Abstract
Abstracts, Concurrent Sessions: Listed alphabetically by first author
Decolonizing the Research: Decolonizing the Self
Jennifer Ajandi
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto
This paper will critically review the research methods I have used/am using for my doctoral degree, exploring the barriers and facilitators for single mother students in universities. Although most research in this area has been conducted in the United States, it has also focused on single mothers in connection with the welfare state. The findings from my study indicate more relevance to issues such as a lack of affordable childcare, experiences of violence, difficulties in the court system, and stigma associated with single mother status.
The methods chapter cannot be inserted as a separate entity excluded from the rest of the analysis in the dissertation. Instead, it must be interwoven throughout all stages of the work as my research is as much about the “how” of the study as it is about the findings.
Four main tenets will be explored that have informed this study: self-determination, participation, action, and reflexivity. These tenets are representative of anticolonial, feminist, and participatory methodologies, which serve to disrupt embedded power differences between the researcher and the participant. To ensure self-determination pertaining to how women's stories are explored, I have presented the option for single mother students to choose between participating in an individual or group interview. In terms of decolonizing the self, particular emphasis will be placed upon the fluid and fixed social identities and experiences of the researcher and participants, which result in the positioning of the researcher as both insider and outsider.
Conducting a “Blind Study”: Issues Related to Visualization in Researching Persons with Visual Impairment
Nitsan Almog
Bar Ilan University
This presentation will address the following ethical and methodological issues arising from a study of academic and social adjustment of university students with visual impairment.
Interview techniques. While interviewing sighted people, many visual cues are used by the interviewer unconsciously: facial expressions, smiles, nodding, and other gestures. When interviewing a person who is blind or visually impaired, the interviewer must pay attention to the fact that this visual information is lost and find other techniques, most of them verbal, to fill this gap.
Use of visual terms. Everyday language includes many visual terms and concepts, like “watch,” “look,” or “stare.” People with visual impairment also use these terms in their language, but it is important to understand them in the way the speaker means. For example, one of my participants said, “Just getting that smile in the morning means a lot.”
Ethics of observations. Observations are a well accepted form of qualitative data collection, but when it comes to researching persons with visual impairment, an ethical question arises. If the research purpose is to describe the reality of people with visual impairment as they experience it, using observations is problematic. If the researcher wishes to discuss or report to a participant on information collected through observations a gap is opened between the researches and the participant, with a possible unfair advantage for the researcher.
The presentation will draw on illustrative examples from the data. Recommendations for research practice will be derived from the analysis.
‘Moving Out of Method’: Working Inclusively with Service Users to Create Change
Janet Balfour
Wilfrid Laurier University
Shoshana Pollack
Wilfrid Laurier University
The field of social science has placed increasing emphasis on how research and policy methods should be designed to support the goals of service user involvement, empowerment and social justice. Yet, there has been little critical debate about whether the use of participatory methods supports either a social justice or empowerment agenda. Despite the recent questioning of participatory methodological rhetoric, there is an urgent need to critically explore both the oppressive and productive performance of power within participatory practices. While acknowledging there are no innocent methods can offer an important critical first step, participatory research discourse must move beyond methodological debate to explore the performance of research relationships. By listening to, and examining, experiences of the researched we can begin an alternative critical dialogue about the promised transformative potential of participatory practice. This presentation provides an overview of findings from a qualitative evaluation of the experience(s) of service users who were engaged in a two year participatory policy research and development process to create the City of Toronto Drug Strategy. Initial findings indicate that the participants were positively affected by their experience(s) and also offer critical insights into the unique challenges and/or barriers of working collaboratively with diverse community stakeholders. The service users offer alternative constructions of inclusion/exclusion and the performance of power within participatory practice, while working beyond method to seek positive social change.
Design Matters in Focus Group Research
Rosaline Barbour
University of Dundee
Although focus groups are sometimes employed as a “method of last resort,” they do not necessarily afford the economies that researchers (and funders) might imagine. It is argued that investing time and effort in attending to design issues is key to getting the most out of using focus groups. It views focus groups as “structured eavesdropping” and makes a case for the enormous benefits that can be reaped through addressing the twin components of research design (the structure) and effective moderating, listening and interpreting (facilitating and making effective use of spontaneous discussion).
Design matters covered include the concept of purposive sampling, second stage or wildcard sampling, the constant comparative method, grounded theory, saturation, and theoretical generalizability. It is argued that focus groups, if employed thoughtfully, can provide unique insights, harnessing the comparative - and, hence, analytic - potential of qualitative methods in order to produce theorized explanations that integrate the ‘micro’ and the ‘macro’.
A critical appreciation of the use of focus groups throws into sharp focus some of the perennial dilemmas and challenges involved in doing qualitative research. Debates about the use of focus group methods illuminate fundamental issues concerning appropriate research topic, framing of research questions, matters of epistemology and methodology, politics, ethics, reflexivity, and representation. The presentation will conclude by outlining some of these ongoing challenges and future potential.
The Application of DICTION to Qualitative Content Analysis Research in Health Service Management
Matthias Beck
University of York
Sally Brown
University of York
Russell Mannion
University of York
This paper reports on a 2-year research project exploring the role and effectiveness of public private partnership in the U.K. primary care sector. The study is based on more than 40 interviews with a range of different stakeholders involved in procurement and project management with eight primary care trusts. These stakeholders held widely divergent views about the nature of the partnerships that had been established between the respective National Health Service organizations and their private sector partners. Using Child and Faulkner's (1998) classificatory scheme of strategic alliances (synergy, segregation, domination, and breakdown), the authors investigate which cultural factors the stakeholders believe to have given rise to the particular set of relationships in their organizations.
The study relies on a two stage process where samples of interviews are analyzed initially via the computer-aided content analysis program DICTION to identify the predominant characteristics of the relationship as viewed by the interviewees. In the second stage of the analysis, individual interviews within different types of strategic alliances are combined and reanalyzed to identify latent factors that have given rise to the stakeholders' differential attitudes toward their organization (using linguistic subcategories such as ambivalence, satisfaction, inspiration, blame, accomplishment, present concern). The study highlights how a combination of qualitative, quantitative and textual research methods can contribute to deeper and richer understanding of the factors that shape, facilitate, or impede organizational collaboration within public-private partnerships.
The Use of Electronic Dialogue as a New Direction in Data Collection and Analysis
Helen Biblehimer
Mansfield University, Pennsylvania
As electronic technology has advanced, there has been a dramatic increase in online advanced nursing degree programs, which, in turn, has resulted in new opportunities for data collection and analysis. The purpose of this oral presentation is to explore a novel use of dialogue, from communication between students participating in an informal discussion board, as data for analysis in a research study. As online courses rely on the written word as a means of communicating knowledge, feelings, and emotions, it is a natural progression for researchers to seek to apply hermeneutic phenomenology research techniques to this data. Normally the phenomenological-hermeneutic approach might use text from published documents to gain insight into a phenomena of interest, but using personal communication which was intended for another purpose is a novel way to discover themes about online teaching.
A study of the experience of graduate nursing students communication on two informal discussion boards, Helping Each Other and By the Water Cooler, will be used to demonstrate the efficacy of the use of this type of data. Paul Ricoeur's interpretive approach to hermeneutic phenomenology will be discussed, and its relevance to the use of data generated for another purpose will be explored. Examples will be given of how this novel data source can be used and interpreted to understand the phenomenon of engaging in an online course in qualitative nursing research.
How Did I Get from Structural Equation Modeling to Axial Coding?: Lessons Learned in Qualitative Methods/Analysis from a Grounded Theory Study of Male Batter Support Groups
Bruce Bidgood
University of Northern British Columbia
What started as positivistic research on the characteristics of treatment group attendees was transformed at the hand of emergent design into a grounded theory study of the processes used by male abusers to construct/deconstruct more positive social images. The paper chronicles the author's frequently ambivalent methodological journey as he learns to convince himself of the epistemological value of naturalistic inquiry; focus the inquiry as process, not outcome; establish strategies to enhance trustworthiness; develop analytic techniques; and convey the products of the inquiry. Particularly instructive is the author's use of structural equation modeling as a figurative illustration of not only the observed change processes but, more broadly, for the teaching of qualitative data analysis. The utility of this selective coding metaphor is illustrated in the elaboration of a substantive theory of image transformation which is grounded in the discourses of male batterers and systematically related to the literature on stigma, deviance theory, linguistic accounts, and group identity transformation. The potential of the theory to serve as a formal grounded theory of image restoration for other negatively labeled populations is also explored. The lessons learned from this case study for the conduct, teaching, and supervision of naturalistic inquiry are discussed.
What Methods to Teach Qualitative Methods? Some Experiences at the Undergraduate and Postgraduate Level in Italy
A. Claudio Bosio
Universita' Cattolica, Milan
Guendalina Graffigna
Universita' Cattolica, Milan
On the basis of their teaching experiences at the undergraduate (master's) and postgraduate (PhD school) level, in this paper the authors propose a specific strategy to train novice researchers in qualitative methods.
As qualitative research is “multi” (paradigms, theories, methods, techniques …), novice qualitative researchers need to understand that doing qualitative projects is an ongoing process where the researcher continuously makes the best choice (combination) possible among different technical-methodological opportunities. In other words, a qualitative research project is an ongoing process that need to be reconfigured at each step of the study implementation. On the basis of these premises, the authors propose the introduction of two methodological concepts, that are pivotal in this logic:
the concept of “theory of theory” (the comparative process by which we make choices regarding qualitative methods and we analyze implication throughout the research design), and
the concept of “theory of technique” (the analysis of how all the tactical choices embedded in (or supporting) the findings production strategies influence the results of a qualitative research.
Waiting in Relational Spaces: Negotiating Research Relationships in Narrative Inquiry
Vera Caine
University of Alberta
Andrew Estefan
University of Calgary
Relationships are central to our work as narrative inquirers. The literature offers much direction for researchers about how to fulfill our obligations to participants, but it says little about the effects on researchers and the research process when we cannot connect with our participants. As narrative inquirers we are aware that the nature of our relationships cannot be predicted at the outset of our research puzzle, and in this lie some of the murkiest and most subtle ethical matters of narrative research (Josselson, 2007). While acknowledging the “possibility of temporariness” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) and the tenuousness of our relationship with participants, we also find ourselves caught in the tensions and trepidations that live in the moments and times of waiting to connect with our research participants.
Reflecting on our experiences, we find ourselves with many wonders: How do we respect the other in the moments of waiting? Who owns the spaces of waiting? Who are we waiting for? And who matters in the moments of waiting? Whose story do we tell when reflecting on these moments? For us the questions that often live amidst the waiting spaces are fraught with wonders about our abilities, our tentative and at times uncertain connections, about the privilege to enter stories of a life unfolding. In this presentation we will draw our attention to the silences and the questions that live in the moments of waiting for our research participants and to the importance of dialogue and our relational responsibilities.
Consensus Development Methods: What Is the Role of Qualitative Research?
Lynn Calman
University of Manchester
Caroline Carlisle
University of Manchester
Tracy Ibbotson
University of Glasgow
Andrea Nelson
University of Leeds
This presentation will explore the contribution of qualitative research to consensus development methods. Consensus methods are increasing being used in health care, particularly in the development of clinical guidelines; they can also be used in the research context to involve stakeholders in research. Common approaches to consensus are the Delphi method and the nominal group technique.
In 2004 the practice education facilitator (PEF) role was established in Scotland to ensure that student nurse/midwife practice experience is of the highest quality, primarily through the support of clinical mentors. The project team were commissioned by NHS Education for Scotland to conduct a 3-year evaluation (2005–2008) of the implementation of this role. The overall design was impact evaluation, including the use of case studies, and involved both quantitative and qualitative approaches.
