LIS 6272 Spring 2015

Ethics can be a tricky business.  On the one hand, we have constructed society such that there are certain expectations that everyone understands, for the most part.  On the other hand, there is a lot of ambiguity in certain areas.  For example, the article on fabrication . . . I can understand the need to protect sensitive information and the identities of those who provided that information, but the “by-the-book” rigid ethicist (yes, I made that word up) in me says that it’s not okay because it’s a type of falsification of results.  It’s a real conundrum.  If you follow the linguistic style and maintain the same general content, it follows that fabrication might be okay.  But what if you don’t do such a good job?  I’m not sure of the answer here, but it is definitely food for thought.

The example given in class was also interesting.  I haven’t had a lot of experience with grant writing, but I wonder if constructing the grant with some wiggle room for such occasions is possible.  Of course, in this case, promises were made to the researchers that were not kept, but I’m thinking more generally.  How can we word our funding requests with just enough vagueness to allow for instances such as this one?  Again, food for thought, and something to keep in mind going forward academically.

Case Study

A case study is unique in that it can be thought of both as a method, and as a research design, depending on the school of thought to which one subscribes.  Though it is named here as the former, the following explanation is constructed such that it is treated as the latter.  The author understands that a case study consists of multiple methods, but that those methods vary depending on the particular case.  As such, each case study must be carefully designed with several considerations in mind.  Before discussing those considerations, it is helpful to examine the definition of “case study.”

Case Study: A Working Definition

To begin with, case study methodology is inherently constructivist.  In a constructivist approach to any phenomenon, reality is seen as being socially constructed, and relative to an individual’s lived social experience (Baxter and Jack, 2008).  Because a case study “investigates a contemporary phenomenon (the ‘case’) in depth and within its real-world context,” the background and experiences of the case’s key players are an integral part of the case (Yin, 2014, pp. 16-17; Gillham, 2000).  In other words, it is impossible to separate an individual from his or her socially constructed reality.

Second, a case study uses several sources and methods to obtain data about the phenomenon under investigation (Yin, 2014).  In fact, the researcher may not be fully aware of what defines the particular case under study until all sources and methods have been thoroughly examined, and the data triangulated (Ragin and Becker, 1992).   As Masoner (1988) pointed out, “the uniqueness of a case study lies not so much in the methods employed (although these are important) as in the questions asked and their relationship to the end product” (p. 15).

Finally, a case study is flexible.  A case study can (1) be adapted to multiple disciplinary and philosophical perspectives; (2) be used to test or build theory; (3) include either qualitative or quantitative data, or both; and (4) accommodate more than one sampling method (Masoner, 1988).  Further, a case study can be used to examine current, observable phenomena or to reconstruct a particular historical case (George and Bennett, 2005).  A case study may include only one, or a combination, of these features.

Given the five interdependent features, case study is a complex approach.  However, Feagin, Orum, and Sjoberg (1991) provide a good working definition of the case study that demonstrates this complexity while still being succinct: “A case study is here defined as an in-depth, multifaceted investigation, using qualitative research methods, of a single social phenomenon.  The study is conducted in great detail and often relies on the use of several data sources” (p. 2).

Planning and Designing a Case Study

After a working definition has been established, considerations for planning and designing a case study can be explored.  It is important to know when to use a case study, as opposed to another type of method or design.  To this end, Yin (2014) provides some specific guidelines for when a case study might be the optimal design:  a case study is advantageous when “a ‘how’ or ‘why’ question is being asked about a contemporary set of events, over which a researcher has little or no control” (p. 14).  Yin recommends conducting a thorough literature review on the proposed research topic in order to determine what is not yet known about the topic, and to formulate a research question.  Once the question has been formalized, the guidelines above can be used in order to determine whether or not a case study is feasible.

Assuming that a case study is determined to be optimal, the researcher must then carefully design his or her study.  This involves consideration of five key components: “(1) a case study’s questions; (2) its propositions, if any; (3) its unit(s) of analysis; (4) the logic linking the data to the propositions; and (5) the criteria for interpreting the findings” (Yin, 2014, p. 29).  With these components in place, the ideal type and category of case study for the proposed research should begin to emerge.

Categories and Types of Case Studies

            Case studies can be classified by both type and category.  The type of case study refers to its scope: how many individual cases are under study and how many units of analysis are included.  The category of case study refers to the study’s purpose: why the researcher is conducting the investigation.

