Category Archives: methods

creating data using theoretical ideas

This example illustrates how methods can be informed by a theoretical connection, and can lead to creative data collection. The key, of course, is the soundness of the theoretical connection upon which the method is based.

As part of a large research project in Chicago, Professor Sampson walked through different neighborhoods this summer, dropping stamped, addressed envelopes to see how many people would pick up an apparently lost letter and mail it, a sign that looking out for others is part of the community’s culture.

In some neighborhoods, like Grand Boulevard, where the notorious Robert Taylor public housing projects once stood, almost no envelopes were mailed; in others researchers received more than half of the letters back. Income levels did not necessarily explain the difference, Professor Sampson said, but rather the community’s cultural norms, the levels of moral cynicism and disorder.

Read more about this in a discussion of the cultural of poverty and at the website for the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods.

Storymapping

Using a combination of GIS technology and social science, there are strategies being developed to connect narrative to place.

Some of this work is being supported by the Center for Digital Storytelling with a project called UR Hear that integrates urban research, storymapping, community-based service learning, and asset-based approaches to community development.

An example of using GIS for doing local history is the Cedar Cottage Virtual Walking Tour created by the high school students at Gladstone Secondary In Vancouver, BC. The project uses Google Maps to create an historical and current picture of what the Cedar Cottage neighbourhood has been and is–clicking on a marker on the Google map takes you to historical photos and descriptions of places, interviews with current residents and business owners, and results of community surveys.

Self-awareness and fieldwork

Because fieldwork depends on the researcher as instrument, developing a sense of self is important for a variety of reasons. First, understanding the unchangeable attributes one brings to fieldwork is useful–things like the impact of gender, race, ethnicity, and religious beliefs. Second, monitoring your reaction to places, people and interactions may be key to identifying both over and under sampling within the research context. Third, using your own feelings, thoughts, reactions may be a pathway to developing an empathetic stance in the research context.

I have found Alan Peshkin’s notion of subjective “I”s useful. Take a look at In Search of Subjectivity.