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I have come to think of the interview as a primary means of gathering qualitative data. That said, I have not done nearly enough in taking advantage of everything interviews offer - recording my observations during and after conducting them in person, and tracking non-verbals both in in-person and telephone interviews. So, I was struck by the discussion in Kathryn Roulston's book "Reflective interviewing: A guide to theory and practice" (Sage) offering research examples which question use of interviews. What I took away from Roulston's discussion was that observational methods are sometimes considered better sources by these researchers. I located one of her references from this section (Porter & Hepburn, 2005, from issue 4, volume 2 of "Qualitative Research in Psychology," as well as a commentary article from the same issue) although I have not yet the chance to review it in detail (look for my thoughts in a later post).
One area where I see the interview as critical is in phenomenological exploration because what I observe and report as the researcher, will be based on my perceptions/interpretations so may totally miss the mark of what the participant or co-researcher perceives as the essence of his/her lived experience. I also used interviews as the sole data collection method in retrospective research and, again, there were no viable alternatives I could come up with. I understand the concerns about data from semi- or unstructured interviews - some of which are probably the same concerns as data from survey research or structured interviews such as: people lying, people trying to tell you what they think you want to hear, people answering thoughtlessly, people concerned about the social desirability of their responses. There is also the chance that interviewers will misinterpret or misunderstand, and may ask inappropriate follow up questions. These errors, I believe, are exacerbated when interviewers do not do their own transcribing. Interviewer transcription, for all of its many difficulties, is increasingly becoming something I see as a critical part of the interview process. Most people who I've spoken to about transcription mention how much time it takes. Frankly, I have heard the barrier 'no time' applied to so many things that I am starting to wonder what we are doing with the massive amounts of time we save by not doing the many things we have 'no time' to do! So, can phenomenological research be conducted without interviews? All I can think of is having the fortunate circumstance of observing someone talking about the experiences you are interested in although you are still going to be limited in not being able to probe. What other examples are there? A problem with an online journal is the reliance on internet access - I talked about this before when the internet was down all over. As it turned out, it was down all over, so anything I posted was probably not going to be read. I had a local situation this week when my office access went off early Monday morning. As of Wed a.m., I was still waiting for a visit from U of Miss technical services (this is near the beginning of the semester, so a busy time). The university has a wi-fi but it does not work well in some of the buildings including the one that houses my office. The building that houses my department has no wifi access, so I cannot simply go use one of the spare rooms there. Yesterday, I sat outside on a bench near the library to try to finish my grading. Note: As discussed in an earlier post, I do not have a 'smart phone' although I am not certain I would use it to try to read written student assignments if I did.
It is amazing how internet dependent I am even though I like to think I am not - it is the little, spontaneous daily uses I do not think about (check the weather; check my interlibrary loan account for some book chapters I requested; use the library dbases to find an article I marked in the reference list of a book I am reading; take a look at my bank account balance, etc.) As I discussed earlier, although I use Dropbox, some - the 'some' is due to my basic mistrust of uninterrupted internet access at home or on campus. In a break with my normal practice, I uploaded a presentation on Sunday night to Dropbox so I could continue to edit it on Monday because I needed to give it on Tuesday, and sure enough, this was exactly the wrong time to depend on Dropbox. I ended up staying up late at home on Monday to work on it, then I put the finished product on my (so far) reliable 8g flash drive. This word frequency diagram was created on wordle.net. I pasted in the entire report, clicked 'randomize' a few times until I liked the arrangement, then clicked on 'color' and chose this scheme. I used the printer dialog box to 'save as PDF.' For Mac OS X users, see the FAQ before you start creating with Wordle - you will need to download the Java patch to be able to use the 'print' function to save your creations. Once you download and install the patch, you need to close your browser and re-open it to get it to work.