Categories. There are two main categories of case studies: single-case and multiple-case.  Each of these can then also be either holistic or embedded.  A single-case holistic study would look at a single case and a single unit of analysis.  A single-case embedded study would examine a single case, but have multiple units of analysis.  Similarly, a multiple-case holistic study would look at multiple cases, but only a single unit of analysis for each case.  A multiple-case embedded study would examine multiple cases and multiple units of analysis.  In multiple-case studies, the units of analysis would be the same across sites, or cases.  Single-case studies are appropriate when the case is either “critical, unusual, common, revelatory, or longitudinal” (Yin, 2014, p. 51).  Multiple-case designs are appropriate when the researcher wants to show replication, or make a more compelling case in addressing the research questions (Yin, 2014).           Types. In addition to these categories, there are also five types of case studies: exploratory/evaluative, descriptive/illustrative, explanatory/interpretive, intrinsic, and instrumental.  The type of case study one chooses to conduct depends on the purpose of the study, and on the research questions (Baxter and Jack, 2008).

The first three types of case studies are defined in Yin (2014).  The exploratory, or evaluative, case study is intended to serve primarily as the basis for further research.  This type of study explores a phenomenon in depth in order to elicit research questions of interest.  The descriptive, or illustrative, case study is designed to observe and, subsequently, describe some event or behavior “in its real-world context” (Yin, 2014, p. 238).  Finally, the explanatory, or interpretive, case study seeks to discover causation or correlation.

The other two types of case studies are defined by Stake (1995).  An intrinsic case study is best used when the intention of the researcher is to gain a more complete understanding of the phenomenon in question in that particular case.  An instrumental case study, conversely, should be used when the case itself is not the center of interest, and the focus is not on understanding or even generalizing results.  Instead, it is useful when the researcher is looking for some specific insight or working on refinement of a particular theory.   Once the appropriate category and type of case study have been chosen, data collection methods should be considered.

Data Collection Methods in Case Studies

Case studies are unique in that data collection methods are almost unlimited.  However, not all methods are appropriate for all cases.  The research design and research questions should be carefully considered when determining which methods should be used.  Also, though the case study has historically been primarily qualitative in nature, quantitative methods can be employed in complement to qualitative methods.  For example, a survey can be useful as a starting point for a case study.

Surveys.  A survey can be especially useful as a first step in designing a case study.  A survey is designed to collect general information, under natural conditions, on particular variables for a specific sample.  Ideally, survey samples are chosen such that the information collected can be considered to be generalizable to the larger population (Roberts, 1999).  However, the use of the survey as a starting point for a case study does not need such considerations in design, as the population of the case study is the population of interest, and the purpose of conducting the survey is to uncover topics of interest for further exploration using qualitative methods, such as interviews and observations.

Interviews.  “The qualitative interview is the most common and one of the most important data gathering tools in qualitative research” (Myers and Newman, 2007, p. 3).  Interviews can be structured, semi-structured, or unstructured.  A structured interview follows a very specific set of questions and does not deviate to topics outside of those questions.  A semi-structured interview, on the other hand, consists of a series of open-ended questions with room to move off topic if deemed of interest.  Finally, an unstructured interview often begins with a topic of interest about which the researcher wants further information.  Many times, these unstructured interviews begin with a researcher’s field notes following a period of observation (DiCicco‐Bloom, B. and Crabtree, B. F., 2006).

Observations.  Yin (2014) describes two types of observations: direct and participant.  In direct observation, the researcher positions herself such that she can unobtrusively observe the phenomenon in question, leaving her free to make notes on what she observes.  Notes may be taken freely, or a more structured form may be provided for data collection.  Participant observation, as its name suggests, occurs when the researcher participates in the phenomenon, and may or may not be able to take notes while participating.  Gillham (2000) further describes direct observation as “mainly analytical/categorical” and participant observation as “mainly descriptive/interpretive” (p. 52).  There is, of course, room for overlap between the two.

Textual evidence.  Questioning and observing the participants in a particular case often tells a compelling story, but sometimes additional evidence is needed to corroborate that story or expand it.  This is where documents and archival records can be useful.  Reviewing such textual evidence can help to verify factual information gathered during an interview or observation.  Inferences can also be drawn from certain documents or records and used as indications that there is a need to investigate further.  Finally, textual evidence can be used as a preliminary overview of a particular organization or case (Yin, 2014).

