I read online today about the list of 78 'undercovered' terror attacks that is being presented as partial support of restrictions on travel to the US by individuals from certain specific countries. That these incidents did not all occur here makes me question the relevance to a US travel ban. But I tend to think like a researcher - maybe too much of the time - and look for logic, purpose and suggestions of multiple, not necessarily linear relationships (I doubt the existance of a great many simple causal attributions in human behavioral sciences) everywhere. Sometimes in political, and other types of speech, logic is replace by emotion, insecurity substitutes for purpose, and relationships are ranked based on individual (self-centered) priorities.
To return to the name and point of this post - I am not even certain what 'undercovered' means. I have see no attempts to quantify it - although I admit that I did not look that hard. Certainly it is a subjective (and likely flexible) measure. I have seen no evidence of the analysis that was conducted to distinguish among 'undercovered' from whatever the other alternatives are ('overcovered?' 'covered appropriately?' 'less uncovered'). I do not know if this is one discrete category on a 3, 5, or 7 point scale, or one anchor point of a continuuous contiuum. Based on what I do know, I am inclined at this point to think that the 'undercovered' list was not the result of a systematic process - either of the qualitative or quantitative type. This might reflect a shift away from traditional political evidence that tends to consist of statistics, but I do not see it as a 'win' for the qualitative side by any means.
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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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