It surprised me to read in Yin's article that Matthew Miles's piece "Qualitative data as an attractive nuisance"was based on a four-year study, and that it critiqued the short-comings of qualitative analysis and case study research without offering suggestions for overcoming the problems he identified. If as a researcher you are going to devote four years of your life on something and identifying its problems, not investing significant effort to think of solutions shows a lack of commitment. Social science research has the purpose of contributing to social thought and theory and improving understanding. Pointing out problems contributes very little to growth and improvement, it is only the first step.
   Yin calls Miles' discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of qualitative data and case study as a "frequent confusion regarding types of evidence,...types of data collection methods,...and research strategies" (p.1). It is easy to confuse these interrelated methods and strategies when they are not clearly defined. Throughout the course I have referred to different books outside the course texts for definitions of various methods and strategies that have come up in the course, because I did not always find Knight and Luker to provide a clear definition of various methods. What I have found is the definitions of methods and research strategies differ from text to text depending on who is doing the defining. So I appreciate Yin's efforts to untangle this mess for me and distinguish the similarities and differences of various types of evidence, data collection methods and research strategies.

Reference:
Yin, R.K. (1981). The case study crisis: Some answers. Administrative Science Quarterly, 26(1), 58-65. 

What's the critical discourse behind your content analysis Mr. Miles?

Last week's lecture on Analyzing Texts and Artifacts: Content Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis, tried to help us distinguish between quantitative and qualitative, positivism and post-structuralism and Rumsfeld and Žižek. I found the point about content analysis vs. critical discouse to be very insightful; that of what's presented on the surface with text, versus what's actually intended.  The intension behind the content.  How else would intension be measured if not through the lived experiences, stories, and qualitative data that come out of those stated objectives and polished agruments?

Now to tie that in with this week's reading by Robert K. Yin, where Yin responds to Matthew Miles's attack on qualitative analysis - and it's companion, the case study, by putting forward the following points:

1. "the case study does not imply the use of a particular type of evidence. Case studies can be done by using either qualitative or quantitative evidence. The evidence may come from fieldwork, archival records, verbal reports, observations, or any combination of these."

2. the case study does not "imply the use of a particular data collection method. A common misconception is that case studies are solely the result of ethnographies or of participantobservation,
yet it should be quickly evident that numerous case studies have been done without using these method."

3. That case studies represent a 'research strategy', and as "a research strategy, the distinguishing characteristic of the case study is that it attempts to examine: (a) a contemporary phenomenon in its real-life context, especially when (b) the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident."

Now expanding on that last point, that the case study represents a 'research strategy' by attempting to examine a contemporary phenomenon in it's real-life context.  It seems to me that if the interest in and intent of the research are ethically motivated, and the analysis potentially helpful and insightful to curious minds and those living that contemporary phenomenon, what's the point of discrediting the methods used.  I guess my point is, if a quantitative study could produce better and more accurate results, or even build on the qualitative data gleened from the case study,  then all the better, but if supporters of the 'scientific' method are simply interested in descrediting other methods, without offering alternatives or suggestions for how to improve, then it's simply an extension of the us against them thought form, and a way of leveraging one's contributions by deminishing the contribution of another.

Reference:
Yin, R.K. (1981). The case study crisis: Some answers. Administrative Science Quarterly, 26(1), 58-65.

-Mandissa Arlain

Qualitative data & constructing narratives

           Yin (1981) makes an interesting point regarding some of the objections participants of case studies have regarding the interpretation of their data. Miles states that participants objected more often to research findings after seeing qualitative data, like case studies, on the basis that they disagreed with the researchers’ interpretations (Miles, 1979, cited in Yin, 1981, p.58).  Ultimately, the researcher is in a position of total power as they have the final say in terms of interpretation when writing the final report. Miles, as Jessica points out, circumscribes qualitative researchers in saying that they will never be able to fully “transcend storytelling” (cited in Yin, 1981, p. 58). Yin (1981) counters Mile’s argument by describing a number of situations when participants might object to interpretations of researchers using quantitative methods like survey research (p.64).

Yin (1981) argues that participants feel more comfortable with being talked about in aggregate data, regardless of the research method being used (p.64). I wonder how this tension plays out in open data initiatives? Very often, social science researchers are reluctant to turn over their qualitative data to institutional repositories (Kuula, 2010). It could be that they are predominantly concerned with confidentiality. I wonder how much of the reluctance also has to do with worries that data might be subject to reinterpretation?  Putting that data out there puts the researcher in the position of no longer fully controlling their narrative.

Kuula, A. (2010). Methodological and ethical dilemmas of archiving qualitative data. IASSIST Quarterly, 34(3), 12-17

Yin, R.K. (1981). The case study crisis: Some answers. Administrative Science Quarterly, 26(1), 58-65. 