Physical artifacts.  One final method of data collection worth mentioning is the study of physical artifacts.  Though traditionally used primarily in anthropological research, technology and its products (computer code, activity logs, etc.) can be considered physical artifacts and may be relevant to the case under study (Yin, 2014).

Rigor in the Case Study

            The case study has been criticized as a research design for its perceived lack of rigor (Yin 2014).  According to Gibbert, Ruigrok, and Wicki (2008), this concern can be addressed by vigilant attention to study design and careful consideration of the four criteria for establishing rigor, as defined by the positivist tradition: construct validity, internal validity, external validity, and reliability.

Construct Validity. Construct validity refers to the use of appropriate “operational measures for the concepts being studied” (Yin, 2014, p. 46).  Establishing construct validity is particularly challenging because a case study is often exploratory, and operationalization must occur during the course of the study.  For this reason, the researcher must be extra diligent about refraining “from subjective judgments during the periods of research design and data collection” (Riege, 2003, p. 80).  Further measures for increasing construct validity include the following: using a variety of sources to support findings, connecting evidence to form a chain that can be followed logically, and having case study participants review data for inconsistencies and misunderstandings (Riege, 2003; Yin, 2014).

Internal Validity. Internal validity deals with the establishment of causation.  Traditionally, the biggest challenge in establishing internal validity is in ferreting out spurious relationships that do not actually show causation (Yin, 2014).  Case study research, however, is more concerned with establishing the ability to make inferences from the case that will hold up in the general population (Riege, 2003).   Measures for increasing internal validity include pattern matching, explanation building, addressing alternate explanations, and using logic models (Riege, 2003; Yin, 2014).

External Validity. External validity involves the generalizability of research findings, and can be addressed initially by properly constructed research questions.  Specifically, “how” and “why” questions should be included in order to arrive “at an analytic generalization” (Yin, 2014, p. 48).  Other ways to increase external validity are to employ theory in the design of single-case studies, and replication logic in multiple-case studies, as well as to clearly define the scope of the study (Riege, 2003; Yin, 2014).

Reliability. Reliability refers to the ability to repeat research and get the same, or reasonably similar, results.  The concern when dealing with qualitative research is the subjectivity of the researchers.  Ways to circumvent this concern involve keeping detailed records and accounts of the research.  Yin (2014) suggests using a “case study protocol” and developing and maintaining a “case study database” (p. 49).

Questions

1. Design a case study using Yin’s five key components. Be sure to include the rationale for the type and category of case chosen, as well as the methods.
2. Describe appropriate methods of analysis for case study research.
3. Describe the compatibility between information worlds and case study research in the context of a specific research problem. Specify the problem and research questions, then describe how you would use case study and information worlds to approach the research.
4. Choose two examples of case study research in education and/or LIS. Compare, contrast, and critique the studies and describe how you would have approached the case differently, if applicable.

 

 

References

Baxter, P., & Jack, S. (2008). Qualitative case study methodology: Study design and implementation for novice researchers. The Qualitative Report, 13(4), 544-559.  Retrieved from http://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol13/iss4/2

DiCicco‐Bloom, B., & Crabtree, B. F. (2006). The qualitative research interview. Medical education, 40(4), 314-321.

Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Building theories from case study research. The Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 532–550. doi:10.2307/258557

Feagin, J. R., Orum, A. M., & Sjoberg, G. (1991). A Case for the case study. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

George, A. L., & Bennett, A. (2005). Case studies and theory development in the social sciences. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Gerring, J. (2004). What is a case study and what is it good for? The American Political Science Review, 98(2), 341–354.

Gibbert, M., Ruigrok, W., & Wicki, B. (2008). What Passes as a Rigorous Case Study? Strategic Management Journal, 29(13), 1465–1474.

Gillham, B. (2000). Case study research methods. London ; New York: Continuum.

Jaeger, P. T., & Burnett, G. (2010). Information worlds: Social context, technology, and  information behavior in the age of the Internet. New York, NY: Routledge.

Masoner, M. (1988). An audit of the case study method. New York: Praeger.