During the project two consensus conferences were used. At the first, to reach consensus on key criteria for the choice of case study sites, trigger presentations were used to generate free discussion in small groups. This discussion was audio taped and analyzed thematically. A second group session further developed this discussion by identifying priorities, and a voting procedure was used to develop consensus on the key criteria. The second consensus conference gathered opinion on the implications of study findings and facilitated agreement on potential recommendations for the future.
We will highlight the contribution of focus group discussion to the development of consensus and indicate the strengths and limitations of involving stakeholders in project development and the interpretation of findings.
Qualitative Research with NVivo: Between New Opportunities to Explore and Risks to Be in Distress
Stephanie Chasserio
ESC Lille Business School of Management
Emmanuel Baudoin
ESC La Rochelle
In this paper, we focus on the software NVivo. Its capacity to follow and to support the user in his analytic and reflection process is the main quality of this software. This communication will present the learning outcomes from two doctoral projects conducted with NVivo. The first research has been conducted in Montreal with 88 extensive semistructured individual interviews. The focus of the second research is the commitment determinants of workers in the context of e-learning at work. The data have been collected through several qualitative methods.
In this paper, we share our learning outcomes concerning the use of this software and explain how our research process has been enriched by the use of this tool. We also highlight the difficulties that we met and to share our doubts. We outline the problem of coding and the temptation to go further in depth. Indeed, the possibility of micro coding could represent a danger for the researcher who can lose time and his initial object, seduced by the micro coding. Moreover, we stress the fantastic possibilities of NVivo concerning the analysis and the right to test ideas, but there are side effects to this flexibility. Through this paper, we highlight how these CAQDAS are powerful and helpful tools. But in the same time, researchers could be seduced by the possibilities of the tool and forget what is most important, the results of their research.
“I Weave My Own Fabric”: Narratives of Women Suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia Syndrome
Adi Finkelstein
Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
The essence of my study is the pain and the fatigue of women suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia syndrome. Using their own unique language, the women protest against their exclusion from the conventional social and political discourse, not merely about their disease but also concerning the accepted definitions of their character traits and their lives as women.
The evidence in this study is derived form extensive 4 years of field work, consisting of 30 in-depths unstructured interviews mostly with women and participating in conferences of the Israeli CF and Fibromyalgia Society. The theoretical underpinnings of the study are derived from the field of medical anthropology, as well as from modern feminist theories in whose subject is the body.
Suffering from a chronic disease myself, I regard reflexivity as a major study tool in my research. Whenever I considered it constructive and useful to the interpretation of my interviewees' narratives, I also introduced my own experiences as a patient as well as a women. Even though this choice can be criticized, I believe it has made the unique interpretation of my study. I also join these women in their subversive stance and question existing theories prevalent both in medical anthropology and in feminist discussion. “I must be willing to stand beside them, not to speak for them but to speak for myself with them. This, I believe, is the first principle of a post positivist research ethic,” answers Ruth Linden to the question, “Is this Sociology?” (1993, p. 1).
Phenomenological Research in the Cognitive Sciences: Interdisciplinary Methods for Interdisciplinary Sciences
Denis Francesconi
University of Trento
Shaun Gallagher
University of Central Florida
For the past few years we have witnessed the birth of a new interdisciplinary scientific field that integrates phenomenology, cognitive science, and neuroscience (e.g., embodied cognitive science). These three different approaches have in common theoretical and empirical aims, and they use both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The insights developed in such interdisciplinary studies can be applied in several disciplines like philosophy, anthropology, psychology, psychiatry, medical science, sociology and education.
Despite the historical but at least partially unfounded mutual distrust of third-person science by the phenomenologists, and of first-person phenomenology by the scientists, numerous works in the recent literature positively connect phenomenology and cognitive sciences. We present and discuss some of them here and show that from this interdisciplinary mixture of qualitative and quantitative researches one can define the specific and fundamental role of the first-person perspective for the study of subjective experience, consciousness, self, and other topics. We review three different approaches used in this interdisciplinary research: (a) neurophenomenology (Lutz & Thompson, 2003; Varela, 1996), (b) qualitative phenomenological research in the context of cognitive sciences (Petitmengin, 2006), and (c) “frontloaded” phenomenology, i.e., phenomenologically informed experimental design (Gallagher, 2003; Gallagher & Sorensen, 2006).
We argue that the use of phenomenology in cognitive sciences, including cognitive neuroscience, not only holds promise for advancing research in those fields but also presents an opportunity for the development of a new understanding of phenomenology.
The Use of Arts in Health Care Research: A Systematic Review of the Literature
Kimberly Fraser
University of Alberta
Fatima Al Sayah
University of Alberta
Arts are and always have been one of the most powerful means for expression and communication. The integration of the arts in the health care realm started with the use of certain artistic endeavors primarily for therapeutic purposes; however, with the advancement of qualitative research and qualitative methods in the recent years, art-based methods have been integrated in health care research primarily for knowledge production (KP) and knowledge translation (KT). In this review, we searched the literature for research-based studies that involved the use of art-based methods for either KP or KT. Our searches revealed 25 studies that met the inclusion criteria, and thus were included in this review after we assessed their quality. We present the characteristics and the findings of these studies. We also introduce the different artistic methods used in these studies—visual (photographs and drawings), literary (poetry), and performance arts (theatre)—and the nonartistic methods that are usually used in conjunction with art-based methods (interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, and others). We discuss the usage of these artistic methods as data collection and knowledge dissemination tools. Further, we discuss these usages within two frameworks; participatory research and the diffusion of innovation knowledge translation theory. Additionally, we present the limitations in using artistic methods in qualitative research, and particularly, we focus on the challenges in the analysis of artistic data. Finally, based on the findings in the studies in this literature review, we present recommendations on the use of arts in health care research.
Mixed-Method Understandings of Family Member Satisfaction with End-of-Life Care
Laura Funk
University of Victoria
Kelli Stajduhar
University of Victoria
Elizabeth Causton
University of Victoria
In this presentation, we discuss the opportunities and challenges we faced in conducting a mixed-method study of family member satisfaction with end of life care. Initially, the study was quantitative: 388 bereaved family members completed questionnaires regarding their perceptions of the quality of care received by the dying family member. However, many participants contacted us to communicate that there was more they wanted to say, and/or that the survey did not allow them to express the complexity of their experience. In response, we conducted in-person qualitative interviews with 24 bereaved family member participants.
One of our goals was to help better understand the quantitative findings (e.g., specific survey responses were used to facilitate discussion with participants, seeking clarification). More broadly, we sought better understanding of the complexity of evaluations of care, to which some family members referred. Notably, whereas some family members reported satisfaction in their survey responses, open-ended accounts revealed more nuanced and generally more negative particular experiences; they also suggested that satisfaction is best understood in a contextual and holistic way. In this presentation we emphasize the opportunities that the different methods provided for our understanding of family satisfaction, the strategies we used in the analysis, as well as the challenges we faced as we sought to integrate and/or juxtapose the findings in the analysis and presentation phases of the study. Throughout the presentation, we will refer to the existing literature on mixed methods.
Caregiving Together: Synergy on the Journey to a Good Death—A Theory to Guide Practice in Palliative/End-of-Life Care
Susan Golembeski
Baptist Health South Florida
The Palliative Care Steering Council at Baptist Health South Florida (BHSF) identified a need to improve end-of-life care in our hospitals for the culturally diverse community we serve. A qualitative research study was conducted and the emergent theory used to inform curriculum development for a Palliative Care Education Program.
Grounded theory methodology was used. The basic social process, facilitating death and providing end-of-life care in an intercultural hospital setting, was investigated. The purposive sample consisted of 52 racially and ethnically diverse people; 26 participants were health care providers from our healthcare system. Eight different health care roles were represented. Twenty-six participants were community members, defined for this study as someone who had a loved one die in one of our hospitals. More than 20 ethnicities were represented. Qualitative interview data were transcribed and analyzed per techniques of grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Data collection and analysis occurred simultaneously and continued until saturation. The core category that emerged from the data is, Caregiving Together: Synergy on the Journey to a Good Death. The three subcore categories are Expecting Differences and Learning, Accepting Differences and Accommodating, and Respecting Differences and Supporting.
Findings from this study offer insight into the complex process of caring for someone who is dying in an intercultural hospital setting. The theory acts to guide practice in Palliative/end-of-life care and is thread through the blended learning Palliative Care Education Program at BHSF. More than 1,700 health care providers have successfully completed the program. Evaluation of the program will begin in January 2010.
A Comprehensive Community-Based HIV Stigma Reduction and Wellness Enhancement Intervention
Minrie Greeff
North-West University
Annamarie Kruger
North-West University
Over the past 5 years a group of researchers was involved in a study entitled Perceived AIDS Stigma: a Multinational African Study. The aim of the planned study is to test the effectiveness of a comprehensive community-based HIV stigma reduction and wellness enhancement intervention, the effect this will have on PLHA, and the community's mental health level as well as the HIV-related health behavior of this specific group of PLHA.
Both qualitative and quantitative methodologies will be used for this study in a mixed-methods embedded design. A qualitative single-system cohort case design as well as a quantitative single-system design with a pretest and four repetitive posttest measures on a 4-monthly basis over 16 months will be followed. Both urban and rural settings will be included as samples. Purposive voluntary sampling followed by snowball sampling will be used.
At the onset of the contact with PLHA and the PLC a pretest of the quantitative data will be conducted. The pretest will be followed by a 2-day workshop starting with a specific group of PLHA and systematically followed up by a comprehensive community-based stigma reduction and wellness enhancement intervention with the PLC. Repetitive posttest measures similar to the pretest will be conducted. The 2-day workshop will be followed up by a 1-day stigma reduction and wellness enhancement activity evaluation 4 weeks after the initial workshops.
The purpose of this presentation is to get feedback from peers during the conference on the planned methodology of this research project.
Perceived AIDS Stigma: A Multinational African Study
Minrie Greeff
North-West University
A group of researchers in five African countries conducted a five year study entitled Perceived AIDS Stigma: A Multinational African Study. In this study experiences of stigma by people living with HIV and AIDS (PLHA) and nurses involved in their care were explored to gain an understanding of stigma, a model developed to explain the HIV stigma process, instruments developed to test HIV stigma in PLHA and nurses, studies of the correlates of stigma conducted, and a HIV stigma reduction intervention piloted.
The methodology of the study included both quantitative and qualitative methods. Experiences of stigma by people living with HIV and AIDS (PLHA) and nurses involved in their care were explored using a descriptive qualitative design and making use of focus groups. This led to the development of a conceptual model delineating the context and processes of HIV and AIDS stigma based on the qualitative data. Instruments were developed and tested for measuring HIV stigma in PLHA, as well as nurses. This was followed by a cohort study of a purposive convenient sample of PLHA and nurses for one year in a longitudinal design that examined various correlates of stigma. The last phase of the study focused on piloting a HIV stigma reduction intervention making use of a qualitative case study design, as well as quantitative measures. The focus of this presentation is to give a detailed description of how the various methodologies enriched the study and understanding of HIV stigma by making use of a mixed-method approach.
The Impact of Caring for People with Neurological Disease and Cognitive Impairment: A Metaethnography
Jane Grose
Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry
Janet Richardson
University of Plymouth
Heather Skirton
University of Plymouth
Julia Frost
University of Plymouth
Natalie Lewis
University of Plymouth
This paper concerns the application of a novel methodology, metaethnography, applied to a real health and social problem. Cognitive impairment, a feature of many neurological diseases, is set to become a major health care issue. Although there are many qualitative studies looking at the effects of caring for someone with physical degeneration, less is known about the psychosocial impact of caring for someone with increasing cognitive symptoms such as aggression, irritability, depression, and silence. A systematic review of existing qualitative research literature, synthesizing current knowledge about social and psychological impact will enable an in depth understanding of the challenges faced by carers of people with cognitive impairment. As well as identifying areas of concordance between studies of the same disease, it might identify similarities and differences across diseases.
