All posts by Sandra Mathison

Paths taken in research

January 23, 2013humour, research designSandra Mathison

This post from Houzz is a humourous depiction of the architectural design process, but the images speak just as well to the research process–from the ideal linear design to the far closer to reality alternative.

25th Annual Ethnographic & Qualitative Research Conference (EQRC)

January 21, 2013eventsSandra Mathison

Please consider submitting a proposal for a paper presentation at the 25th Annual Ethnographic & Qualitative Research Conference (EQRC). The proposal deadline is March 20, 2013. For more details, visit the conference website.

The keynote speaker at the conference is a very interesting choice, not the usual qual research personality. Here is the description of his address on the conference website:

Avoiding the Peril of Publishing Qualitative Scholarship in Predatory Journals
Jeffrey Beall, M.S.L.S.
Scholarly Initiatives Librarian
University of Colorado Denver

Publications have historically been the moorings of higher education. Journals, in particular, have served two invaluable purposes. One is to engage scholars as research and theories are generated and disseminated for debate, further exploration, peer-review, and replication. Additionally, journals serve as a permanent archive for scholarship so that future generations can historically trace research findings and paradigms, building from what is known and has come before.

Printed journals have been the longstanding mainstay for publishing in higher education. With the advent of the internet, however, some journal publishers have moved to new publishing models. Whether the shift is a boon or bane, of course, remains to be seen as the move is one currently in progress. As with many facets of higher education, it may prove in time to be some of both.

Within this context, Mr. Beall will present his current scholarship regarding one particular facet of the current open access publication movement: predatory journals. Due to the burgeoning nature of on-line journal publications, Mr. Beall will focus his presentations on publication companies, rather than on specific journals that propagate vanity publications. Among other scholars in this field, Mr. Beall has gained cogent notoriety for taking the steps of (a) comprising a list of publishers that he considers to be predatory and (b) generating criteria that he believes helps scholars to distinguish high quality from predatory journal publishing.

Qualitative researchers at all phases of their academic careers will find Mr. Beall’s presentation to be valuable (junior through senior faculty). Departments within institutions typically set criteria by which scholars earn tenure, promotion, and financial raises. These standards expect certain levels of academic rigor to be demonstrated by the respective faculty. Mr. Beall will help scholars to recognize on-line predatory journals, differentiating them from those of advanced quality. Any participant who someday will serve on tenure & promotion committees, or participate in similar departmental processes involving peer-evaluation, will find the presentation particularly useful.

Qualitative researchers sometimes find it challenging to locate journals without biases toward scholarship that does not specifically apply the traditional scientific method. Mr. Beall will help conference participants, however, avoid the temptation trap of succumbing to predatory journals. The so-called green and gold models of open access may someday become the way of future publication, according to some academic futurists, and current qualitative scholars must be adequately informed regarding the issues, making good current publication decisions in a field that is rapidly changing.

The conference is affordable and centrally-located in Ohio, making it readily accessible to all by driving or flying. Note that all interactive poster and lecture presentation conference papers are invited for submission, review, and potential publication in a printed, peer-reviewed periodical, the Journal of Ethnographic & Qualitative Research (JEQR).

Researching the virtual world

January 20, 2013ethics, methodology, methods, technologySandra Mathison

The explosion of social media has opened a new space in which human interaction and social life unfold, and perhaps are differently constructed. As the social world goes digital, social scientists are challenged to adapt research methodologies and methods to this new space, one where thousands and possibly millions of people interact.

A literature that provides guidance on how to do research in growing and includes books like:

Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online by Robert V Kozinets
Internet Inquiry: Conversations About Method, edited by Annette N. Markham & Nancy K. Baym

And journals devoted especially to the topic:

A key consideration in research in this new space are ethical issues of privacy, consent, and research participants’ rights. Some references that deal with these issues are:

Banks, W. and M. Eble, 2007, Digital Spaces, Online Environments, and Human Participant Research: Interfacing with Institutional Review Boards, in Digital Writing Research: Technologies, Methodologies, and Ethical Issues, H. McKee and D. DeVoss (eds.), Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, pp. 27–47.
Brown, R. & Gregg, M. (2012). The pedagogy of regret: Facebook, binge drinking and young women. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 26 (3): 357-369.
Buchanan, E. A. and Zimmer, M., Internet Research Ethics, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition).
Burden, K., Shuck, S., & Aubusson, P. (2012). M-Research: Ethical issues in researching young people’s use of mobile devices. Youth Studies Australia, 31 (3): 17-26.
Morrow, V. (2008). Ethical dilemmas in research with children and young people about their social environments, Children’s Geographies, 6 (1): 49-61.
Zimmer, M. (2010). “But the data is already public”: On the ethics of research in Facebook. Ethics and Information Technology, 12 (4): 313-325.