Merriam, S. B. (1988). Case study research in education : a qualitative approach (1st ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Myers, M. D., & Newman, M. (2007). The qualitative interview in IS research: Examining the craft. Information and organization, 17(1), 2-26.

Ragin, C. C., & Becker, H. S. (Eds.). (1992). What is a case?: exploring the foundations of social inquiry. Cambridge university press.

Riege, A.M. (2003). Validity and reliability tests in case study research: a literature review with “hands‐on” applications for each research phase. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 6(2), 75–86. http://doi.org/10.1108/13522750310470055

Roberts, E. S. (1999). In defence of the survey method: An illustration from a study of user information satisfaction. Accounting & Finance, 39(1), 53-77.

Stake, R. E. (1995). The art of case study research. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Yin, R. K. (2014). Case study research : design and methods (Fifth edition.). Los Angeles: SAGE.

This update is about how to apply content analysis to analyze a discussion board of a deaf virtual community: alldeaf.com. A virtual community is the connection between members which is created, maintained, and developed via computers that are connected to networks (Granit & Nathan, 2000). Or groups of people with shared interests who conduct regular, organized interactions online, by means of a common location or mechanism (Ridings, Gefen, & Arinze, 2002). D/deaf and hard of hearing populations particularly, rely more on communication through Internet or online forum. AllDeaf. com is one of the largest virtual community for D/deaf and hard of hearing people. And cochlear implant & hearing aid is one of hottest topic on that forum.

Three research questions are posed for this study:

1. What are the main subjects people are talking about cochlear implant and hearing aids?

2. Does the forum include behaviors that express social support or beyond social support?

3. How Deaf cultural conflict involves into online discussions?

Data for six months will be collected for analysis. Research data were processed by means of content analysis: The messages posted on the forum will be assigned to thematic content categories. A code book needs to be conducted before the formal procedure of content analysis.

 

 

 

 

 

For the third project update, I assigned myself to have completed approximately half of my final project, which will consist of a literature review of environmental justice ethnographies and an ethnographic research proposal focused on the oyster harvesting situation in Apalachiocola Bay. I have finished writing the lit review for U.S.-based ethnographies and am debating whether I should include international ethnographies as well. I still need to write my proposal for gaining access to the Bay community. What I have written so far is by no means a finished product, and some heavy editing and reorganization will likely be required before I’m finished. In the interest of saving space on the blog, I have sent my 3,500 word proposal to Dr. Kazmer via email for her input.

My annotated bibliography is heavily slanted towards theory. The following is the tentative outline of the major sections that will refocus my writing towards the method of online ethnography. The less formal section titles will most likely change.

What’s in a name?
This section will be a micro-history of online ethnography. There are several names for internet-based ethnographic studies: cyber-ethnography, virtual ethnography, online ethnography,, and netnography. Some of the names are a product of their time and rarely seen today such as  cyber-ethnography. One of the most attention grabbing is the portmanteau, netnography, which comes from a marketing research discipline. The choosing of a name can identify a researchers discipline.

Method discussion
This section will discuss the data collection and analysis techniques used. It will also include the advantages of this method such as the context is not created by the researcher.

Part of a mixed or multiple method study
Ethnography is sometimes used as a means to create a better quantitative survey or more focused qualitative interviews. The exploratory nature of ethnographic methods lends itself to strengthening other methods.

Ethics
Online ethnographic methods share similar ethical considerations to traditional ethnography. It also raises some new concerns since the researcher can be virtually invisible which might be seen as electronic eavesdropping.

What’s being studied?
Internet forums are well suited for online ethnographic studies, since forums can be viewed as a parallel to real-time off-line human interactions. The aspect of time and exchanges of information make online ethnography a great choice for information studies research. The topics of the forums being studied range from leisure activities (eg. hiking and rubber duck collecting) to individual coping with life changing events (eg. cancer patients and Bosnian refugees).

Since my last update, I have:

1.  Interviewed 2 researchers/professors

Dr. Tameka Hobbs is a graduate of Florida State University where she earned her doctoral degree in United States History, and Historical Administration and Public History. In addition to her teaching experience, she has served as a researcher, writer, consultant, and director for a number of public and oral history projects in Florida and Virginia, including the African American Trailblazers in Virginia History Program, a statewide educational program focused on celebrating African American History. Her professional experience includes serving as Director of Projects and Program for the John G. Riley Museum and Center of African American History and Culture, located here in Tallahassee….Fast forward: I was fortunate to work alongside her on a “Reunion & Remembrance” oral history project centered around Florida Memorial University, a small HBCU in Miami. I soaked up practical techniques but had never formally picked Dr. Hobb’s brain on theoretical or abstract concepts pertaining to oral history research. Speaking with her was a real shot in the arm.

