Qualitative Methods and Field Research

1. Chapter 10 Qualitative Methods and Field Research

2. Content Analysis • The study of recorded human communications, such as books, websites, paintings, and laws. • Used to study communication and political discourse. Who says what to whom, why, and how? • Example: Analysis of editorials about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. What words are being used?

3. Content Analysis • Unit of analysis can be tricky. Always make sure to take a sample of what you are trying to research if you can’t get the entire document. • Coding is also difficult since it is rather subject. Images of violence, use of religious rhetoric or injecting race in the conversation. How do you measure?

4. Content Analysis • Manifest Content: Concrete terms that are obvious in connection to the analysis. • Latent Content: Underlying meaning that is difficult to pick up in connection to the analysis. • Example: Bill Clinton’s use of the word “kid” when talking about Barack Obama.

5. Advantages and Disadvantages • Advantage • Time • Easy to correct mistakes • Historical perspective • Disadvantage • Somewhat limited • Misinterpretation can lead to bad findings

6. Comparative Historical • Examination of societies over time and in comparison to one another. • View of History is critical if examining one society or one group over time. • Cyclical • Linear Progression • Path Dependency

7. Sources and Analysis • In historical research you generally begin with someone else’s guiding your own research. However, it is important to bring something new to the table. • Either through new research OR perhaps a different theoretical perspective and re-analyzing the previous research.

8. Case Studies • In-depth examination of a single instance of some social phenomenon, such as a village, a family, or a juvenile gang.

9. Focus Group • A group of people are brought together in a room to engage in guided discussion of a topic.

10. Qualitative Interview • An interaction between an interviewer and a respondent in which the interviewer has a general plan of inquiry but not a specific set of questions that must be asked with particular words and in a particular order.

11. Seven Stages of Interviewing • Thematizing • Design • Interviewing • Transcribing

12. Seven Stages of Interviewing • Analyzing • Verifying and checking facts • Reporting

13. Guidelines - Taking Research Notes • Don’t trust your memory. Take notes while you observe. • Take sketchy notes in the field and rewrite them later, filling in the details. • Write down everything, but realize most of what you write isn’t going to make the cut.

14. Elements of Social Life Appropriate to Field Research • Practices: voting, debating • Episodes: elections, crime, illness • Encounters: people interacting • Role: occupations, family roles • Relationships: political, family

15. Elements of Social Life Appropriate to Field Research • Groups: social movements and groups • Organizations: parties, interest groups • Settlements: neighborhoods, ghettoes • Social worlds: "wall street", "the beltway” • Lifestyles (subcultures): urban, homeless

16. Preparing for Field Work • Fill in your knowledge of the subject. • Discuss the group you plan to research with an informant/gatekeeper. • Develop an identity with the people to be studied. • Realize that your initial contact with the group can influence your observations.

17. Reactivity • The problem that the subjects of social research may react to the fact of being studied, thus altering their behavior from what it would have been normally. • Hawthorne Effect

18. Emic and Etic • Anthropologists use the term emic perspective in reference to taking on the point of view of those being studied. • The etic perspective maintains a distance from the native point of view in the interest of achieving more objectivity

19. Naturalism • Approach to field research based on the assumption that an objective social reality exists and can be observed and reported accurately.

20. Ethnography • A report on social life that focuses on description rather than explanation. • Autoethnography assumes a personal stance, breaking the proscription against the researcher getting involved at that level.