QUALITATIVE METHODS FOR FUN & PROFIT I203: Social & Organizational Issues of Information 4/10/2015

Looking Forward to Thurs.  Reading Responses Due  Assignment 1 Distributed

Qualitative Stereotypes Qualitative methods…  generate a bunch of stories.  aren’t rigorous.  aren’t scientific.  produce data that are too vague to be useful.  are only useful for exploratory research.  are too specific, never generalizeable. 3 4/10/2015

Why Use Qualitative Methods? We don’t know the right questions. 4 4/10/2015

Why Use Qualitative Methods? We know the questions, but we don‘t know how to ask them. 5 4/10/2015

Why Use Qualitative Methods? We want deep & rich data. 6 4/10/2015

Why Use Qualitative Methods? We need to understand the context that surrounds our questions. 7 4/10/2015

Why Use Qualitative Methods? We want to understand an issue from another point of view. 8 4/10/2015

Alternative Points of View 9 4/10/2015

Culture Is… 10 4/10/2015

Culture Is… 11 4/10/2015

Culture Is… 12 4/10/2015

Culture Is… 13 4/10/2015

Culture Is… 14 4/10/2015

Qualitative Methods  Interviews  Focus Groups  Direct Observation  Participant Observation 15 4/10/2015

Ethnography 16 4/10/2015

Grounded Theory Pros: Glaser, Barney G., and Anselm L. Strauss The discovery of grounded theory; strategies for qualitative research. Chicago,: Aldine Pub. Co. Cons: Thomas, G. & James, D. (2006). Re-inventing grounded theory: some questions about theory, ground and discovery. British Educational Research Journal, 32 (6), 767–795. Dey, I. (1999) Grounding grounded theory—guidelines for qualitative inquiry (London, Academic Press). 17 4/10/2015

Reliability in Qualitative Work Quantitative ResearchQualitative Research Internal ValidityCredibility External ValidityTransferability ReliabilityDependability ObjectivityConfirmability See: Lincoln, Yvonna S., and Egon G. Guba Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications. 18 4/10/2015

Good Questions to Ask About Qualitative Work  What are the empirical claims?  What theoretical claims are made?  How does this contribute to the corpus?  What was the context of production? Adapted from Anderson & Dourish (and thanks to Jenna Burrell!) 19 4/10/2015

Less Good Questions to Ask About Qualitative Work  Is that a representative sample?  How can you tell if what people told you is right?  Didn’t you affect things by being there?  What should I build? Adapted from Anderson & Dourish (and thanks to Jenna Burrell!) 20 4/10/2015

Reading Guidelines  Limitations Section  The Researcher Appears  Surprises  Sample Description & Defense  Well Scoped Claims 21 4/10/2015

Next Time  Understanding, Reading, Evaluating Quantitative Research (for fun and profit).  Reading response papers are due! 22 4/10/2015