Dr. Tiffany Austin received the BA in English from Spelman College, MFA in creative writing from Chicago State University, JD from Northeastern University School of Law, and PhD in English from Saint Louis University. Her teaching and research interests include African Diaspora literature; including African, African American, Caribbean, and Afro-Latin American literature; Comparative literature; critical theory and gender studies. She is a prolific writer and consummate professional. I could insert a whole slew of top-tier publications and invited talks…To cut to the chase: Dr. Austin performed oral history research while documenting the life and work of social protest blues singer Willie King of and Aliceville and Old Memphis, Alabama (near the Mississippi border). I learned tons from my interview with Dr. Austin.

I was supposed to interview Dr. Anthony Dixon of the Riley Museum. I spoke with him in person plus emailed twice, to no avail. Thankfully, Dr. Austin had my back.

2. Dr. Hinnant’s talk

Dr. Hinnant raised good points about how qualitative and quantitative methodologies are usually intertwined. By way of example, he spoke about how oral history research is increasingly quantified through indexing/classification so that narratives are searchable through voice recognition technology. The issue of access is an important angle that I had not captured; I paid little attention to the curation and dissemination of oral history. I will work to include this valuable perspective from now until my project is due. Dr. Hinnant included in his Powerpoint a great article.

3. Added 8 more articles to my draft literature review

My oral history literature review outline has expanded. I am starting to really see the intricacies, benefits and limitations of the oral history technique.

4. Updated my taxonomy

I have added a few new constructs to my oral history taxonomy. 

 

Social Networking Platform Usage in Intra-organizational Communication

In the short time in which social network platforms have been adopted in organizational contexts, they have been used in two primary ways. The first, and more commonly studied, way is for organizational communication with external parties, such as customers, vendors, and the public. Most organizations that use social networking applications to communicate with external parties have a multipronged strategy that crosses various platforms. For example, they maintain pages on popular public social networking sites like Facebook, and they broadcast messages on microblogging sites such as Twitter. Their employees also sometimes write blogs on news websites and, occasionally, they host social tagging sites.  Communication on these sites is faced externally. The second and less commonly studied way in which organizations have employed social networking applications is for internal communication and social interaction within the organization.  To date, most studies of social networking applications for internal communication have been conducted by scholars within the computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) and human computer-interaction (HCI) communities. These studies in CSCW and HCI have focused on special issues in social networking application use for organizational action and can be categorized into three types.

The first type of study emphasized the usage practice of a new medium (email, IM, wiki, social tagging system, blog, microblog, etc) in workplace. These studies usually combined participant observation, and content analysis (both quantitative and qualitative), and quantitative surveys as research method.

Participant observation, which was used in to examine how a particular medium was adopted and used by an organization, has been defined as a research method that involves participating in people’s daily lives over a period of time, observing, asking questions, taking notes and collecting other forms of data (O’Reilly, 2005). Similar to ethnography, participant observation is deemed the centerpiece of ethnographic research, because it avoids the artificiality of controlled experiments and the unnatural setting of surveys and allows access to first hand data that may be otherwise unobtainable (Kozinets, 2010; Murchison, 2010). Participant observers in ethnography can adopt four different roles: covert observer, overt observer, covert participant, and overt participant (i.e., true participant observer) (Schutt, 2006). As a covert observer, the ethnographer seeks to observe things as they are without participating and disclosing her/his role as an ethnographer. In contrast, the overt observer announces her/his role as an ethnographer. The covert participant acts like the people under study without identifying her/his role as an ethnographer, while the overt participant announces her/his research role and participates in group activities. The presence of overt observers or overt participants might alter the behavior of people under study. Participants can have the opportunity to experience others’ lives and learn from their points of view, but may take the risk of becoming native and losing objectivity. Observers can have enough time to record what happens and stay objective and scientific, but may fail to gain the insider’s view. Which role to adopt depends on the research topic, the ethnographer’s personality and background, the nature of the field, and ethical concerns (Murchison, 2010; Schutt, 2006). The ethnographer’s role may not necessarily remain fixed during an ethnographic study, but may change depending on the situations (O’Reilly, 2005). The participant observers in those studies mentioned above are either developers of certain platform (e.g., Yammer, one corporation-oriented social networking site) or research team members from the studying organization (e.g., IBM or Microsoft research center) thus have the convenience to serve as covert observer to minimize their influence to people under study. Although those researchers aimed at studying the usage practice of internet-based mediums, they didn’t conduct participation and observation using auto-netnographic approach, ranging from “reading messages regularly and in real time, following links, rating, replying to other members via e-mail or other one-on-one communications, offering short comments…contributing to community activities, to becoming an organizer, expert, or recognized voice of the community” (Kozinets, 2010, p. 96). Because of the research topics, they are not interested in being a real community member and recording and analyzing their own online experiences, which is the advantage of auto-netnographic approach, but preferred to take the content analytic approach lurking around an online setting to ensure their studies are unobtrusive.

