INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods

‘Corpus Construction’

 Defining the sites and subjects of in situ work Making decisions about your field site(s) – how a social phenomenon of interest is mapped out onto spatial terrain Selecting people to follow, observe and/or interview Selecting media / artifacts from the setting for further analysis

Competence and Innovation  Competence (Bauer and Gaskell) Systematic Issues of public accountability  Innovation (Becker) Challenge conventional thinking

Doing Innovative Research  Starting Where You Are (Lofland and Lofland) Commitment and Curiosity Access and ‘getting in’  Willingness to go where others won’t The inconvenient and uncomfortable The illegitimate

Approaches  Total enumeration (i.e. census)  Statistical random sample  Snowball sample (iteration again)  Convenience sample (bad)

Random vs. Systematic  Random Statistical Sampling Distribution of already known attributes Sample has a distribution of criterion = population as a whole Popular misconception – the greater the # in the sample, the more accurate  ‘Corpus Construction’  Typifies unknown attributes  Systematic selection to some alternative rationale (not a convenience sample)

Unknowable Populations Many populations of ‘individuals’ are knowable, however…  What about ‘actions?’  What about ‘situations?’  Open systems (i.e. language) = infinite populations

Mapping the Unknowable Representations (unknown) Varieties of: Belief Attitudes Opinions Stereotypes Ideologies Worldviews Habits Practices Social strata, functions and categories (known) [Bauer and Gaskell]

Mapping the Unknowable  Iteration until Saturation  Don’t collect too much data [logistical limits]

Problems of Social Strata in Cross- Cultural Research

Demographic Form

Extending Selection Strategies: Sampling for ‘Innovation’  Identify the case that is likely to upset your thinking and look for it – (the counter- example) e.g. morphine, opium, heroin addicts  If someone says it has already been studied, its probably time to study it again.  Studying the non-serious and the ‘boring’

Loose Ends: Selecting Field Sites  Some work is clearly ‘sited’  Some is not (amorphous social settings) – and therefore locating such work will be more involved  Sites may be ‘open’ or ‘closed’

Loose Ends: Collecting text, images, data  Text produced in the process of research vs. texts produced for other purposes  Bauer and Gaskell’s simplified treatment of newspapers, etc. – newspapers as…  vs. Becker’s concern with the ‘sociology of record keeping’  in media studies, the ‘active audience’

In Conclusion - Representativeness?  The problem of unknowable populations  Rather than ‘representativeness’ we are seeking ‘range’ and variation in the social phenomenon under study  To what effect? Challenging notions of what is ‘natural’ or ‘universal’ about a phenomenon

To Review  Population and the problem of unknowable populations  Selection for range/diversity of the social phenomenon rather than representativeness  Selection for innovation  Stopping criterion

For Thursday  Read Lofland and Lofland section on logging data  Read UC guidelines for protection of human subjects