Class Notes

In the upcoming weeks, we need to post one outside reading, one experiment/experience with NVivo/qualitative research, and a post addressing questions and concepts about qualitative research.

The assignment for this week is to write a review of I Quit, a text available in the class files. We should look at this as if we are reviewing it for a journal. It must remain confidential.

We also need to post our notes on Anderson.

AND we also need to rewrite our guesses about the wood shavings, redefining them in terms of how the wood shavings could qualify as a gift for a 50-year-old daughter. This should include a discussion of the cultural implications of gift giving. 

 We need to remember the difference between field notes and site notes. Field notes are the first level of abstraction. We're looking for archetypes within the situation-- power users are one example of a type of person we might encounter several times. Site notes should be written within an hour of the observation, and field notes should be written several days later.

Coding occurs in several cycles: primary cycle (what is present in the data) and secondary cycle (first abstraction, themes, how and why).

Tracy identifies eight major aspects of studies that help us decide if it is worthwhile: worth, rigor, sincerity, credibility, significant contribution, resonance, ethics, and meaningful coherence. Worth can include the tangible takeaways, social impact, and the answer to the "so what?" question. In order for our research to be sincere, it must be able to fail. This is somewhat akin to the falsifiability principle. For us, resonance takes the place of generalizability.

The coding that Tracy covers focuses largely on ethnographic coding. In terms of our own project, we have already framed our own work-- we know what we are looking for and how we're looking for it. Our work begins with a deep understanding of the study. This is followed by selection of texts and a close reading of the texts. From this, coding categories emerge-- underlying constructs with multiple values/codes. Categories are not themselves codes. Categories can emerge from the questions we ask. With codes established, we can figure out the unit of analysis. These can be formal features (sentences, paragraphs) or more difficult things like thoughts, ideas, and themes. Because not all texts you look at will meet the requirements you set up for a case, you must go through and validate cases before beginning coding.

The best way to deal with multiple cases in NVivo is through multiple files. Files can be in any format, though it works best with Word and text files. PDFs should be OCR optimized. The titles of our files should include as much information as possible-- date collected, location, type of data. There are three major classifications - source (these classifications go across the entire case and are known before any reading/coding of individual texts), node (classifications used across units of analysis), and relationship classifications. Every unit of analysis must have a code, even if it is unassigned; this is a show of our trustworthiness.