WordStat – Also made by Provalis Research (http://www.provalisresearch.com/wordstat/Wordstat.html)
8. Dedoose – This is a new one designed for mixed methods approaches.
   (http://www.dedoose.com/)
9. Scrivener – This is not really a qualitative research tool but it is a writing tool. What makes it interesting for us here is its ability to assist with sorting memos.
   (http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php)
10. Writer’s Café – Another writing tool. I really like this one!
    (http://www.writerscafe.co.uk/download.htm)

There are others and it is important to remember that other tools may be used that are not specifically designed for qualitative research. What these software packages do is allow users to create a database out of text. This creates a tree like structure that allows for the creation of nested categories. In class, I described these as baskets that are filled with stuff. The stuff in the baskets is text. Software is also very good at quantifying text. It can then tell you how much text is in a category and therefore allows for the quantitative comparison of categories. Once there is quantification, there can be statistical analysis. My dissertation data was analyzed using both NVivo for coding and percentage analysis of the text in the different categories and Excel for quantitative analysis of those categories. I have found that the use of software for qualitative analysis can make it quantification irresistible. I’m not sure about this, but see for yourself what you think. I’d love to discuss it.

NVivo and SSCC

The SSCC Splash Page

The UW-Madison School of Education has a great service called the SSCC… (Social Science Computing Cooperative). It is a server that allows users to log in remotely. By logging in the user’s computer becomes a dumb terminal and sees a new Windows desktop. Now going to the Start menu, the user has access to many software titles including NVivo and ATLAS.ti, two popular software packages for the analysis of qualitative data. In order to get access to the SSCI, you must contact Sabrina Checkai at MERIT. So anyways, the SSCC is a nice resource that you can get to from anywhere.

You have already read my chapter on technology rich tools for conducting grounded theory analysis but I still have to emphasize” Please be patient with this because it will take some time to make the technology into something that really works for us. It will have to “get out of the way” so that it because just as much of a tool as pen and paper for coding. Also remember remember remember that GT is NOT about coding. It is about naming patterns. It is about comparing incident to incident. Memoing is where the action is rather than in coding. NVivo has become quite a powerful tool and we will just scratch the surface. This summer, Audrey Trainor aatrainor@wisc.edu will offer a course specifically about the use of NVivo for qualitative research and I recommend it strongly. (I also recommend my course on Case Study and Phenomenology— pardon the plug!).

A couple hits. If you put a thumb drive in a computer and then connect to the SSCC, the thumb drive will mount and you will be able to have access to those files. BUT…there is an important caveat to this. You MUST give yourself access.  When you first get the SSCC remote desktop you will notice that if you try to access the thumb drive by double clicking on the MY Computer icon, you will meet with the dialogue box below. It says “A server application is requesting access to your local client files.”

Make sure that you grant FULL ACCESS. The default is No Access. If you click OK allowing Full Access, you will be able

Make sure to "grant access."

to get to your files on your thumb drive. Then you will be able to drag and drop files from your thumb drive to the SSCC desktop or to other folders. Remember to save your files, though, into the U: drive so that you will have access to those files later. If you leave them on the desktop, you will probably lose them.

A nice work around for this and that is to simply use the program Internet Explorer (IE). That will give you access to the internet and then you can get to your e-mail or MY Webspace so that they can get access to your files.

So the goal will be to get some textual data into NVivo and to start coding and memoing. Coding is accomplished by selecting text, right clicking on it and selecting code and new node or code at existing node. You can also code ‘en vivo’ which simply means that the same word(s) will be used for the code as you coded. When you create a new node or a new memo, you must give it a name and you may give it a description. I strongly recommend that you do this. Memos, you will remember, should be sortable and so you should name them in a way that will make them sortable. Once you have a good number of “free nodes” that you have created through your open coding process, you can collapse them into larger categories. “Tree Nodes” are those nodes that have other nodes in them. In this way you can create nested categories. In Grounded Theory, this approach is used to eventually generate a “Core Category” that becomes the focal point for the theory you build.

Right click to code.

In my technology courses there are some things I say a lot. One of them is “There are no problems. There are only opportunities to learn.” Using software is like using a foreign language or a musical instrument. It takes practice but it gets easier with time and you will soon be able not only to use NVivo but to use it creatively and in ways that are nuanced for their appropriateness to you research. NVivo is a powerful tool that can do many things and you should not feel frustrated if you don’t “get it” right away. I have been using MS Word just about every day for many years and I still learn more about what it can do all the time. As a general rule, I think it is better to learn it by using it rather than having someone show you all thing things it CAN do. I think it’s better to approach it with problems that you need solved and you then use the tool to solve those problems. In this way you discover its capabilities in a way that is situated and authentic. Don’t give up easily!

I hate to sound like a broken record, but “Use NVivo; But don’t let NVivo use you!” Beware of “tool fetish” and beware of using it just to use it. Beware also of its “affordances” and how they may get you think in a particular was about your data. When we coded the baseball interview with pen and paper, I didn’t have to explain anything about how to use pen and paper. We could focus on CONCEPTS. You want to get to that point with NVivo or whatever tool(s) you use in any of your analyses.