1. 'Corpus Construction' as an alternative logic of sampling
INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods
'Corpus Construction' as an alternative logic of sampling

2. Project Bamboo
Join a qualitative research team to talk to humanities scholars to inform the design of “shared, interoperable tools, services, and content to meet the real needs of humanities researchers.”
Please me if interested:

3. ‘Corpus Construction’

4. ‘Corpus Construction’
Defining the sites and subjects of field-based research
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

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

6. 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

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

8. Random vs. Systematic ‘Corpus Construction’
Typifies unknown attributes
Systematic selection to some alternative rationale (not a convenience sample)
Random Statistical Sampling
Distribution of already known attributes
What can be said about the sample generalizes to the whole population
Popular misconception – the greater the # in the sample, the more accurate

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

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

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

12. Problems of Social Strata in Cross-Cultural Research

13. Demographic Form

14. 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. addicts of opiate drugs
If someone says it has already been studied, its probably time to study it again.
Studying the non-serious and the ‘boring’

15. Selection from Observation
Description (in field notes) is a selection from what is observed – we do this implicitly [Becker]
done well creates new categories and ideas that ‘get around conventional thinking’

16. 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’

17. Selecting text, images
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’

18. In Conclusion - Representativeness?
The problem of unknowable populations
Rather than ‘representativeness’ we are seeking ‘range’ and variation in the social phenomenon under study
For what purpose? Challenging notions of what is ‘natural’ or ‘universal’ about a phenomenon – theory building rather than theory testing/refinement

19. 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

20. For Tuesday Read Lofland and Lofland section on logging data
Read UC guidelines for protection of human subjects
We will discuss your first activity – a participant-observation exercise