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 (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 ‘til Saturation  Don’t collect too much data [logistical limits]

Reporting Practices  Public accountability 1) A description of the materials 2) A characterization of the topic 3) The initially defined social strata… 4) The social strata added later 5) Evidence for saturation 6) Timeline of data collection cycles 7) Place of data collection

How to carry this into ‘in situ,’ inductive, qualitative research Who am I missing? Looking out for social strata, categories that define the social setting (and variations)

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’

Description as ‘Sampling’  a selection from what is observed – we do this implicitly [Becker]  done well creates new categories and ideas that ‘get around conventional thinking’

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’

In Conclusion - Generalizability?  The problem of unknowable populations  Rather than ‘representativeness’ seeking ‘range’ and variation in the social phenomenon under study  To what effect? Challenging notions of what is ‘natural’ or ‘universal’ about a phenomenon  Social critique not predictive control (remember Habermas)

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