Case Studies as Theory-Generating

 Beaulieu et al. (2007) make a great comment about the difficulty with case studies: they ask how a case study can “be used to inspire other work, without implicitly or explicitly falling into a universalizing fallacy? (p. 673). As they go on to explain, case studies tend to either be seen as unable to generate theory or as attempting to explain all experiences with one experiment (through what Yin calls “cross-case analysis,” p. 58). Yin (1981) argues that cross-case analysis, or generating theory across multiple case studies, is possible through constructing theories for each case and seeing if, allowing for some flexibility, they can correspond to theories for other cases.

Interestingly, Yin goes on to say that this method is not less scientific than similar methods used for scientific experiments. I agree with Yin – of course cross-case analysis may lead to over-generalization, but that is always a risk for research of any kind. Furthermore, as Luker points out a number of times in her book, theory-generating is an important task of case studies. Without the hypotheses about broader theories that case studies put forward, there would be no opportunity to test those theories against a broader range of cases and therefore generating strong new theoretical explanations would be much more difficult.

Beaulieu, A., Scharnhorst, A. and Wouters, P. (2007). Not another case study: A middle-range interrogation of ethnographic case studies in the exploration of e-science. Science, Technology and Human Values, 32.6, 672-692.

Yin, R.K. (1981). The case study crisis: Some answers. Administrative Science Quarterly, 26(1), 58-65.

Messy Data Vs. Neat Narrative

This week’s Yin (1981) reading was interesting in replying to Matthew Miles’ conclusion that “qualitative research on organizations cannot be expected to transcend story-telling.” When Yin mentions that Miles described qualitative research as not rational, and of less scientific value, I remembered one of the first Luker (2010) readings we had done where she discussed the traditional gendered separation between quantitative and qualitative research. I couldn’t help but think that gender wasn’t the main differentiating factor among these different types of research; it seems to also come with perspective. You’ll notice that more traditional scholars tend to have Miles’ sort of perspective because cold hard facts represent that sort of clarity and correctness I guess we strive for as academics. It mirrors that whole concept of our search for the capital-T Truth. Newer, more open and innovative minds embrace all the messy questions and answers that come with studying humans from a social science perspective. In this world, the questions and answers change and evolve as the world evolves (in our case, how information evolves), and it’s necessary for us to also evolve our traditional rigid views of the hard and fast method of studying things accordingly. Qualitative research allows us to linger in the messy data, as opposed to creating a neat narrative. 

Luker, K. (2010). Salsa dancing into the social sciences. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Yin, R.K. (1981). The case study crisis: Some answers. Administrative Science Quarterly, 26(1), 58-65. 

Research involving First Nations

Hi,
Since we've been talking a lot about research methods and ethics lately, I wanted to share this resource we used in another class I'm talking.  It's a webpage from the Government of Canada website entitled "Research involving the First Nations, Inuit, and Metis Peoples of Canada.  It recognizes that most research on these communities is performed by non-aboriginal people so it offers a set of guidelines in order to conduct research respectfully and fairly.  It also outlines the rules of intellectual property in these situations, and describes how to get the most out of research.  I found it very interesting. Here's the link http://www.pre.ethics.gc.ca/eng/policy-politique/initiatives/tcps2-eptc2/chapter9-chapitre9/#toc09-1

Government of Canada. "Research involving the First Nations, Inuit, and Metis Peoples of Canada", 2012. Retrieved from http://www.pre.ethics.gc.ca/eng/policy-politique/initiatives/tcps2-eptc2/chapter9-chapitre9/#toc09-1.

Critical discourse analysis

Wikipedia refers to critical discourse analysis (CDA) as “an interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse that views language as a form of social practice and focuses on the ways social and political domination are reproduced in text and talk.”

In his article titled Critical discourse analysis and the marketization of public discourse: the universities, Norman Fairclough notes that "viewing language as a social practice implies 'that it is a mode of action and also, in a dialectical relationship with other facets of 'the social' - it is socially shaped, but also socially shaping.' He continues by stating that 'it is vital that critical discourse analysis explore the tension between these two sides of language use, the socially shaped and the socially constitutive, rather than operating one sidedly from a structuralist position. 

When I think of this in practical terms, I think of the nature of words and text.  The very act of uttering a word or expressing a gesture places an immediate onus on the recipient to respond. To say hi or to smile, for example, illicits an immediate response from the receiver, and is interpreted as impolite if it does not occur.  The very structure that words were created to exist within requires the engagement of more than one individual, and has too many unspoken codes (and expectations) to be considered neutral.  Even if one could make the argument that content can be neutral, and Fairclough gives some examples in his article, the context isn’t.  Exchange words with discourse, and the speaker and or content producer, whether it be through text or through broadcast, is expanding the same idea, that the ideas and gestures articulated will generate some sort of individual or societal response, if not physical, then cognitive, if not immediate, then gradual.

Fairclough notes that connection between text and social practice is seen as being mediated by discourse practice: on the one hand, processes of text production and interpretation are shaped by (and help shape) the nature of the social practice.  He adds that there are ‘cues’ laces in the text or discourse on how the social practice should play out.

Reference

Norman, F. (1993). Critical discourse analysis and the marketization of public discourse: the universities.          Discourse Society, 4, 133.

-Mandissa Arlain