This study selected research papers focusing on Alzheimer disease and dementia, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson and Huntington disease. Titles and abstracts were reviewed by two researchers, and papers fitting the inclusion criteria were chosen. Following critical appraisal of the selected papers by a team of qualitative researchers, first- and second-order themes were identified and their appropriateness in terms of the aims of the study was discussed. The final synthesis to create third-order themes has not yet been completed but is imminent, and the results of the metaethnography will be presented.
We Are Never Alone: A Sociology of the Road
Lesley Harman
King's University College at the University of Western Ontario
In 2008 I walked the Camino de Santiago, an ancient Christian pilgrimage covering almost 800 kilometers across the North of Spain. This “unintentionally” became an ethnography of pilgrimage. Although I set out to experience the pilgrimage and had in the back of my mind that I might glean some sociological insights, the outcome became a “walking ethnography.”
The experience was grounded in the company of 13 other pilgrims who became friends and walking companions as well as the hundreds of other pilgrims that I met and talked with along the Way. As I began to observe and question the various motives and methods that people employ on this postmodern pilgrimage, I and the others developed a typology of pilgrims. I also became aware of the “authenticity discourse,” which had pilgrims questioning themselves as well as others as to how their walking approximated the archetypal “pilgrim.”
The methodology was unique in that it involved a communal reflective discourse while in the process of walking the Camino. It was “grounded theory” in the walking. The presentation will discuss the process of evolving a Sociology of the Road, as well as some of the findings as examples.
Qualitative Project Management: Collaboration, Scalability and Efficiency
Hamish Holewa
Central Queensland University
Qualitative research has come of age; the methodology is now commonly used in large, multisite, collaborative research projects. Although welcome to the qualitative community, this expansion brings new logistical challenges associated with data management, increased participant numbers, collaborative partners, compliance issues and geographically disparate sites.
Although robust software for qualitative analysis exists, there is a lack of tailored tools for managing large-scale qualitative research projects. In response, this paper outlines the development of a qualitative project management website designed to offer users a central point for data collection and storage, collaboration, and workflow management. This innovative online tool assists in the management of qualitative research projects by facilitating the exchange of information and data between research team members and by providing a central secure location in which all project related material can be stored. The website also uses workflow management to provide automatic information exchange and alerts between research team members (transcribers, project officers, researchers, industry), based on task analysis of the qualitative research process.
Use of the website for secure data collection, storage, and workflow management has been shown to increased research efficiency, accountability, security, audit capabilities, and ethics committee compliance while decreasing document handling costs, logistical issues, and redundant processes. The system has allowed scalability of the research process in participant numbers, site locations and staff numbers. An overview of the system with future technological directions will be discussed in relation to further streamlining the qualitative research process.
Advances in Concept Mapping and Visual Meaning-Making with ATLAS.ti
Debra C. Burkey Piecka
Independent Educational Researcher
Rodney Hopson
Duquesne University
Rosalie Torres
Torres Consulting Group
Jill Casey
JDC Partnerships
ATLAS.ti is a powerful tool for analyzing qualitative data both from a textual perspective and as a knowledge management tool. ATLAS.ti offers means to “manage, extract, compare, explore, and reassemble meaningful pieces from large amounts of data in creative, flexible, yet systematic ways” (Muhr, 2004, p. 2). Although many researchers use qualitative software to code and categorize their textual data, few investigate the visualization resources of the network view portions of the program.
The presentation's purpose is twofold: (a) to explain and demonstrate how concept maps created with the ATLAS.ti software may be used to build knowledge and create valid meaning during grounded theory data analysis and (b) to illustrate how the visualization of data analysis through concept maps inform data analysis and conclusions.
The paper draws from two studies in progress in the United States. One study provides results of an ethnographic study about how kindergartners learn with interactive videoconferencing to uncover emerging patterns of meaning-making in the dialogue transcriptions from the kindergartners' interactive sessions. The second study illustrates meaning in the understanding of logic model use among math and science university and K-16 partnerships.
In the studies, the software provided a versatile tool to perform multiple functions: portray the analysis process through coding; organize the plentiful data; substantiate various measures to ensure qualitative quality and rigor; and create concept maps to visualize meaning making of kindergartners, math and science specialists, educators, experts, and stakeholders in the two studies presented in the paper.
Peer Support in Teaching Qualitative Methods through Shared Journaling
Áine Humble
Mount Saint Vincent University
Elizabeth Sharp
Texas Tech University
Teaching qualitative research methods (QRM) to graduate students is exhilarating, challenging, and demanding. One common problem, resulting from the prevalence of positivistic thinking in academia, is that alternative paradigms of research are often not easily understood and, at times, are actively resisted in class. This can be daunting to faculty members teaching QRM for the first time. New professors face a formidable challenge when students do not accept or understand that knowledge is created in multiple ways. Additionally, students may be surprised to find that qualitative research is much more challenging than previously thought as they become familiar with issues such as methodological congruency, validity, sampling, and reflexivity.
Because of the particular challenges of teaching QRM, we argue that peer support is vital for professors, particularly those teaching it for the first time. In this presentation, we will describe how we supported each other during 2 years of teaching QRM by co-creating a shared journal (sent electronically to each other as we lived in different cities). We will detail how through the sharing of weekly entries, we (a) assisted each other through the challenges of teaching QRM, (b) encouraged each other to think more reflexively about our approaches to teaching QRM (e.g., how much emphasis should be given to “thinking qualitatively” versus having hands-on experience with different QRM strategies and techniques), and (c) offered valuable resources, activities, and assignments to each other. Using our journal entries, we will share our ideas, reflections, resources, and raise questions about teaching QRM.
Mode Effects in Qualitative Interviews: A Comparison of Semistructured Face-to-Face and Telephone Interviews using Conversation Analysis
Annie Irvine
University of York, United Kingdom
This paper will present the research design and emerging findings of a methodological study that uses the technique of Conversation Analysis to explore what interactional differences exist (if any) between telephone and face-to-face research interviews. Although there has been discussion of the pragmatic and ethical reasons as to why one or other of these data collection modes might be preferable, the ways in which the spoken interaction and resulting data are affected by qualitative interview mode have not been investigated to any significant extent. The study's overall aim, therefore, is to increase knowledge about how interview mode influences the structure and content of the researcher-participant interaction and to consider the methodological implications of any such differences for the resulting qualitative data.
The study uses qualitative semistructured interview data gathered in a recent U.K.-based study on mental health and employment. The data set comprises five face-to-face and six telephone interviews, totaling just under 17 hours of audio data. The method of conversation analysis is being used to transparently and systematically identify interactional patterns in the research interviews and to compare (using qualitative and quantitative measures) the differences that exist, if any, between the two interview modes.
The study addresses an important methodological issue in qualitative data collection, about which little is currently known. In addition, it demonstrates methodological innovation in the application of conversation analytic techniques to qualitative research interview data.
The study is funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council.
Advancing Qualitative Research through Open-Access Online Journals
Cindy Jardine
University of Alberta
Ron Chenail
Nova Southeastern University
Lisa Given
University of Alberta
Over the past two decades, open-access, peer-reviewed, online qualitative research journals have emerged as critical capacity-building resources for authors and readers from around the world. These journals embrace a multinational, transdisciplinary, and methodologically pluralistic focus in their editorial policies, boards, and publications to provide quality articles and reviews to the broadest possible array of academics, students, and professionals who undertake qualitative research. Drawing on a critical textual review of 10 of these journals and discussions with their editors, we will discuss the commonalities among and differences between these publications, their respective journeys in attaining their current status and practice, and the challenges created by both their open, online format and qualitative focus. Issues such as provision of copyright, use of multimedia, funding for these journals, and other key topics will be discussed, with a focus on implications for qualitative publishing in the future. Finally, we will explore how each is helping to create a virtual qualitative research community, thereby advancing both qualitative research and the development of qualitative methods.
Involving Young People with Mental Health Needs and Parents in Qualitative Research
Pauline Jivanjee
Portland State University
This presentation will focus on strategies to involve young people with mental health needs and their parents in qualitative research. The presenter will draw from experiences as the co-principal of community-based participatory qualitative research projects to examine the benefits of participatory research and the steps involved in engaging and supporting young people with mental health needs and parents in qualitative research.
Guided by concepts from empowerment theory and empowerment evaluation, the Research and Training Center on Family Support and Children's Mental Health at Portland State University has embraced participatory approaches in research, and we have engaged youth and family members in a variety of roles in research projects. The presenter will draw from experiences on several qualitative research projects, particularly a qualitative study of community integration from the perspectives of young people aged 17 to 24 with mental health disorders and parents. The co-principal investigators first developed an advisory group of parents and young people with mental health needs to guide the development of the study. After the study was funded, we recruited, hired, and trained three youth research assistants and two parent research assistants to recruit participants, conduct focus groups, and assist with the analysis of qualitative findings. This presentation will describe the roles and activities of young people and parents in the research; challenges encountered in conducting participatory qualitative research, including ethical issues; effective strategies for involving young people and parents in qualitative research; and recommendations for training young people, parents, and researchers to collaborate in conducting community-based qualitative research.
The Work of Inuit NIPINGIT, The National Inuit Committee on Ethics and Research
Cathleen Knotsch
National Aboriginal Health Organization
Scot Nickels
Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami
The volume of research involving Aboriginal peoples has increased considerably during the past decade. At the same time, efforts to create guidelines for research involving Aboriginal peoples have grown to respond to the pressing needs of Inuit, First Nations, and Métis communities. Ethical guidelines have been discussed by many research networks and in particular by those researchers working with small communities. Subsequently, research and ethical guidelines and policy statements were developed to guide research involving Aboriginal peoples of Canada.
In response to these growing challenges in the Arctic, a new committee was created. The Inuit Nipingit—National Inuit Committee on Ethics and Research plays an active role in helping provide Inuit involvement and positions on research and research ethics. In recognition of Inuit interests in improving and maintaining appropriate research conduct and processes, the Inuit Nipingit is developing effective responses to identified Canadian policy statements and guidelines and preparing Inuit positions as necessary.
Inuit Nipingit is coordinated jointly by Inuit Tuttarvingat of the National Aboriginal Health Organization (NAHO) and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK). Both organizations are committed to facilitating the participation of Inuit in discussions about health and environment research in the Canadian Arctic, to identifying emerging research priorities, to improving and enhancing networking, to facilitating knowledge translation, and to promoting the use and value of Inuit knowledge.
This presentation outlines the development and current and future work of Inuit Nipingit, and places it into the context of research in the Canadian Arctic.
A Role for Nonliterary Expressive Arts in Autoethnography?
Andrea Kovalesky
University of Washington Bothell
Definitions of autoethnography often include references to literary data points such as self-narration and autobiography. However, as the use of nonexpressive arts continues to grow, particularly their use in the health care field, issues arise about their place in autoethnography. This paper will address three questions, using as a basis the presenter's background in qualitative research, teaching courses on the expressive arts in health care, and a review of the literature.
What roles do nonliterary self-expressions such as drawing, painting, sculpting, fiber arts, and photography (visual arts) and dance, music, and drama (performing arts) have in autoethnography? Analysis of art works are used widely in ethnography; how common is this in autoethnography?
How are literary and nonliterary self-expressions the same/different in autoethnography? Both types of expressions share personal and subjective aspects, but nonliterary expressive arts have a symbolic, interpretive nature. How does this affect the analytical process in autoethnography?
When might nonliterary self-expression be considered autoethnographic? What place do these factors play?: (a) the artist's purpose; (b) quantity of data points; (c) the artist's ability to represent experiences or responses that can be identified by the culture, even though in a symbolic and/or abstract manner; and (d) the opportunity for others to access the work(s).
Examples of nonliterary expressive arts and artists will be shared to supplement the discussion of these questions.
