Qualitative Research Methods Richard Coyne
Triangulation A B C Eg. A study into under-age drinking that calls on both (1) statistical information compiled from police records and (2) interviews with parents and children. Hughes, K., A.M. Mackintosh, G. Hastings, C. Wheeler, J. Watson, and J. Inglis. 1997. Young people, alcohol, and designer drinks: A quantitative and qualitative study. British Medical Journal, (314)414-418.
Independent or related components of the study Corroboration or filling in the gaps Catalyst 1. Survey of user needs 2. Design of computer program, artwork, composition, building 3. Evaluation (and iteration) 1. Questionnaire survey 2. Case study 3. Simulation 1. Field recordings 2. Listening exercises and questionnaires 3. Creative task 1. Intervention and response 2. Creative task by subjects/participants 3. Design or composition by researchers
1. Secondary sources (literature review) 2. Primary sources (archives) 3. Theory Dialectics and triadic thought Descartes 1. Analyze 2. Synthesize 3. Evaluate Hegel 1. Thesis 2. Antithesis 3. Synthesis or unification Descartes, R. 1968. Discourse on Method and the Meditations, Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin. [1596-1650] Hegel, G.W.F. 1969. Hegel's Science of Logic, London: Allen & Unwin. [1770-1831]
1. Case 1 2. Case 2 3. Case 3 1. Composition 1 2. Composition 2 3. Composition 3
?? Ethnographic study
What is an ethnographic study? ethnomethodology A particular approach to qualitative analysis Acknowledges the co-dependencies between the subject matter and the researcher (Heisenberg, Werner. Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science. 1958.) Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Goffman, Erving. 1969. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin.
Recognizes that objectivity is contingent and problematic Values narrative and narrativity (story-telling) Recognizes the ubiquity of interpretation Concerned with everyday actions rather than idealizations
paying to the most commonplace activities of daily life the attention usually accorded extraordinary events. Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1967) p.1.
Many everyday practices (talking, reading, moving about, shopping, cooking, etc) are tactical in character. And so are, more generally, many ways of operating : victories of the weak over the strong (whether the strength be that of powerful people or the violence of things or of an imposed order, etc.), clever tricks, knowing how to get away with things, hunter s cunning, manoeuvres, polymorphic simulations, joyful discoveries, poetic as well as warlike. The Greeks called these ways of operating metis. But they go much further back, to the immemorial intelligence displayed in the tricks and imitations of plants and fishes. From the depths of the ocean to the streets of modern megalopolises, there is a continuity and permanence in these tactics. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), xix-xx.
Sometimes has a political edge Regards human actions and practices as forms of knowledge Regards theory-building as a practice/praxis Is self-reflexive on the research processes, researcher motives,
History? Lowenthal, David. The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. White, Hayden. Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. Carr, Edward Hallett. What is History? Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964.
Is hands-on and involved in the subject domain Extends anthropology to familiar territory, including the researchers own practices Captures the marginal Methods: Sometimes involves recording groups of researchers discussing evidence Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Goffman, Erving. 1969. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin.
Royal Mile, a case study Relevance of the study: Urbanism, design, social relations, policy, sound, devices, anthropology, archaeology, heritage, history, aesthetics, safety, traffic engineering, representation, Interviews and surveys: attitudinal surveys, usage surveys, Perceptual approach: eg Kevin Lynch (edges, landmarks, etc), mental states, internal conditions, representation, categories, typologies, perception, Mathematical-theoretical approach: eg space syntax, modelling, simulation Ethnographic approach. What is this? Practice-based approach. What is this?
What is different about an ethnographic study? Focuses on practice, everyday life, the body, bodily inscription, gestures and bodily actions as modes of thought. Elaborating the case study Walking The sociability of walking A walk along the Royal Mile Things to observe Pace, embodied practice, comportment, posture, cultural difference, different knowledge bases
http://www.booklounge.com/books/landscape-architecture/theory-history/walkscapes-walking-as-an-aesthetic-practice
Augoyard, J.-F. 2007. Step by Step: Everyday Walks in a French Urban Housing Project, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. de Certeau, M. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley: University of California Press.
For Augoyard walking is a lot like talking. Walking is fluid, prone to digressions, capable of forgetting what is apparently essential and of lingering over details. As with language, the ordinariness of walking becomes a means of asserting one s presence, a tactic of everyday life, a mode of being. (p.19)
Other examples of ethnographic study Eric Laurier http://web.me.com/eric.laurier/ordinary_life/
Coyne, Richard, Hoon Park, and Dorian Wiszniewski. 2000. Design devices: what they reveal and conceal. Kritische Berichte: Zeitschrift für Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaften, (3)55-69.
What are the outcomes of the study? Records Carefully annotated field notes Records of what people say Records of what people do Textual or notational records Transcripts Records of what the researchers say and do Images, photographs, movies A body of evidence An interpretation A framework for authorising theories, generalisations, comparisons Creative outputs, a composition, design, performance, installation or artwork (or a proposal for any of these)
Method 2 subjects 2 observers Shadow groups Follow two subjects as if invisible and record without comment Group 1: What is said Group 2: What is done Group 3: Distant group Observe from a static position and from a height Group 4: Observer participation Ask questions and participate in discussion Groups 5 and 6: practice-based intervention group Create deliberate interventions into the activities of the subjects to provoke responses. Eg tell them to carry out a particular task, carry a cello, sing to them, one walks backwards, salute everyone over 50, install an artwork in the street to change it