Content analysis, which was used by those studies mentioned above to analyze posts and field notes to develop themes for specific research questions, has been defined as a technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts to the contexts of their use (Krippendorff, 2004). Content analysis can be classified into latent (subjective and qualitative) and manifest (objective and quantitative) (Babbie, 2007). Early content analysis was objective and generated quantitative summaries and enumerations of manifest content, but qualitative and latent analysis have found greater acceptance over time. Because those studies aimed at using post and field note content to emerge in the process of a researcher analyzing a text relative to a particular context (Krippendorff, 2004), they all used interpretive, relatively subjective, and less rigid approach to code the latent content, which is also indicator of contexts, discourses, or purposes, and to understand the underlying meaning.

The second type of study focused on specific aspects of media use, such as motivations or barriers. A related, but distinct, third type of study examined social networking applications, as organizational tools, for facilitating individual career advancement and managing communication and collaboration. These two types of study mainly used qualitative semi-structured interview method to collect data and then coded all of the interviews to identify major themes for each research question. Qualitative interviewing is a research method aims at understanding people’s points of view, experiences, thoughts, and feelings with the purpose of producing knowledge (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). According to Rubin and Rubin (1995), qualitative interviewing has three unique characteristics that distinguish it from other methods of data collection. First, qualitative interviews are modifications or extensions of ordinary conversations, but with important distinctions. Second, qualitative interviews are more interested in the understanding, knowledge, and insights of the interviewees than in categorizing people or events in terms of academic theories. Third, the content of the interview, as well as the flow and choice of topics changes to match what the individual interviewee knows and feels.

Qualitative interviews can be categorized into semi-structured interviews and unstructured interviews depending on the degree of structure (Blee & Taylor, 2002). In unstructured interviews, without giving specific questions the researchers let the interviewee to direct the flow of conversation and introduce and structure the problem in her/his own words corresponding to the broad issues raised by the interviewer. In semi-structured interviews, the researchers create an interview instrument consisting of a list of questions before interviewing, which allows the flexibility to change the order of questions, ask follow-up questions, seek clarifications, and add extra questions during the interview. The researchers are supposed to play a more active role in leading semi-structured interviews than in unstructured interviews. The purposes of semi-structured interviews are to explore, discover, and interpret the meaning of phenomena. Compared to unstructured interviews, semi-structured interviews can ensure the research questions to be addressed. The researchers could retain the flexibility to ask follow-up questions developed from content analysis or participant observations, seek clarifications, obtain explanations and background information, and tailor the interview guide to different interviewees (Murchison, 2010). Most studies mentioned above employed semi-structured interviews because 1) they have done previous studies using other research methods to develop interview instruments which include a list of specific, pre-determined questions; 2) they aimed at acquiring the same type of information from participants so can help to organize information more systematically and quickly; 3) the researchers preferred some flexibility in the process of collecting data.

 

References:

Babbie, E. (2007). The practice of social research (11th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.

Blee, K. M., & Taylor, V. (2002). Semi-structured interviewing in social movement research. In B. Klandermans & S. Staggenbory (Eds.), Methods of social movement research (pp. 92-117). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Kozinets, R. V. (2010). Netnography: Doing ethnographic research online. Washington, DC: Sage.