Cross-Cultural Communication and Language Issues: Methodological and Ethical Considerations
Pranee Liamputtong
La Trobe University
In this paper, I discuss the importance of language and communication in cross-cultural research. Often, researchers and the participants are from different linguistic backgrounds. But language “represents data in qualitative research and communication”. It is “the process through which data are generated between a researcher and study participant.” Often, in carrying out cross-cultural research, the researchers are linguistically and culturally distant from their research participants. Differences in language spoken and the meanings that are conveyed can create problems and this has implications for the findings of their research. It is also an ethical issue, as misunderstanding can occur, and this can result in the misinterpretation of the research findings.
In this presentation, I first discuss issues pertaining to language. I then look at bicultural researchers and the need to provide training and support for bicultural researchers in cross-cultural research. Working with interpreters and/or translators in cross-cultural research is an essential part if it is not possible to work with bicultural researchers. I shall point to some limitations in working with short-term interpreters/translators and suggest some strategies that involve them more in a research project. Last, I provide discussions on the transcription in its original language and a translation method that cross-cultural researchers may adopt in their qualitative research.
The Challenges of Navigating Institutional Ethics Review Boards when Conducting Research with Vulnerable Populations
Sara Lige
University of British Columbia Okanagan
Rachelle Hole
University of British Columbia Okanagan
Research with vulnerable populations presents distinct challenges in regards to the regulatory ethics process. In particular, the aspect of participatory or emancipatory research with individuals with intellectual disabilities involves matters that demand special attention from the researcher. Consent forms, pictorial forms, issues of assent, questions about competency, and questions about confidentiality are some of the points that can be complex when applying for ethics approval. Further, conducting emancipatory or participatory research with this population complicates issues of accessibility because of the emphasis on co-researcher status of the participants and the goal of empowerment, which translates to ownership of research rather than confidentiality. Written communication with the participants must be in plain language to ensure accessibility; indeed, accessibility must be considered for all aspects of the research, including location, presentations and dissemination of the findings.
Research ethics boards (REBs) are not always cognizant of the intricacies associated with this type of research or the relevant research concerning modifications that validate various approaches. Impairment-related issues have often been cited as reasons for the questionable research practices with people with intellectual disabilities. A common complaint is the lack of attention paid to this group by the research community. To rectify this, it is necessary to develop appropriate research strategies and ethics protocol. In this presentation, we reflect on the ethical implications of conducting research with individuals with intellectual disabilities and discuss strategies for communicating the unique nuances of ethical research practices to REBs.
Taking Culture and Power Seriously in Community Mental Health: The Process of Collective Theory Generation in Multifaceted Community-Based Research
Sarah Maiter
York University, Canada
Anne Westhues
Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
In their efforts to understand complex community issues and find solutions that build equitable and supportive communities, researchers increasingly undertake studies that are collaborative and multifaceted. These multi-phased projects are often based on collaborations between multidisciplinary research teams and community organizations or associations, are usually multimethod, and often mixed method, multi sited and multi perspectival. They frequently involve a large number of people with different skills and interests. Although they have greater potential to capture the complexity of community issues and address the multiple realities inherent in public policy and community practice, the management and synthesis of data from these projects is not always easily apparent, as they might be with smaller projects.
In this paper, we share the process of how members of the Taking Culture Seriously in Community Mental Health, a 5-year participatory action research initiative funded as a Community University Research Alliance (CURA), approached a synthesizing analysis of data from a collaboratively based mixed-method study. We suggest that an approach that emphasizes process and outcome are key to the generation of theory. Despite the challenges, intense collaboration and inclusion of the multidisciplinary team of researchers and community members are central, and a pragmatic focus on outcome—for us, a practice-oriented theoretical framework to enhance mental health services for members of diverse ethnocultural groups—can result in theory that is credible, believable, and plausible (Guba, 1981; Krefting, 1991).
Program for Coping with Stigma for Women Whose Partners Died of AIDS: A Case Study
Eva Manyedi
North West University
Minrie Greeff
Africa Unit for Transdisciplinary Health Research
The purpose of this research was to develop a program for coping with stigma for women whose partners died of AIDS. Having experienced severe stigmatization, these women used mostly ineffective problem-focused strategies and very limited emotion-focused strategies. Because of their difficulty in coping, there was a need to develop a program to assist these women to cope with the stigma of having lost an AIDS partner as well as being HIV positive themselves.
The program was developed, implemented, and evaluated by means of a holistic multiple case design with a sample of 4 women. Data were collected by means of multiple sources from transcripts of the eight sessions and naïve sketches by participants as well as field notes from observations of individuals and of the group. Data analysis was done according to a case record. The conclusions about the impact of the program were that it had a positive impact based on the fact that these women grew from being lonely, reserved, and having a negative self-perception to being open about their HIV status, sharing their problems related to stigma, seeking support, being altruistic by advocating for assistance of other women in the same situation, and suggesting the establishment of a home-based care facility where they would assist in caring for others.
Innovative Qualitative Methods and Policy Development
Eva Meyers
Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center
Martha Ann Carey
Maverick Solutions
Aja Tulleners Lesh
Improvement in the system of health care in the United States has recently received not only great interest but also substantial funding for improvement. As the largest health care profession and having the highest level of public confidence, the nursing voice can contribute to this improvement. Using focus groups, this study explored the experiences of advanced practice nurses in the delivery of clinical and community preventive services in federally qualified health centers, nurse-managed centers, and retail health clinics. In addition, six members (current and former) of the U.S. Preventive Task Force were key informants. Using Robert Stake's (2006) multiple case study method, the several findings (“assertions”) to be presented are documented with data from each of the data sources. Uniquely suited for this type of study, this qualitative approach has not been used to its potential. This presentation will demonstrate the method and how it can be applied to various settings.
Using “Questerviews” to Improve Recall and Quality of Information Obtained from Recreational Poly-Substance Users
Warren Michelow
University of British Columbia
Jane Buxton
University of British Columbia
Much research to date with users of substances other than tobacco or alcohol involves quantity/frequency methods, structured interviews, or use of predefined scales. Many people who use substances are adults whose use is not characterized by dependence or addiction. Poly-substance use is the norm, can be considered instrumental or functional, and is aimed at achieving psychosocial goals. Among this large population, little research extends beyond the single-drug-focused quantitative studies.
This innovative study used a mixed-methods approach called “questerviews” combining structured questionnaires and semistructured interviews to investigate individual, social, and environmental determinants and patterns of recreational poly-substance use among adults. Each interview began with a structured questionnaire obtaining a detailed history of substance use over time periods from lifetime to past 7 days for 23 named substances plus others. This was followed with a semistructured interview exploring in-depth the most recent episode of poly-substance use elicited by the questionnaire. Finally, a short structured instrument obtained participant demographics and served as a marker that the encounter was ending and facilitated satisfactory closure with the participant. Transcripts of in-depth interviews were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Theoretical saturation was identified through constant comparison.
The questerview technique worked well to establish rapport; stimulate recall, especially of recent poly-substance use; made explicit the types of substances of interest; and allowed the interviewer to adapt more closely to each participant's narrative and cognitive styles. Using this technique enabled capturing a much richer and more complete account of participants' poly-substance use.
Finding Middle Ground: Negotiating University and Tribal Community Perspectives in CBPR
Selina Mohammed
University of Washington Bothell
Karina Walters
University of Washington
June LaMarr
Tulalip Tribes
Sheryl Fryberg
Tulalip Tribes
Tessa Evans-Campbell
University of Washington
Community-based participatory research (CBPR) has been hailed as an alternative approach to one-sided research endeavors that have traditionally been conducted on communities as opposed to with them. The commonly identified ideal of CBPR is the formation of equitable partnerships between academic institutions and communities throughout all phases of the research process. Although the process of CBPR engenders numerous relationship strengths through its emphasis on co-sharing and learning, mutual benefit, and community capacity building, it is often challenging as well.
In this paper, we describe some of the struggles and resolutions of implementing CBPR in a research project designed to prevent cardiovascular disease among a Northwest American Indian community. In particular, we highlight the process of how we collaboratively constructed a qualitative interview guide and data sharing agreement that addressed the concerns of both university and tribal community constituents. Establishing these two items was a process of negotiation that required (a) balancing of individual, occupational discipline, research, and community interests; (b) definition of terminology (e.g., control of data versus access to data); and (c) extensive consideration regarding how to best protect research participants. Although CBPR can successfully be used as a vehicle to identify decolonizing research strategies and develop relationships that prioritize tribal sovereignty, it requires all research partners to examine and articulate their own assumptions and expectations, and nurture a relationship based on compromise to effectively meet the needs of each group.
Two-Person Interviews: Developing a New Technique
David Morgan
Portland State University
Jutta Ataie
Portland State University
Individual interviews and focus groups are both familiar techniques for collecting qualitative data, but there is no consistent approach to interviews with two or three participants. This paper reports on the early stages of a research program to develop two-person interviews, where the interviewer asks the same question to a pair of participants. We have conducted studies using two-person interviews on health-related and education-related topics, including explicit comparisons to focus groups in the educational study.
One of our major goals is to compare the kinds of interactions that occur in two-person interviews and focus groups. This reflects our tentative conclusion that the interaction between the participants in two-person interviews makes them much more similar to focus groups than individual interviews. In addition to these broader issues, we will also address some of the more practical lessons that we have learned about procedures for conducting two-person interview In particular, we have examined how to shape the interaction in two-person interviews by conducting both less structured, exploratory interviews and more structured, researcher-driven interviews.
Ethical Issues in Using Digital Storytelling as a Research Tool
Mari Ann Moss
University of Waikato
Carolyn Costley
University of Waikato
Digital storytelling combines digital audio and visual content with personal narrative. Digital storytelling practice has been used to support community building and social change, self-reflection and reflective practice, healing and violence prevention, brand building, and corporate consulting (Lambert, 2006). Digital storytelling research is interdisciplinary, coming mainly from the perspectives of media studies and education (Lundby, 2008). Academic researchers are just beginning to consider digital storytelling as a research tool.
Digital storytelling has all the ethical issues of other visual research methods. Informed consent, confidentiality, and ownership are the dominant issues. Beneficence and judgment are issues, too. The Center for Digital Storytelling embraces the principles of respect, safety, and sensitivity.
When researchers use digital stories as “data points” for analysis, ethical issues multiply. Issues of informed consent, confidentiality, and ownership occur on at least three levels. One must consider these for participation in the digital storytelling process, again for analyzing the stories produced, and yet again for distributing the results of that analysis. The purpose of this presentation is to identify the ethical issues and the levels at which they occur and to consider ethically appropriate protocols. An important issue is whether researchers have any right to evaluate the process or content of digital stories.
Interviewing Doctors: Advancing Qualitative Research Methods in Primary Health Care Contexts
Christy Newman
University of New South Wales
Susan Kippax
University of New South Wales
Limin Mao
University of New South Wales
Deborah Saltman
Brighton and Sussex Medical School
John De Wit
University of New South Wales
Jonathan Anderson
University of New South Wales
Robert Reynolds
University of New South Wales
Peter Canavan
National Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS
Michael Kidd
Flinders University
General practitioners (GPs) have played a critical role in the response to the HIV epidemic in Australia, yet the numbers of GPs training in advanced HIV care may be insufficient to replace those leaving to retire or change jobs, even while the numbers of people living with HIV is increasing and aging. Despite these pressing issues, little research has focused on the experiences of the GP workforce who provide HIV care in Australia. This paper will provide an account of interviewing a number of these doctors and will consider how key lessons learned influenced the design of a newly successful funding application to work in more depth with this group.
The new project is entirely qualitative: a unique achievement within a health research funding model that tends to be more trusting of quantitative methods. However, recruiting doctors to take part in research of this kind is by no means straightforward. The GP workforce is under considerable stress from increasing time pressures and a growing range of clinical care responsibilities and challenges. Furthermore, although these doctors regularly take part in quantitative studies, they might be less understanding of the value of qualitative methods. Lessons learned through conducting 16 in-depth interviews with HIV GP prescribers as part of the Primary Health Care Project on HIV and Depression (2006–2009) include making presentations to targeted practices to gain GPs' trust, especially with regard to the legitimacy of qualitative research methods and ensuring the project budget can reimburse GPs for their time.
