I am going to make a presentation about qualitative methods in evaluation later this week. The focus is on qualitative interviewing. This is the second time this semester I have presented about some aspect of qualitative inquiry to a graduate class. It was my assessment after the fact that the first attempt did not go very well.
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Members of a class I teach won the first ever wheelchair basketball tournament at The University of Missisissippi. Here is a picture from last night after the final game (I am the one in the center, not in a chair). None of these students actually uses a wheelchair for mobility; over the course of the tournament, I only saw one student participant who regularly uses a wheelchair. (I think this is due to the small number of students with mobility limitations attending this university rather than anything else. This university has not traditionally offered a great deal in the way of accessible recreational opportunities so potential students probably prefer to attend institutions that offer a greater range of disability accessible programs.) The students who participated thoroughly enjoyed this - using a chair made the game flow differently and provided an additional challenge for everyone. One of my semester goals is to work on a detailed transcription. I am not trying for a full "Jefferson style" conversation analysis but I do want to capture some paralinguistic elements that are not part of the standard 'verbatim' transcription.
I found an incredible book for people who are interested in transcription: "Transcribing talk and interaction" by Christopher Joseph Jenks (John Benjamins, Philadelphia). It is the only book I have seen devoted to this. The free for download "Manual on transcription" by Dresing, Pehl, and Schmieder, now in its second edition, is also terrific. Dresing et al. provide a nice overview and include some technical information. Jenks is more purely about representation of sound and other elements and has very little discussion about equipment or technology. After the break, you can find the first stage of this project, if you are interested in following me through it. I have said it before and I have thought about it a lot - it is HARD to let people see the 'real' you.
When I write my deep down, inside feelings, some of the less attractive elements of my personality are certain to show through. I know about these things - but they are the type of thoughts that most of us only share once in a while, with someone close, during an emotional situation, or when substances are involved. And I regularly regret giving the life to some of the thoughts that speaking words aloud does. I have seen several references in fiction to what it would be like if people could easily read each others' minds. It would be a total disaster, that's what it would be like. But I think to honestly and accurately pursue qualitative inquiry, it is important to be able to self-disclose and TO BE WILLING TO PUT IT OUT THERE. After all, I am asking that of research participants. As a recreation leader, I have always kept to the rule that I will not ask people to try an activity that I will not do myself. That is one of several criteria I have for selecting games or activities. So, if I am going to continue down the qualitative path, I have to be willing to give some of myself - and put it out there. I did some of this in writing up the field notes assignment and as I typed last night, there were a few things I would have preferred to leave out, but, to preserve the genuine experience (these notes were written immediately after the experience so reflected my immediate reaction), I left everything in. But in some ways it is a little like taking off some of your clothes, but not necessarily while you are at a nude beach. I am working on putting together my participant observation data. I have made some notes on the handwritten notes and uploaded all of the videos to the iMovie program. I plan to create a short 'highlight reel' that illustrates some of each of the episodes I have identified. I have identified 4 episodes and some 'interludes' between the episodes. The photo above, by the way, is my current road bike. This is a 2009 or 2010 Schwinn Peloton Ltd carbon frame (for a few years, Schwinn made relatively expensive bikes and I like the geometry a lot; I picked up the frame, unused, for a very good price a couple of years ago). Custom paint by Jack Kane, Jack Kane Racing Cycles in North Carolina. I built it with some new and some took-off-my-other-bikes parts (Ultegra drivetrain and shifters, Easton EA 70 bars, stem, seatpost, EA 90 wheels, TRP R960 brake calipers). Here is a 20 second loop from Monday night's ride repeated 4 times; this camera's mediocre performance under these light conditions works to obscure detail which is ideal for posting here (to be fair to the camera, it is using entirely default settings; the normally lit portions of the film are beautiful!). Filmed with a Drift Ghost HD mounted on an Easton EA70 carbon handlebar. Notice the 'wave' effect this video has as a result of the very rough road along with the stiff-yet-responsive nature of the carbon. Editing with iMovie included rotating the clip - I had the camera mounted sideways and did not know the lens rotated until later - muting the road noise, choosing and looping the selection, and attaching the soundtrack. The song is "Rolling in the Deep" by Adele.
Created by me with one of the the GoAnimate Ninja templates.
The cycling group went out again last night but I have a conflict on Wednesdays. My appearance Monday was mentioned in some email exchanges and it actually made me feel a little guilty. I do not participate in this ride regularly - I did not come out and say it so much in my prior post, but I stay away partly because I fear that they will not work as hard as I would like. Draft riding in general is very, very different, and since my focus is TT/triathlon riding, I do not benefit as much from riding with others. I 'used' this activity for an assignment. I did enjoy myself and am more likely to consider repeating attendance than I would have been before. The camera was surprisingly unobtrusive from my viewpoint - it did not change my participation. I think I have filmed and taped so many things over time that I am less aware of it. (One of the very funny things to me was seeing my head pop into the top of the picture whenever I stood and leaned over on a climb.) Before I go on with this train of thought (follow the 'read more' link), I want to comment on the picture. Since I called the post 'guilt,' I started to think about using a picture of a judge, then I thought of using a 'funny' judge, like one from the old "Monty Python's Flying Circus" show, but when I searched for a picture, I also saw some pix of "The Spanish Inquisition." I laughed my head off at this skit when I was watching Python weekly beginning with my middle school (7th grade) years. I had a small B & W television in my bedroom and had to watch this with an earplug because it came on at 10:30 on Sundays and that was after my bedtime. Now that I think about it, I am certain my dad knew what I was up to. I had no idea at that time what the Inquisition was but when I did finally learn about it in a history class, I had had this 'early exposure.' There is another bit of comedy in the inclusion of "Cardinal Biggles," a fictional character who was a WW I flying ace (notice the aviator hat and goggles). "Cardinal Fang" was Terry Gilliam, the sole American in the group, who mostly did the animations for the Pythons but later became a film director. I recorded my participant observation experience with a Drift Ghost HD. The video quality is overall very good. The audio quality is less so, but there was a lot of wind and a lot of road noise.
I arrived about 5 minutes before departure and turned the camera on. I tried to bring this up a couple of time ("I am trying out my new action cam") but there were too many other conversations going on. I assumed that everyone saw it on the handlebar of my bike - it is large and obvious. It occurred to me later that it looks a little like a headlight and if I had mounted it to a helmet it might have been more obvious and received more attention. I have to believe that at least some, if not all of the riders knew that I filmed the ride. |
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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