Krippendorff, K. (2004). Conceptual foundation. In Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology (2nd ed., pp. 18–43). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S. (2009). Interviews: Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing. Sage.

Murchison, J. M. (2010). Ethnography essentials: Designing, conducting, and presenting your research. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

O’Reilly, K. (2005). Ethnographic methods. New York, NY: Routledge.

Rubin, H. G., & Rubin, I. S. (1995) Qualitative interviewing: The art of hearing data. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Schutt, R. K. (2006). Investigating the social world: The process and practice of research (5^th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

 

The original intent of this update was to create an interview instrument to examine the reasons people frequent such events as FSU Pride’s Speak Out, in which individuals are invited to share their coming out stories.  However, in the process of attempting to write the instrument, I realized that in order to properly structure such interview questions, I would first need preliminary data.  As such, what is below is a draft of a survey with two qualitative questions which are intended to provide me with starting points for constructing interview questions.  The other data gathered will be used to provide a rough sketch of the audience/participants at the event.

Survey

Welcome!  The following is a brief survey about the recent Speak Out event sponsored by FSU’s Pride Student Union for use in doctoral research about the coming out narrative.  Your participation in this survey is entirely voluntary, and you are welcome to leave the survey at any point should you feel uncomfortable in any way.  There is no penalty for not completing the survey.  The survey is also entirely anonymous.  At no point are you required to provide any personally identifying information unless you should choose to volunteer for follow-up interviews.  The survey should take approximately ten minutes to complete.

Your participation is appreciated.

Question 1:  Age  ­­­­­­­­­________

Question 2:  What is your current year in school?

__Freshman     __Sophomore     __Junior       __Senior

__Graduate Student               __Not currently attending

 Question 3:  What is your current gender identity?

__ Female        __Transgender (Female to Male)        __Genderqueer

__Male            __Transgender (Male to Female)        __Agender

__Bigender     __Third Gender     __Genderfluid      __Transwoman

__Transman     __Two-spirit     __Other:  ______________________

__Prefer not to answer

Question 4:  What is the current sexual orientation with which you identify?

__lesbian         __gay       __bisexual       __asexual        __pansexual

__heterosexual     __queer      __same gender loving     __Prefer not to say

__Other:  ______________________

 Question 5:  How out are you currently?

             __completely out        __out only to some friends     __out to all friends

__out only to some family      __out to all family       __out only to self

__still questioning

Question 6:  Have you attended the Speak Out event in previous years?

 Question 7:  Have you attended other similar events, either in Tallahassee or elsewhere?

 Question 8:  Can you briefly explain in the space provided the primary reason you attended the Speak Out event?

 Question 9:  Can you briefly explain in the space provided any other reasons you attended the Speak Out event?

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This survey was approved by the Institutional review Board at FSU.  Any questions you may have can be addressed to Dawn Betts-Green in the School of Information (cdb07f@my.fsu.edu) or her major professor Dr. Don Latham (dlatham@fsu.edu).

The reflection site I chose is AllDeaf.com. This is an online forum for Deaf and Hard of hearing population. The qualitative content analysis for the forum is about the information flow within discussion on Cochlear Implant. The disciplinary context for this part is about audiology, CI and Deaf Culture. The social context for this part is about dispute between medical and social model of deafness: should deafness be cured? The conceptual context for that part is about CI usage and acceptance. There are 4273 posts from 2003 to 2015. The themes can be derived from all posts using content analysis methods.

At first glance, it does not seem as though conducting a content analysis seems very daunting. On the other hand, after getting some class time to actually perform a small content analysis, I found that the process is much more involved than the readings made it seem.

I chose an article from the Tallahassee Democrat about the proposed closure of Apalachicola Bay to oyster harvesting. I started by examining the framework the author used, trying to determine if the story was framed using an environmental perspective, an economic perspective, a social perspective, etc. After I determined which framework was used to write the article, I started pulling statements either written by the author or from interviews with users of the Bay to support the framework and began to write research questions from there.

A proper content analysis requires a lot of time and re-evaluation of prior thoughts about content. I wasn’t sure if I was doing this activity the right way when I started, but I think I’ve found a way to help organize and orient myself to conducting a content analysis. This method of qualitative analysis will certainly prove useful to me as I continue in my program.