Reflecting on the Personal Narrative: Scholarly, Therapeutic, and Aesthetic Intersections
Jennifer J. Nicol
University of Saskatchewan
What happens when personal experiences are mined for the purposes of scholarship? When I first explored this question (Nicol, 2006a), I was intrigued by the scholarly and therapeutic aspects of the personal narrative, and the complex dynamics that arise when researchers write and publish personal narratives as scholarly contributions. Intersections of scholarship and therapy generated in a personal narrative might be congruent and reciprocally enriching, or they might clash and produce weak scholarship and/or therapeutic harm. The topic continues to be significant, given persistent debate about the appropriate boundaries and parameters of science, research, and scholarship, and heightened ethical awareness about potential harm associated with qualitative inquiry.
In this presentation, I extend my original understandings to include a third dimension, the aesthetic component. Further reflection and an interest in expressive research texts (Nicol, 2008) led me to identify beauty as yet another aspect of the personal narrative that researchers must negotiate. Methodological implications, specific technical strategies, and rewards and challenges of producing personal narratives will be elaborated. My training and experiences as a researcher, psychologist, and music therapist give me a unique vantage point from which to consider the topic, offer suggestions, and invite discussion. I will draw on my work (Nicol, 2006a; 2006b) as well as that of authors such as Bochner (2001), Frank (2000, 2004, 2005, 2006), and Pelias (2004) with the purpose of encouraging continued appreciation for the personal narrative; continued reflection on its nuances, and more intentional navigations of scholarship, healing, and beauty.
Grounded Theory Method (GTM): An Introduction to the Version of Abduction
Beng Kok Ong
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Since its creation in 1967 by Strauss and Glaser in 1967, grounded theory method (GTM) has evolved and established in social research, and it is now widely used methodology in social sciences, particularly in sociology. I can identify at least two versions of grounded theory as a method of qualitative research in social sciences: objectivist grounded theory method (OGTM) by Strauss and Glaser (1967) and constructivist grounded theory method (CGTM) by Charmaz (2000). Qualitative researchers have always confused CGTM with abductive research strategy (ARS) by Blaikie (1993). This happens although there are some distinctive differences between these two. Therefore, this paper address this problem through the introduction of abductive grounded theory method (AGTM) as another version of GTM, with the aim of distinguishing between grounded theory, particularly CGTM, and abductive research strategy (ARS) and eventually AGTM.
Living an Ethical Agreement: Negotiating Confidentiality and Harm in a Feminist Participatory Action Research Project
Colleen Reid
Simon Fraser University
Pamela Ponic
BC Centre of Excellence in Women's Health
Kashmir Besla
Louise Hara
Connie Kaweesi
Robin LeDrew
Feminist participatory action researchers (FPAR) strive for collaborative, respectful, and empowering relationships with their research participants. However, academically or institutionally controlled research ethics boards rarely enable people from the community to be actively engaged in these processes. We were involved in a FPAR project in four diverse communities across British Columbia, Canada, that examined women's experiences with the formal and informal economies. We were required to maintain community confidentiality to adequately protect project participants and the local communities from harm. Over time the community researchers expressed frustration with maintaining community confidentiality; it limited their capacity maintain control of the project, to conduct the research, to transfer knowledge, and to engage in taking action locally. In this presentation we reflect on these tensions through an overview of our methodological and ethical decision-making and an analysis of local researcher “vignettes” that explore how these issues played out in each of the communities. We conclude with some strategies for developing a collaborative approach to ethics in FPAR.
Performing Intersectionality: The Mutuality of Intersectional Analysis and Feminist Participatory Action Research
Colleen Reid
Simon Fraser University
Pamela Ponic
BC Non-Profit Housing Association
Louise Hara
Connie Kaweesi
Robin LeDrew
Feminist theorists and researchers have long claimed the need to pay attention to women's diversities. As co-researchers with a 5-year working relationship on the Women's Employability and Health Research Project we have been grappling with what it means to examine and embody women's diversity. We have worked together on a feminist participatory action research (FPAR) project, engaged deeply with intersectional theory and analysis, and more recently identified ourselves as an intersectional research team. Our process for working and writing together has been complex and rewarding, with difficult lessons along the way. FPAR is an approach to research that aims to bring diverse voices and perspectives into the research process with overt attention paid to what comes from the research and how women's lives can be improved as a result. As a theoretical approach, intersectionality forces researchers to deeply consider the diverse identities and subjectivities that exist within and amongst women, and how these complexities inform research processes (Varcoe et al., 2007). In this presentation we describe our experiences conducting an intersectional analysis as a province-wide FPAR team. The research question guiding our presentation is: How does an intersectional analysis illuminate aspects of a FPAR process?
Researching “at Home” as Cultural and Professional Insider: Focused Ethnographic Fieldwork Experience from Rural Ghana
Kathy Rush
University of British Columbia Okanagan
Vida Nyagre Yakong
University of British Columbia Okanagan
This focused ethnography examined rural Ghanaian women's experiences of seeking reproductive health care. Twenty-seven women, diverse in age, educational background, marital status, socioeconomic status, and number of children, participated in the study. Individual interviews, focused group discussions, and participant observations were employed in data collection.
This paper addresses the methodological challenges of conducting a focused ethnography in non-Western rural Ghana. Focused ethnography, rare in rural Ghanaian settings, is characterized by a specific focus over an intense, abbreviated time frame and used when the researcher is native to the study setting or is an insider. There are legitimate concerns that insiders are intrinsically biased because of their preconceived ideas and closeness to the culture that prevents them from looking at issues with “fresh eyes” and from asking critical questions. The historically contested participant/researcher relationship has also been viewed as problematic. Researching “at home” presents dilemmas and challenges but also opportunities and privileges and enriches the data.
I describe my experience of gaining entry and negotiating my way through diverse community gatekeepers, building rapport and trust with the community members and women, on one hand, and the nursing staff at the rural clinics, on the other hand. I share the privileges, opportunities, and challenges of being an insider as my “nativity” was threefold: as a Ghanaian, a woman, and a nurse doing fieldwork and studying women's reproductive health care. I also share some strategies I used in navigating my way and the researcher/participant relationship throughout the research process.
Postcolonialism and Unhomely Moments: Possibilities in Examining Palliative Home Care Experiences of Immigrants
Lisa Seto
University of Toronto
Jan Angus
University of Toronto
Denise Gastaldo
University of Toronto
Doris Howell
Princess Margaret Hospital, University Health Network
Immigrants must often negotiate multiple meanings of home, such as home as a place of origin, home as a form of shelter, and home as a place of belonging. However receipt of palliative home care can shift or change the meanings of home, as a place of health, refuge, privacy, and security. Often home care is seen as an intrusion that disrupts routines and is an invasion into private lives when outside health care professionals enter the home to provide care. Changes to the meaning of home might be significant for immigrants because there can be a disruption to multiple meanings, especially when it becomes a place for dying.
Postcolonial theory provides a critical lens in which to examine how meanings of home enter into and shape experiences of palliative home care for immigrants. Specifically, Homi Bhabha, a postcolonial scholar, writes about the “unhomely moment,” where through migration the borders of private and public spheres become confused. Tensions can arise as boundaries become less defined, which might contribute to a sense of vulnerability for both terminally ill immigrants and home care providers. Postcolonial theory challenges health researchers to critically examine the complexity of social locations, such as gender, class, and race, and the influence of historical contexts on immigrant health experiences. This presentation will discuss how postcolonialism can form a foundation for inquiry and analysis, and examine how the theory may orient health researchers to an alternate framework to identifying issues and understanding palliative home care experiences of immigrants.
Visual Media in Community Research: Digital Storytelling
Kathleen Sitter
University of Calgary
Digital storytelling provides individuals and communities with a powerful forum to share their experiences, in their own voices, while leveraging the use of media technology. The setting is a group-based environment in which participants are guided through the process of creating a 2- to 5-minute video that combines the use of narrative, photographs, and music. During the process, participants familiarize themselves with the technology and also share with others' life stories, where the group provides collective feedback to assist and support everyone in the development of their digital story.
The process draws on aspects of Freirean philosophy, photovoice, and various art therapy techniques. It has been applied in a number of community environments throughout the world and can play an important role in facilitating community development. This paper explores digital storytelling as a pedagogical praxis based on the author's experiences facilitating a digital storytelling project and considers the strengths and challenges associated with the application of digital storytelling within community-based research.
Artists, Curators and Gallery Owners: A Question of Ethics
Andrew Smith
Bethlehem Tertiary Institute
The qualitative researcher has been compared to the curator of an art gallery (Cole & Knowles, 2001), responsible for collecting and displaying the “pictures” painted by participants (the artists) in the research process. Much has been written on the ethics surrounding that relationship: in analogical terms, the curator's responsibility to the artists. The analogy, however, can be extended to include others: for example, the people who, often unknowingly, have their “pictures” painted by the participants; readers of research as visitors to the gallery; and publishers or funding agencies as gallery owners. Research literature seems to pay less attention to the potential ethical issues implicit in these broader relationships.
This paper takes as a case study a recently completed New Zealand-based research project in which parents were interviewed about a specific aspect of their children's experience. The project was funded and published by a national agency that was not the researcher's employer. During the course of the study, a number of questions were encountered, including:
Who is responsible for looking out for the interests of the young people being discussed by the participants?
If the participants give informed consent to their stories being presented in a certain way, what happens if the funder requires changes?
Using the analogy described, the paper discusses the questions that arose and the ethical principles involved.
Across the Miles: Strategies to Make Collaborative Multisite Qualitative Research Possible
Kristin Stegenga
Children's Mercy Hospital
Sharron Docherty
Duke University
Celeste Phillips-Salimi
Indiana University
Molly Donovan
Indiana University
Verna Hendricks-Ferguson
Barnes-Jewish College
Yvonne Barnes
St Louis Children's Hospital
Joan Haase
Indiana University
The purpose of this presentation is to describe an innovative approach to research that enables team members with varied research experience located at multiple study sites to participate in qualitative research data collection and analysis. The study using this approach (Children's Oncology Group ANUR0631) involves a therapeutic music video intervention aimed at increasing resilience and quality of life for adolescents and young adults undergoing stem cell transplant. Collecting and analyzing qualitative data in a multisite clinical trial and employing study team members with a wide range of qualitative research experience adds challenges that can have a critical impact on data quality and understanding of results. Thus, the study team has employed an innovative and systematic approach to collecting and analyzing qualitative data across sites. This approach includes training for all team members, pairing of experienced and less experienced researchers for small group work, and scheduling regular conference calls during which the team is able to discuss functional and methodological concerns, as well as emerging themes revealed in the data.
The methodology for collecting and analyzing qualitative data in this study provides an innovative model for future collaboration between and among nurse clinicians and scientists. Qualitative data collection and analysis is possible across a large multisite study despite varied qualitative skill levels in team members. The keys to success are a well-planned strategy that targets training in qualitative data collection and analysis methods and a team that brings a variety of experiences and perspectives, both academic and clinical to the endeavor.
Synergistic Use of Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches to Inform Behavioral Oncology Interventions
Kristin Stegenga
Children's Mercy Hospital
Sheri Robb
Indiana University
Debra Burns
Indiana University
Joan Haase
Indiana University
The purpose of this presentation is to describe the synergistic use of qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis strategies in a multisite behavioral clinical trial (COG ANUR0631) as a way to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of a therapeutic music video intervention on overall resilience and quality of life for adolescents/young adults (AYA) undergoing stem cell transplant. Quantitative data are collected at three time points through 100 days posttransplant to evaluate the efficacy of the intervention compared to a low-dose audio-books control. Phenomenological interviews are conducted separately with the AYA and a caregiver after the final quantitative data collection.