For the best effect, click on 'fullscreen' above so you can see a larger version of the diagram. The Chancellor's office at The University of Mississippi released part of the public report addressing incidents on the Ole Miss campus that occurred on election night (and made the national news). I found this a fascinating read, in part because the data collection was what I would describe as qualitative since it was based on document analysis (social media, photographs) and interviews. There are lots of discussion points in this report - including the role of spontaneous social media ("Twitter") to create a situation. I hope journalism or communication classes take advantage of this report to initiate class discussions. I highlighted one quote I found particularly interesting: "For example, some tweets held that a police car had been overturned on campus, students had been sprayed with tear gas and pepper spray, people had been shot, and students had been tased. None of this took place, but through interviews with students, some of whom reported these events while never leaving their rooms or observing anything firsthand, it became clear that the veracity of a statement had little bearing when deciding to report it through Twitter" (emphasis added). You can read the news release and download the report at: http://news.olemiss.edu/university-committee-releases-report-on-election-night-incident/#.UQPtEuiRo0U Near the end of the report, I began to see the influence of phenomenology. Different groups of students had differing experiences (some felt 'threatened,' others did not); some noted that it changed the way they felt about the university - one noted that the Hotty Toddy chant - used at sporting events - now had different meaning (it was used in the context of what some perceived as a threat). I included the picture of the burning sign because, interestingly to me, the two students who were photographed with the burning campaign signs both denied responsibility. In their view, picking up or holding the burning sign did not carry the same level of responsibility as setting the sign on fire. So, that makes me wonder - which is 'worse,' if there is such a thing - setting the sign on fire and leaving, or picking it up and being photographed with it? (One student admitted his purpose in picking up the sign was to be photographed.) Or does it matter? Either behavior was meant to create controversey, I believe. Lots of issues of perception going on here, but also undoubtably issues of self-monitoring and self-editing during the interviews occured, so any reality reported is a result of some interpretation. On the other hand, in this instance, perception (during and after) seems to be as or more important as objectivity. And your 'facts' depend on where you were standing. I think it would be very interesting to hear the interview tapes. I see the presence of phenomenology in the fact that the 'lived experiences' of this night reflected differing perceptions of reality. However, each individuals' response/perception had an impact on how they view not only that night, but the environment they are in. For some students, they woke up the next morning and went to a 'different' university than the one they attended the day before. This was actually my experience to some extent. I believe that I am 'insulated' from a lot of the day to day goings on. The only residential areas I spend any time in are the Residential Colleges and the students there are for the most part serious, creative, upper class (or on academic scholarship) and seemingly less engaged in the heavy drinking atmosphere that tends to be associated with other groups of residential students. I teach in the recreation building and mostly teach exercise science, recreation, or health students, who, for the most part tend to have a healthy lifestyle. While I attend some campus events, they are usually technology instruction, academic lectures, or musical performances. I also avoid "The Square" (downtown Oxford) during most weekend evenings during the academic semester - so I am really out of touch with the daily lives of undergrads who live on or near campus. Interestingly, right around the time of the election, this university was recognizing the 50th anniversary of the end of segregation when James Meridith became the first Black student to attend in fall of 1962. My thoughts around this time were that we were so far away from that world that it was incomprehensible to imagine what attitudes were like in 1962. Needless to say, I was stunned by what I heard about election night. I remember thinking (and still think): I wonder what is going on in the minds of some of these students (Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, etc.) when they see people of other races as they walk around campus. I see the influence of Interpretive phenonemenological analysis (IPA) in how the report of election night was written - the writers interpreted how the students interpreted the events of the night to come up with a description of the actual events. I also especially like the note the writers made about the crowd of student observers: "The Incident Review Committee holds that although the majority of students were present to satisfy their curiosity, couching them as 'observers' belies the fact that their presence, in ever-increasing numbers, was a significant factor in the escalation of the events of election night. We think it more appropriate to refer to these students as 'passive participants' because by their mere presence they played a role that contributed to the difficulties with crowd control and negative media coverage.' This video was created with Photo Booth for Mac, using the built in Mac camera and mic, and edited with iMovie. The theme is one of the standard iMovie themes (Comic Book) although I altered the titles - which by default are movie credits ("Directed by," etc.). The background sounds and music all came from the iMovie program library of sounds. I adjusted the levels down to 10% so they did not cover up the audio.