EPSE 595 Syllabus W2 2012-13

January 3, 2013UncategorizedSandra Mathison

EPSE 595 W2 2012

Language matters

December 13, 2012big abstract ideas, narrative inquirySandra Mathison

For an ongoing discussion of the way language matters, check out The Little Blue Blog, a compilation of brief analyses of how issues about public policy are framed, especially as undergirded by particular conceptions of democracy. Bloggers George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling describe the blog:

The Little Blue Blog is a continuation of The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic. The book addressed a problem that progressives face everywhere: conservatives have framed just about every issue in conservative moral terms. Progressives all too often find themselves stuck with using conservative language and ideas, which reinforces those ideas even in arguing against them. The Little Blue Book tells how to get out of the trap. Use the progressive moral system you believe in. This is about much more than words. Words mean things. You need to say what you believe and what is true. Progressive communication is democratic communication. It requires that you be transparent, authentic, honest, and strong if your fellow citizens are to trust you. This is advice for all citizens, not just our leaders.

In a description called ‘framing the issues’ Lakoff & Wehling give a short lesson in frames… the ways in which ideas are clumped together so that things make sense to us. In particular, “Frames are structured in a hierarchy. To understand a kitchen, you have to understand food preparation and eating. In politics, the highest frames are moral frames. The reason is that all politics is moral: political leaders propose policies because they are right — not because they are wrong or don’t matter. All policies, therefore, have a moral basis.” As such, ‘facts’ and ‘logic’ have significantly less purchase then we think in determining what and how we believe and think.

This blog is a continuation of The Little Blue Book, and both are meant to school Democrats and progressives on how to use language and frames more effectively within public discourse about policy issues. Lakoff & Wehling follow their own advice in this discourse by making their own moral frames the basis for their discussion.

Sage advice on recording & transcribing equipment

December 5, 2012data analysis, technologySandra Mathison

The following from my UBC colleague Steven Talmy:

For multiparty talk such as that in focus group interviews, I find it best to use both a DVD recorder for picture and a high quality digital audio recorder. The video, though optional, can help with gesture/gaze/proxemics and so on, while the audio recorder provides the primary data source for transcription. Any DVD recorder can provide picture; for audio, I’ve found it’s better to spend a bit more for good quality. I have been super happy with my Roland Edirol R-09HR, though I don’t think they’re still making them. Something like the Zoom H4n looks like it would be a good replacement.

You upload your audio files from SD card to your PC/Mac, save the master, and work with a duplicate file for transcription. I’ve used several transcription applications… For audio, I use Audacity for microanalysis (freeware). For less fine-grained audio transcription, Express Scribe is great (freeware). I use a footpedal with Express Scribe, along the lines of this one: .

Other options for audio transcription apps: Adobe Audition: (pricey!!); F4 audiotranscription: (freeware); Sound Writer and Voice Walker (freeware; but old apps); Transcriber AG: (freeware).

There’s also Dragon Naturally Speaking, which is a talk-to-text application, but it’s not great for interview transcription (you have to listen to your audio file, repeat what it said on it, which DNS then transcribes… and with the latest versions of DNS (11 and 12), there are some unresolved problems with Word integration).

If you wind up wanting to do video transcription, then Transana is in my experience the best out there ($50).

the power of metaphors

December 3, 2012big abstract ideas, metaphors, publicationsSandra Mathison

We are, of course, aware of the power of metaphors, but we often simplistically believe that we choose the metaphors we use rather than them being embedded within metaphors that are so deep (and often simple) that we misunderstand their power and their hegemony. Lakoff and Johnson have provided an excellent analysis of this idea in Metaphors We Live By and Lakoff has contributed significantly to our understanding of the role of metaphors in public policy and discourse, often employed by the media and politicians.

In an editorial on the fiscal cliff, Lakoff illustrates the ways the fiscal cliff metaphor is constructed through other more deeply held metaphors. Here is an excerpt:

Let’s take a look at the metaphorical complexity of “fiscal cliff” and how the metaphors that comprise it fit together. The simplest, is the metaphor named MoreIsUp, which is a neural circuit linking two distinct brain regions, one for verticality and one for quantity. It is a high-level general metaphor widespread throughout the world, and occurs in a vast number of sentences like “turn the radio up,” “the temperature fell,” and so on.