Interview data are used to identify commonalities of experiences of the AYA and caregivers within each intervention group. Quantitative and qualitative data are then examined for convergence to increase the credibility and interpretability of the findings. The use of mixed methods in intervention research has the potential to add depth and increased understanding of the underlying processes by which an intervention may be working. Collecting and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data in combination also can have a critical impact on data quality. The requirements for rigor in both methodologies (reliability for quantitative, trustworthiness for qualitative) help provide the clearest description of what the intervention offers and possible intervention limitations.
Lessons from the Field: Using Photovoice in Ethnically Diverse Public Housing Population
Christine Stevens
University of Washington Tacoma
Hope VI projects were grants given to cities to demolish existing public housing with combination of new rental and owner-occupied structures. Our interdisciplinary evaluation team received a grant to research the impact of relocation on the families, assessment of the community and supportive services to the clients. In addition to the methods of focus groups, GIS mapping, and ethnographic interviewing, photovoice was also selected to encourage the residents to evaluate the process of relocation and how their families and health have been affected. The purpose of this research was to explore how the residents view relocation from their established neighborhood and how the process has affected their health, jobs, economic issues, and sense of community.
One method of photovoice is to have the community members gather to share their photographs and develop ideas about what is needed to strengthen their community. Though this has proven beneficial in other populations, there were barriers to this in our study. There are several primary languages groups (Laotian, Cambodian, Vietnamese, English, and Russian), so sharing in a focus group with translators would be difficult.
There is a long history concerning trust between groups, so there are barriers to sharing information in a group. The last barrier is the human subjects committee, which worries about sharing photographs among different people and the risks involved. Though there were barriers to using photovoice in this evaluation project, we continue to utilize this method because it allowed many of the residents to have power in their representation.
Foreignness: Aesthetic and Performative Video Analysis of Intercultural Approaches in Art Education
Ulrike Stutz
Technische Universität Dresden
I present a qualitative approach to the analysis of visual data that I have developed as a tool in art education and related research. This approach uses still photographs and video documentation to highlight learning processes. Verbal analysis is thus complemented by aesthetic and performative methods. The visual material is manipulated by accentuating elements, reducing richness of detail, and changing speed. The emerging modified images, videos, and animations are used not only as a means of investigation but also for presenting its results. The results thus reveal the research methods used to gain them. Accordingly, my research not only deals with the learning processes of art students which have been its immediate object. I also ask methodological questions towards the feasibility of applying perception- and experience-based research approaches in social science. Theoretical foundations for my approach come from art science (picture analysis) and gestalt theory as well as from cognition theories like Ricœur's phenomenology and Derrida's deconstructivism.
In my talk, I am going to refer particularly to my current work with art-education students at the Technical University of Dresden, which focuses on intercultural approaches in art education. Central to the topic are aesthetic and performative self-representations as well as perceptions of the Other which undermine the identifying and ethnifying of the self and the Other. Presenting an aesthetic analysis of video material that documents sequences of our work, I will highlight the processual and transient quality of the emerging interactive spaces while making transparent and justifying the research method.
http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/411/893
Abstracts, Poster Sessions: Listed alphabetically by first author
This Is Not a Poster: It's a Hypertextual Re-presentation of Relational Critical Reflexivity
Ryan DeForge
University of Western Ontario
Jodi Hall
University of Western Ontario
Natalie Szudy
University of Western Ontario
Julia Bickford
University of Western Ontario
Raphael Lencuch
University of Western Ontario
James Shaw
University of Western Ontario
Christine Cullion
University of Western Ontario
This is not a conventional poster. Rather, it is an interactive, dialogic medium of re-presentation that has two foci: hypertext re-presentation and critical relational reflexivity (RCR).
Feminist, poststructural perspectives underpin our hypertextual re-presentation. Hypertext is characterized by disrupting ordering processes that dictate how/where the reader must enter/follow the text. Instead, without a chainlike orientation with a beginning, a middle, and an end, hypertext goes beyond the static nature of a printed poster. Hypertext contests conventional re-presentations that appear/claim to attain a single truth by calling into question the notion of a stable, fixed identity or knowledge claim. The benefits offered by hypertext include inviting the reader to become a textual agent as they become an active participant in the construction of the text. Moreover, the blurred writer-reader boundary contributes to the unfixing of textual hierarchies by offering the reader rhizomatic permutations of textual engagement. The experiences of engaging in RCR form the substantive content of our hypertextual poster. Within our group of doctoral students/candidates, RCR serves to resist the hegemonic experience of reifying the Lone Researcher model typical of conventional re-presentations of social science practice wherein seemingly contesting worldviews are embraced to create a dynamic learning environment.
Our poster consists of a white screen onto which we project our hypertextual re-presentations of ourselves and our work(s). Participants can choose their way through its experiential content and are thus introduced to two novel and potentially revolutionary relational techniques to qualitative inquiry: hypertext re-presentation and RCR.
Storied Methods of Our Negotiations of Selves in the Practice of “Relational Critical Reflexivity”
Jodi Hall
University of Western Ontario
Ryan DeForge
University of Western Ontario
As two doctoral students in health and rehabilitation sciences with interests in qualitative inquiry, we have come to understand the important role reflexivity plays in a rigorous research process. Indeed, the literature is replete with accounts of how and why reflexive practices flourish. However, we found a scarcity of literature regarding relational critical reflexivity, which we understand to be the reflexive dialogue that occurs between peers/colleagues offering an enhanced way of examining oneself. The space created within relational critical reflexivity offers opportunities to critically question the beliefs, values, and ideologies that shape our identities, and for practices to be held up to scrutiny and to simultaneous, collective (re) visioning.
Our own endeavor to engage in such relational scholarship is inspired by our critical, feminist and postmodern perspectives, but as we soon discovered, relational critical reflexivity is no easy task: The complexities of tending to issues of power, voice, and values within a mixed-gendered dyad of graduate students can seem overwhelming. In this presentation we describe the means by which we engage in relational critical reflexivity, simultaneously addressing the limits of dialogue, embodied knowledges, and the (im)possibility of fully discovering/writing the self(ves) in the context of relational critical reflexivity.
The impetus for addressing such issues reflects our desire to foster within others recognition of relational critical reflexivity as a means for discovering prior assumptions and previously untapped sites of knowing while problematizing traditional notions of self-reflexivity. Such concerted efforts will guide us (all) toward more rigorous and ethical research practices.
An Innovative Approach to Colaizzi's Method of Empirical Phenomenology
Verna Hendricks-Ferguson
Goldfarb School of Nursing at Barnes-Jewish College
Joan E. Haase
Indiana University, School of Nursing
Claretta J. Dupree
Kathleen J. Sawin
UW-Milwaukee College of Nursing
Kitty Montgomery
Children's Hospital of Wisconsin
The purpose of this presentation is to describe an innovative collaborative team approach used to plan and implement a multicentered study involving focus groups. A major benefit of using this approach is that it enabled a senior pediatric oncology nurse scientist to mentor several pediatric nurse researchers in data collection and analysis, using Colaizzi's method of empirical phenomenology. Our collaborative team approach used Web-based technology and regular scheduled conference calls for team members to receive ongoing training and group identification of emerging themes during data analysis. Our collaborative approach and ongoing communication during training and data analysis was based on group-as-a whole theory and empirical phenomenology.
The purpose of this study was to: (a) describe pediatric oncology nurses' perceptions of factors that facilitate and impede palliative and end-of-life (PC/EOL) communication with dying children, their families, and health care providers; and (b) identify group commonalities of pediatric oncology nurses' PC/EOL communication experiences. Assigned team members conducted four focus groups at each of the three sites using group-as-a-whole theory to guide data collection and analyses. Nurses at each site were assigned to focus groups according to years of experience. This innovative design and analysis increased the trustworthiness of the findings. Engagement of investigators and staff at each site enhanced the likelihood of useful translation of evidence from this project into clinical practice. Another innovative feature of our approach to conduct qualitative data collection and analysis is the diverse academic and clinical perspectives of our team members which has enhanced the data analysis procedure.
A Narratological and Narrative Perspective on the Research of Turning Points
John Humblet
Ghent University
Ann Buysse
Ghent University
Jan De Mol
Ghent University
Several studies have used the concept of turning points (TP) as a unit of analysis in understanding developmental processes in relationships. Conceptualized as any event or occurrence that is associated with change in a relationship, the TP is central to a process view of relationships. TP can be defined as breakthroughs, after which the relationship soars to higher levels of commitment (“positive” TP), or as breakdowns, after which the relationship falls apart (“negative” TP). It is important to notice that TP are not real events but ad hoc mental constructions people attribute change to.
In an earlier study recently divorced participants were asked to sum up all the TP they experienced during the breakdown of their relationship. The data from this study were rather “poor” (vague, not differentiated). It is possible that TP only work within a narrative framework. To investigate this idea, 1,500 divorced participants are asked to write down the story of their divorce. A second group of divorced participants are interviewed in-depth about their divorce, but they differ from the first group in receiving information about the concept of TP. Afterward the data are coded on a narratological level, the structure of the story, and on a narrative level, the content of the story. The purpose of the present study is to investigate which narratological and narrative elements a story should contain before it can be useful (for example in a therapeutic/mediation context). Question: Which factors should be taken into account when doing this kind of research?
Culturally Relevant Cancer Risk Counseling for Underserved Latinas
Gloria Juarez
City of Hope
The primary purpose of this project was to evaluate the effects of a culturally relevant genetic cancer risk assessment (GCRA) intervention for Latinas. Four focus groups were conducted consisting of Latinas that have undergone GCRA. Participants were recruited through a letter of invitation. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire that included items assessing perceived cancer risk and satisfaction with GCRA. The focus groups entailed a facilitated discussion of the key study variables and other culturally relevant issues that might influence the GCRA intervention. Data suggest that the pre-GCRA period might be the most distressing time for these women. Perceived sense of lack of information and uncertainty about what to expect appeared to play a key role in distress. Most women initially had negative expectations (i.e., expecting the worse or bad outcome) but ultimately felt hopeful that they could learn more about the GCRA process and what it meant for them. Information was cited as the primary contributor to positive psychosocial outcomes, specifically increased locus of control and self-efficacy. The major cultural themes identified were destino, religious and spiritual coping, how cultural attitudes and belief influence lack of information, community awareness, and public health issues. Preliminary data indicate that the pre-GCRA window might be most distressing for this population, indicating that this might be the most appropriate time for psychological intervention. This study helps address gaps in applied cultural and behavioral cancer genetics research on Latinas at risk for hereditary breast cancer and ovarian cancer.
Discourse and Cognition: Methodological Implications of a Discursive Perspective
Jessica Lester
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Researchers within the field of cognitive education have often viewed discourse as a by-product of social structures and cognitive processes. Cognition has primarily been studied within experimental settings, with little attention given to the role of naturalistic interactions within cognition. When discourse has been considered by cognitive psychologists, it has often been “treated” as a reflection of people's perceptions, not as that which constitutes the social world. In that the site of knowledge construction has rarely been viewed as being situated within everyday interactions, the role of discourse in cognitive development has been minimally explored.
From a discourse analysis in social psychology (DASP) perspective, cognitive processes are viewed as “being handled, managed, produced, made relevant in the talk, rather than as something sitting outside of the talk” (Edwards & Potter, 2005, p. 241). Instead of assuming that a social world exists and waits to be discovered, DASP considers how “socially produced ideas and objects were created in the first place” (Phillips & Hardy, 2002, p. 6).
Within this paper, I consider the relationship between the constructs of discourse and cognition while also exploring the mental aspects of discourse. I seek to extend the discussion of cognition and discourse beyond simply considering “cognitive processing” in relation to discourse production. Through this exploration and analysis, I explore the following questions: (a) In comparison to “traditional” frameworks within cognitive education, how does DASP frame cognitive constructs? (b) For researchers within cognitive education, what are the implications of the epistemological and methodological assumptions of DASP?