I have been processing information from TQR 2013 for the past couple of days as well as thinking about how some of what I learned applies to my research interests. As a student of health behavior, I am often concerned with finding ways to persuade people to change behaviors - either to add health promoting behaviors or to reduce or eliminate behaviors that are believed to be negative. (What is the opposite of health promoting - health demoting??) When examining these issues, it seems to me to be very important to understand not only the value people place on certain behaviors, but how they perceive themselves with respect to those behaviors. Physical activity, my particular interest, has been the subject of many attempts to quantify subjective concepts - such as 'moderate,' 'vigorous,' various levels of 'perceived effort,' etc. Heart rate, the one physiological response that many people can regularly monitor (things like lactate threshold require specialized equipment and testing) is still fairly 'subjective' in the sense that it can be impacted by fatigue, numbers tend to trend downward as fitness increase, the relationship with age is not linear, etc. Because I am not a physiologist, I am interested in even 'fuzzier' results like 'enjoyment,' 'fun,' 'alertness,' 'good mood,' 'feeling energetic,' etc. Adherence or habitual engagement in physical activity (I tend to really dislike the word 'exercise') can be assessed by the numbers, but even counting number or amount of times does not tell me the intensity at which someone worked, or how they felt about it. These questions, as well as the others suggested above (matters related to value and perception) all lend themselves very well to qualitative approach, yet it seems that there is more emphasis based on quantitative methods, even when the 'fuzzier' concepts have to be forced into numerical scales.
Today some of the pitfalls of technology became clear. Our internet connection kept failing today,, we contacted the ISP and were told that the entire town of Oxford, Mississippi was having internet difficulties. The connection ‘hiccupped’ while I was uploading a video blog entry and some supplementary technical notes. I copied and saved the notes and left the web page open, hoping that when the connection was restored the upload would continue. Of course this does not prevent the creation of media on my computer although it does hamper my ability to share. I do not have a smart phone or tablet with 4G access; even if I did, these offer only a partial solution to a lack of internet access problem. First, some smaller devices do not have the ability to run some of the more sophisticated programs, so I would be limited in what I could create - even if there is an iMovie-type app, I doubt it has the capabilities of the program on my computer and it would be a lot harder to use without a large screen and a mouse. Secondly, only other people with 4G access would be able to retrieve things I do post. This starts to make me thing of the ‘tree in the forest’ thing (if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?). If I post something on the internet but no one can go online to view it, is it 'available?' Another question is, if I post something and people can view it, but they don’t, is it 'available?'
This (the fact that I anticipate internet issues) is why I do not rely on Dropbox for files I use in my classes and instead carry around flash drives with my not Information about this post: created on Word and saved to my computer hard drive several hours prior to posting. Technical notes: I created the video by combining 4 short movies made using Apple's Photo Booth program and the built in camera and microphone on my iMac. It was necessary to start a new movie when changing the effect but it was easy enough to paste the clips together in Apple's iMovie. I cut out two of the longer pauses but otherwise left it as it was - this was not scripted or rehearsed (which is probably obvious). I then added the transitions, background music, and other sounds using the built in functions in iMovie. I am still using OS 10.6.8 Snow Leopard - the Photo Booth program appears to be a little more user friendly in the Mountain Lion OS.
Although doing this work tends to be labor and time intensive (especially uploading for posting!), it is clear to me that individuals have the potential to produce unique and entertaining videos with just a Mac and the built in programs; with a handheld camera of reasonable quality, it would not b |
AuthorI am Sheryl L. Chatfield, Ph.D, C.T.R.S. I am a member of the faculty in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. I also Co-coordinate the Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research and I am a member of the Design Innovation Team at Kent State. Archives
February 2024
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