The economy is seen as moving forward and either moving up, moving down or staying level, where verticality metaphorically indicates the value of economic indicators like the GDP or a stock market average. These are indicators of economic activity such as overall spending on goods and services or the sale of stocks. Why is economic activity conceptualized as motion? Because a common conceptual metaphor is being used: ActivityIsMotion, as in sentences like “The project is moving along smoothly,” “The remodeling is getting bogged down,” and so on. The common metaphor TheFutureIsAhead accounts for why the motion is “forward.”

In a diagram of changes over time in a stock market or the GDP, the metaphor used is ThePastIsLeft and TheFutureIsRight, which is why the diagram goes from left to right when the economy is conceptualized as moving “forward.”

When Ben Bernanke spoke of the “fiscal cliff,” he undoubtedly had in mind a graph of the economy moving along, left to right, on a slight incline and then suddenly dropping way down, which looks like a line drawing of a cliff from the side view. Such a graph has values built in via the metaphor GoodIsUp. Going down over the cliff is thus bad.

The administration has the goal of increasing GDP. Here common metaphors apply: SuccessIsUp and FailingIsFalling. Hence going over the fiscal cliff would be a serious failure for the administration and harm for the populace.

These metaphors fit together tightly in the usual graph of changes in economic activity over time, together with the metaphorical interpretation of the graph. From the neural perspective, these metaphors form a tightly integrated neural cascade — so tightly integrated and so natural that we barely notice them, if we notice them at all.

What is equally important about Lakoff’s illustration is that one metaphor, especially one built on more deeply cognitively embedded metaphors, cannot be easily replaced (if at all) by an alternate metaphor.

Street Ethnography

November 12, 2012field notes, image based research, importance of place, methodology, publications, research examples, technologySandra Mathison

Street ethnography is an emerging research approach that focuses on public exterior spaces… sidewalks, parks, neighbourhood spaces. Both the ethnographer and the ethnographic participants are moving through these public spaces and so are engaged with each other in informal ways as both use these spaces in a fairly equal way. The tools for street ethnographers include neighbourhood walks, going along with ethnographic participants, and photography.

A good illustration of street ethnography is, Urban Fieldnotes, a mash-up of research and street style blogging. Blogger Brent Luvaas, a visual and cultural anthropologist & Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Drexel University, describes Urban Fieldnotes this way…

Urban Fieldnotes is a street style blog documenting fashion, style, and dress on the streets of Philadelphia and beyond. It is also a blog about street style blogging, an experiment in auto-ethnographic research and open-source fieldwork that is part of an ongoing project entitled “Street Style 2.0: New Media and the New Politics of Fashion.”

His research project is connected to the rise of street style fashion blogging as a form of amateur ethnography that challenges prevailing modes of expertise in the fashion world. Just to make sure you know this is research, he also says…

Your comments and suggestions are welcome, but please note that any comments posted to this blog may be used in future presentations and publications, both print and digital, by Brent Luvaas.

Street style blogs are plentiful, but perhaps one of the mostly widely read is The Sartorialist, but Luvaas provides a long list of street style blogs from around the globe. Others he might have included are Advanced Style, which focuses specifically on ‘older folks’ and Bill Cunningham’s work for the NY Times. And there are an increasing number of models come street style bloggers, like Hanneli Mustaparta and Christine Reehorst.

There isn’t much written about street ethnography, although R. Weppner’s 1977 Street ethnography: Selected studies of crime and drug use in natural settings is a good resource, if you can get your hands on it.

Using film clips for teaching

October 28, 2012big abstract ideas, image based research, representation, research examplesSandra Mathison

The Sociological Cinema is a website of film clips that can be incorporated into teaching about a wide range of sociological topics. Videos are usually available on YouTube or some other site and might be clips from popular TV shows/movies, or made specifically as videos on a topic.

The site has a search function, and you can submit suggestions for videos, resources and assignments to be added to the site. Just a couple examples are:

Cultural jamming…

Norm breaching…

There isn’t a huge amount of content on the site yet, but it has a lot of potential.

Clever visual representation of FB data

October 11, 2012data analysis, technology, UncategorizedSandra Mathison

While I’m not sure exactly how this translates to research or evaluation, this display of the spread of an ‘idea’ (more accurately a Facebook post of Marvin the Martian) is interesting and compelling. Having recently struggled with meaningful ways to present social network data to project staff this makes me wonder if there are similar animated ways to illustrate the nature and evolution of SNA maps.

Qualitative Research Cafe

Food for thought on interpretive and critical research approaches