Secondary Analysis of Qualitative Data: Illustrating a Conceptual Model with Managers' Narratives
Pamela Loewen
University of Lethbridge
Secondary analysis of qualitative data is the reanalysis of artifactual or nonnaturalistic data, such as interviews and field notes, which other researchers collected and shaped in some way (Heaton, 2004). In the past, we did not recognize the potential for analyzing and publishing research based on preexisting qualitative data. However, over the past decade growing numbers of researchers are exploring the potential of secondary qualitative data analysis, especially in the fields of health care, education, and criminology. Increasing reuse of qualitative data has various benefits, such as less time spent reinterviewing the same participants for different studies and fewer resources expended on collecting new data (e.g., Corti & Thompson, 2004; Hammersley, 1997; Heaton, 2004; Thorne, 1994, 1998). Nevertheless, various authors have identified some issues about the secondary analysis of qualitative data (e.g., Hinds, Vogel, & Clarke-Steffen, 1997). In particular, ethical concerns might preclude access to confidential details, distorting the analysis of the secondary analyst. Also, some authors argue that qualitative data collected for one study might not “fit” the perspective and research questions of another study (e.g., Corti, 2000).
The benefits and pitfalls of secondary qualitative data analysis are discussed in relation to my study. Specifically, I successfully analyzed 237 narratives in preexisting interviews with managers and other employees at three southern Alberta cultural organizations (Frank Slide Interpretive Centre, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, and Remington Carriage Centre). My analysis illustrated a conceptual framework about identity construction of the sites through their interorganizational interactions.
Focus Groups in a Longitudinal Design?
Sofie Maes
Ghent University
Jan De Mol
Ghent University
Divorce of their parents is considered as causing crisis in children's lives, but the greater part of them are able to cope with this transition of their family (Flowerdew & Neale, 2003). However, the exact process of how the child is able to adapt to this family transition and shows resiliency has received little attention in research (Carobene & Cyr, 2006). Research is primarily based on a unidirectional, “parenting” formulation in which parents are seen as the active agents and children as passive recipients. In contrast to this traditional top-down approach, the current project focuses on processes rather than on outcomes and adopts a bidirectional perspective (Kuczynski, 2003), stressing transformation and change in parents, children and the parent-child relationship.
To analyze the child's process of going from initial distress to finding stability after divorce, we would like to use qualitative research methods. In particular, our plan is to conduct several focus groups with children of divorce. Moreover, we would compose the groups so that time since divorce is the same within each group but differs between groups. In this matter we are still struggling with a lot of questions: Is it possible to investigate a process in a qualitative way? Are focus groups appropriate to investigate this process? Can we do it in a longitudinal design? Which method of analyzing the data fits this design the best?
Balancing Safety and Action: Creative Ethical Protocols for Photovoice Research with Women Fleeing Violence
Pamela Ponic
BC Non-Profit Housing Association
Natasha Jategaonkar
BC Non-Profit Housing Association
The ability to access safe and affordable long-term housing is critical for women fleeing violent relationships. In the current housing and homelessness crisis across Canada, the need to understand and address women's ability to secure such housing is urgent. As such, we are conducting a feminist participatory action research project in four diverse rural communities across British Columbia using photovoice methods that combine photographs and narratives to tell women's stories (Frohmann, 2005). The goals of this study are to (a) increase awareness of the barriers to housing faced by women fleeing violence, (b) facilitate participant empowerment, (c) enhance local capacity to address these issues, and (d) support the advocacy efforts of two provincial umbrella organizations. Although these goals are in keeping with FPAR principles of action and social change (Frisby et al, 2009), they are also complicated by ethical and safety considerations. Certainly, informed consent, anonymity, and confidentiality requirements are critical to minimize risk and maximize safety for potentially vulnerable women (Reid et al, in press), yet maintaining confidentiality sometimes requires the stripping of contextual information from data, which can limit feminist analyses and action possibilities (Fine & Weiss, 2005; Ponic, 2007). Ensuring participant anonymity can also compromise the opportunity to use the data to raise public awareness about important, yet sensitive, social issues and to advocate for change. In this poster, we outline the innovative ethical protocols we designed to maximize safety considerations and action potentials, and discuss the complexities of doing so in a multisite community-based research project.
Navigating the Changing Landscape of a Community-Based Pilot Project to Increase Access to Postsecondary Education
Adele Ritch
DYAD Projects
Access to postsecondary education for underrepresented groups looms as an increasingly pressing issue for Canada. In response to this critical issue, the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation (CMSF) is undertaking Canada Post-Secondary Access Partnership, a pilot project to provide community-based services to those who typically do not participate in available career planning programs and might lack information about how to enter into and succeed in postsecondary settings. YouCanGo services are being introduced in more than 15 communities by YMCA Canada working with a range of other nonprofit, public, and private partners. To learn more about what constitutes an effective community-based program to improve postsecondary access, CMSF incorporated a qualitative process research design into its pilot project.
Although the pilot program included core program components, the actual services and the way staff provided services varied considerably both within and across the sites. Services evolved during the 18-month pilot as organizations adapted their program delivery to the particular capacities of the participating organizations and the local community context.
Throughout the study period, the robust nature of the semistructured interview process as well as the ability to undertake repeat interviews have provided the means for researchers to enhance the quality of data obtained as the program evolved. At key points in time, interview questions were restructured to elicit greater depth and clarification from stakeholders. This reflexive process ultimately provides greater clarity about the strengths and challenges of the YMCA delivery of postsecondary access services to underserved groups within specific organizational and community contexts.
Capturing the Experience of Disablement: Issues in Using the Life History Calendar
Tiffany Scott
University of Texas at Austin
Tracie Harrison
University of Texas at Austin
Researchers use life history calendars (LHC) to gather life course histories focusing on specific events and broader transitions. Although a family of related tools has emerged as effective methods for gathering data from participants on broad or narrow phenomenon, we chose the LHC to gather detailed information on the disablement process. The purpose of this paper is to review the uses of the LHC in qualitative and mixed-method research as well its benefits and limitations. We also discuss the way the LHC is currently being used in a large mixed-method, cultural comparative study of disablement outcomes. Data from three culturally distinct women with permanent disabilities will be presented as case studies to illustrate the use, pros and cons of the LHC. In conclusion, we posit that the LHC is a useful method, but is most useful when approached from an interpretive paradigm, when trying to gather data from women of varied ethnic and socioeconomic strata.
Sharing the Load: Exploring Collaborative Qualitative Analysis
Jonathan Sillito
University of Calgary
Glen Gatin
Fielding University
Paul Wishart
University of Calgary
We are in the early stages of a research program investigating collaborative aspects of qualitative analysis. As a first step in this research, we conducted a small interview study and found data collection and analysis work (open coding, for example) is divided up between team members. The challenge for team members then is to combine their work into a consistent analytic product. This combining process is an important analytical activity in its own right and involves discussing different perspectives, comparing insights, resolving differences and collectively refining the research focus.
To continue this research and to explore how tool support for collaboration can be improved, we have created Saturate, a Web-based qualitative analysis tool. A screen shot of the tool is available at http://ucalgary.ca/~sillito/saturate.pdf. Saturate supports two main analytic activities: coding and memoing. Using Saturate, researchers can code and memo text data (such as interview transcripts and webpage content). This coding and memoing can then be shared with team members. Memos can be created about other memos generating an analytic discussion. We hope the resultant analytic discussion can effectively facilitate combining the insights of the research team into a representative and relevant analytic product.
A small number of researchers are currently using Saturate in collaborative projects, with the hope that more will be using it in the near future. Analysis of how researchers use the tool will provide feedback to refine the tool, and more particularly, refine our understanding of the collaborative aspects of qualitative analysis.
Abstracts, Symposia: Listed alphabetically by submitting author
Thinking Critically about Mixing Qualitative with Quantitative Methods
Susan Berkowitz
Westat
By now, in most social scientific circles, the question of whether qualitative and quantitative methods should ever be combined has presumably been resolved. The paradigm wars are over, so we have been told, or, at least, a truce has been called, with perhaps some minor ongoing “skirmishes.” But this apparent consensus in favor of mixing does not obviate—indeed, it makes more important—the question of how this methodological rapprochement can occur in a fruitful and meaningful way that ensures the essential characteristics and distinctive strengths of each approach are maintained. This panel will explore political, organizational, and intellectual factors that affect the dynamics and outcomes of mixed methods research studies. It will sound a cautionary note for qualitative researchers who enter the territory of mixed methods without taking into account basic power differentials as well as fundamental differences between qualitative and often hegemonic quantitative perspectives.
i Mixed Methods: New Title, Same Old Hegemony?
Cynthia Robins
Westat
Qualitative methods of data collection and analysis have gained cachet in recent years as researchers recognize the value-added of first-person narratives, ethnographic observation, and textual analysis. Consequently, qualitative researchers increasingly are being invited to participate in “mixed” or “blended” methods study designs. This pattern is viewed by many researchers as the first step toward qualitative recognition and full inclusion in scientific research. This presentation will encourage proceeding with caution, however, noting that such designs too often focus solely on the methodological techniques rather than their epistemological underpinnings. Qualitative research is more than a method, but is an approach to knowledge whose philosophical underpinnings differ fundamentally from those underlying the positivist or postpositivist paradigm.
The presenter will discuss several core issues that qualitative researchers should explore with their collaborators early to avoid late-onset challenges with mixed method studies:
hypothesis-testing versus interpretation, the former being a fixed approach to a research question, whereas the latter encourages the researcher to continually rethink a question as new information is learned;
the role of the researcher in data collection, or why a senior qualitative researcher cannot hand off all of her work to a research assistant; and
ensuring that all partners in the research are using the same terms (e.g., community participation, in-depth interviews) to mean the same thing.
Qualitative researchers are seeing more opportunities to contribute to our understanding of the world, but should try to ensure that old biases are not simply obscured by the new packaging of “mixed methods.”
ii Mixing Methods in Different Types of Evaluation Studies
Izabella Zandberg
Academy for Educational Development
Evaluation research focuses not only on whether the evaluated program accomplished its intended outcomes but also on why. However, despite the U.S. research community's increasing acceptance of mixing qualitative and quantitative methods, the tendency is still to design evaluations that are overly reliant on quantitative data. The qualitative component is often added only at the end of the research, after a quantitative study fails to answer all the questions that needed to be addressed. On rare occasions, qualitative research is interwoven with quantitative work in an integrated research design from the early phases of study development.
This presentation will be based on the experiences of research teams working in two large social science research firms in the United States, where most work is funded by various agencies in the U.S. government. The presenter will discuss three government-funded evaluations of health-related programs that exemplify different levels of integration of a mixed method approach from the onset of the study. Factors that facilitated as well as those that hindered such integration, including time and budgetary limitations, will be discussed. The presentation will conclude by considering reasons why mixing methods in evaluation research still poses a challenge and propose ways to remedy the situation.
iii When Not to Mix: Real World Perspectives on Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in a U.S. Contract Research Setting
Susan Berkowitz
Westat
In its textbook formulation, the decision of whether to mix qualitative and quantitative methods in a single research design is often posed in very abstract, “ivory tower” terms. But along with important epistemological considerations are real-world issues that need to be addressed, which spring partly from the wider policy and political environment of a study, and may be more apparent in a private firm than a university-based setting. This paper will “upend” the usual “how to mix” discourse by exploring circumstances in which combining qualitative methods such as ethnography, in-depth interviews, and focus groups with quantitative survey methods can be ill advised, notwithstanding the understandable lure for qualitative researchers interested in promoting wider use of qualitative methods.
The presenter, an anthropologist drawing on concrete examples from 20+ years working in an applied contract research firm in the U.S., will consider factors related to the (a) audiences for the research; (b) level of funding and the funder's goals and expectations; (c) “goodness of fit” between the quantitative and qualitative design components, especially in posing of the research questions and underlying conceptual framework; and (d) the ability and willingness of collaborators to understand and appreciate the distinctive contributions of the qualitative study component. The presentation will underline the importance of critically and strategically assessing the viability of mixing methods in a setting where the quantitative, positivist paradigm remains hegemonic and will draw analogies between this debate and parallel issues of “separatism” and “assimilation” raised in the civil rights and feminist movements.
Assessing Arts-Based Research
Darquise Lafrenière
University of British Columbia
Arts-based initiatives have emerged over the past few decades as promising avenues for innovation in qualitative research. As a result, researchers in various disciplines are experimenting with novel forms of inquiry and data representation, such as dance, drama, fiction, poetry, song, and visual art. If much has been written about the form, the content, and the legitimacy of these arts-based research methods, other important questions have been neglected. Drawing on the empirical works of our UBC interdisciplinary research team, this proposed symposium will identify and discuss initiatives undertaken to design assessment models, methods and tools. This is currently an understudied area within arts-based research and warrants significant attention.
i Exploring Three Approaches to Research-Based Theatre
George Belliveau
University of British Columbia
Graham Lea
University of British Columbia
In recent years, fields including health care and education have increasingly made use of theatre to conduct qualitative research. This paper explores how research-based theatre, an umbrella term for the integration of theatre into a research process, has been developed as a method and methodology for both analysis and dissemination of research. Qualitative theatre-based methods encompassed or akin to this approach include ethnotheatre (Saldaña, 2005), performance ethnography (Denzin, 1997), and performative inquiry (Fels & Belliveau, 2008).
In this paper, we identify and discuss three approaches to research-based theatre that have emerged within the research literature. The first one resembles a traditional playwriting process, where an author brings to life data previously analyzed (Saldaña, 2008). The second approach takes a more collective approach and researchers explore and analyze data using theatrical techniques then collectively perform their findings (Norris, 2000). The third approach allows for a combination of collectively exploring and analyzing data, prior to a single author creating a script based on the data and the theatre process (Colantonio et al., 2008; Mitchell, Jonas-Simpson, & Ivonoffski, 2006).
We also explore some of the challenges, benefits, and ethical issues associated with the three approaches. In addition, examples from three recent theatre projects where we integrated each of the approaches to analyze and disseminate data will be critically examined. Finally, methods of evaluating the efficacy of research-based theatre productions, informed by the literature and our recent projects, will be shared.
ii Designing a Conceptual Framework for Assessing Poetry as a Means for Data Representation
Darquise Lafrenière
University of British Columbia
Susan Cox
University of British Columbia
This paper explores the use of poetry as a way of disseminating qualitative research findings. We focus on the question, What are the criteria that inform the quality of research poems in the context of data representation? Drawing on our empirical works as well as on a quality management approach, we present a conceptual framework we have constructed for assessing the use of research poetry as a means for data representation. Our model was tested with poems created in four found poetry workshops based on the data gathered in a 5-year CIHR-funded research project Centring the Human Subject in Health Research: Understanding the Meaning and Experience of Research Participation. Fifteen human subjects agreed that the anonymized transcripts of their interviews be used by creators to write poetry on four themes that emerged from the data: practical costs and benefits of research participation, reasons for participating in research, relationships with researchers, and trust in research. More than 30 poems were written using exclusively the words of the human participants (found poetry). We argue that evaluation should rely on three sets of criteria: normative, substantive, and performative criteria. We also claim that our model for assessing research poetry could be adapted and applied to evaluate various forms of research-related artistic work.
iii Working across Scientific and Arts Disciplines: Pushing the Boundaries of Tradition
Susan Cox
University of British Columbia
George Belliveau
University of British Columbia
Darquise Lafrenière
University of British Columbia
Graham Lea
University of British Columbia
This paper reflects on a pilot project undertaken by an interdisciplinary team of researchers and artists/actors, lay and professional, to create, perform, and/or display and assess four arts-based methods for transferring knowledge to various audiences: research participants, researchers and research workers, members of research ethics boards, policy makers, funding agencies, interest groups, and the general public. The four artistic forms that were studied include poetry, song, theatre, and visual art. The project involved more than 50 artist-collaborators and was conducted over an 18-month period. We discuss the ethical, epistemological, and methodological issues we encountered as well as the opportunities that arose from this interdisciplinary collaborative work. We comment on the overlapping and divergent concerns that social scientists, educational researchers and artists had at various stages during the development of the research project. We make recommendations as well as propose assessment models that could be of assistance in interdisciplinary research-based projects.
Innovative Dialogic Research on Cultural Identity, Youth Engagement, and Social Justice
Darren E. Lund
University of Calgary
Studies analyzing the role of youth and adults engaged in social justice initiatives and programs show that a promising area of focus is on the identities of participants. Researching the complex set of issues surrounding identity must include critical consideration of ethnicity, language, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and other markers of difference, as well as racism, racialization, and other forms of oppression. Each of the presenters at this workshop will offer insights from their own dialogic research, in various stages of completion, around these issues, drawing on theory from cultural, antiracist, and critical theory. Presenters will share a range of dialogic research that covers broad topics of cultural diversity, youth engagement, community collaboration, and social justice activism. This workshop will further our understanding of respectful, collaborative research methods, using duoethnography and other dialogic narrative forms of inquiry.
i Connecting Visual Methods and Dialogical Research
Kathy Sitter
University of Calgary
This presentation explores the ways in which visual methods such as photovoice, participatory video, and digital stories open up new spaces for dialogue and collaboration in community-based research. The presenter draws on her experiences working with various marginalized groups, including Aboriginal communities, people with disabilities, and women previously involved in the sex trade, to discuss the opportunities and challenges associated with visual media in social justice initiatives.
ii Duoethnographies on Youth Activism and Social Justice
Maryam Nabavi
University of British Columbia
Through a dialogic engagement across social identities and life experiences, the presenters will offer insights and analyses on an emerging methodology and how it benefits research on social justice issues. Exploring issues such as what formal and informal experiences and education have brought each of us to become social justice activists—and how learning about advocacy and community action in dialogue with another, and through dialogue, can change our perspective over time—this presentation will explore the value of creating collaborative narratives through a duoethnographic inquiry on activism and collective anti-racism work with youth.
iii Engaging Former Youth Activists in Duoethnographic Research
Darren E. Lund
University of Calgary
The presenter will argue for using a duoethnographic approach as a respectful way to engage in collaborative research. This ongoing study offers a critical analysis of the impact of engaging in social justice research from the perspective of actual former student leaders, long overlooked as informants in shaping our understandings in this area. The researcher seeks to better understand the many complex ways in which taking a leadership role in fostering social justice can affect individuals.
Abstracts, Symposia: Listed alphabetically by submitting author
Ajandi, Jennifer, 3
Almog, Nitsan, 3
Balfour, Janet, 3
Pollack, Shoshana, 3
Barbour, Rosaline, 4
Beck, Matthias, 4
Brown, Sally, 4
Mannion, Russell, 4
Biblehimer, Helen, 4
Bidgood, Bruce, 5
Bosio, A. Claudio, 5
Graffigna, Guendalina, 5
Caine, Vera, 5
Estefan, Andrew, 5
Calman, Lynn, 6
Carlisle, Caroline, 6
Ibbotson, Tracy, 6
Nelson, Andrea, 6
Chasserio, Stephanie, 6
Baudoin, Emmanuel, 6
Finkelstein, Adi, 6
Francesconi, Denis, 7
Gallagher, Shaun, 7
Fraser, Kimberly, 7
Al Sayah, Fatima, 7
Funk, Laura, 8
Stajduhar, Kelli, 8
Causton, Elizabeth, 8
Golembeski, Susan, 8
Greeff, Minrie, 8, 9
Kruger, Annamarie, 8
Grose, Jane, 9
Richardson, Janet, 9
Skirton, Heather, 9
Frost, Julia, 9
Lewis, Natalie, 9
Harman, Lesley, 9
Holewa, Hamish, 10
Piecka, Debra C. Burkey, 10
Hopson, Rodney, 10
Torres, Rosalie, 10
Casey, Jill, 10
Humble, Áine, 11
Sharp, Elizabeth, 11
Irvine, Annie, 11
Jardine, Cindy, 11
Chenail, Ron, 11
Given, Lisa, 11
Jivanjee, Pauline, 12
Knotsch, Cathleen, 12
Nickels, Scot, 12
Kovalesky, Andrea, 12
Liamputtong, Pranee, 13
Lige, Sara, 13
Hole, Rachelle, 13
Maiter, Sarah, 13
Westhues, Anne, 13
Manyedi, Eva, 14
Greeff, Minrie, 14
Meyers, Eva, 14
Carey, Martha Ann, 14
Lesh, Aja Tulleners, 14
Michelow, Warren, 14
Buxton, Jane, 14
Mohammed, Selina, 15
Walters, Karina, 15
LaMarr, June, 15
Fryberg, Sheryl, 15
Evans-Campbell, Tessa, 15
Morgan, David, 15
Ataie, Jutta, 15
Moss, Mari Ann, 16
Costley, Carolyn, 16
Newman, Christy, 16
Kippax, Susan, 16
Mao, Limin, 16
Saltman, Deborah, 16
De Wit, John, 16
Anderson, Jonathan, 16
Reynolds, Robert, 16
Canavan, Peter, 16
Kidd, Michael, 16
Nicol, Jennifer J., 16
Ong, Beng Kok, 17
Reid, Colleen, 17
Ponic, Pamela, 17
Besla, Kashmir, 17
Hara, Louise, 17
Kaweesi, Connie, 17
LeDrew, Robin, 17
Rush, Kathy, 18
Yakong, Vida Nyagre, 18
Seto, Lisa, 18
Angus, Jan, 18
Gastaldo, Denise, 18
Howell, Doris, 18
Sitter, Kathleen, 18
Smith, Andrew, 19
Stegenga, Kristin, 19
Docherty, Sharron, 19
Phillips-Salimi, Celeste, 19
Donovan, Molly, 19
Hendricks-Ferguson, Verna, 19
Barnes, Yvonne, 19
Haase, Joan, 19
Stevens, Christine, 20
Stutz, Ulrike, 20
DeForge, Ryan, 21
Hall, Jodi, 21
Szudy, Natalie, 21
Bickford, Julia, 21
Lencuch, Raphael, 21
Shaw, James, 21
Cullion, Christine, 21
Hendricks-Ferguson, Verna, 22
Haase, Joan E., 22
Dupree, Claretta J., 22
Sawin, Kathleen J., 22
Montgomery, Kitty, 22
Humblet, John, 22
Buysse, Ann, 22
De Mol, Jan, 22
Juarez, Gloria, 22
Lester, Jessica, 23
Loewen, Pamela, 23
Maes, Sofie, 23
De Mol, Jan, 23
Ponic, Pamela, 24
Jategaonkar, Natasha, 24
Ritch, Adele, 24
Scott, Tiffany, 25
Harrison, Tracie, 25
Sillito, Jonathan, 25
Gatin, Glen, 25
Wishart, Paul, 25
Berkowitz, Susan, 26
Robins, Cynthia, 26
Zandberg, Izabella, 26
Berkowitz, Susan, 26
Belliveau, George, 27, 28
Lea, Graham, 27, 28
Lafrenière, Darquise, 27, 28
Cox, Susan, 27, 28
Lund, Darren E., 28, 29
Sitter, Kathy, 28
Nabavi, Maryam, 28
Footnotes
Acknowledgement:
This study was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Nursing Research, Health Disparities Among Mexican American Women with Disabilities, R01 NR010360.
National Institutes of Health: National Institute of Nursing Research (5R01NR008583), Children's Oncology Group (COG) (U10 CA098543), and National Cancer Institute (U10 CA095861)