Interesting text by Cutcliffe, J.R. "Methodological issues in grounded theory":
- He proposes a combination of the methods proposed - separately - by Glaser and Strauss. He says that any attempt of a purist approach to the method can only constrain the gathering of data.
- However, he advocates the strict definition and execution of the methodology once it is chosen. Not being able to describe the method used for the gathering/analysis of data is, according to him, one of the greatest weaknesses of grounded theorists.
- He is in favour of pre-field revision of literature and use of researcher's background knowledge -- for what Glaser's must be turning in his thumb. Fair point: if the researcher doesn't know what has been written about the matter of investigation, how can he possibly know what to look at. Some minimal direction must be taken.
- Understandably so, Cutcliffe doesn't seem to think that researchers should choose their informants before the observations take place. But he does think that an activity that can -- and should -- take place before the observation period starts is the definition of criteria to choose the informants. What should informants have or be to be good informants for this specific research? Generally, informants are people who have content knowledge about the phenomenon being studied and who are willing to talk. However, each field and each research questions turns itself to one -- or more -- people in the field, and these are the informants for this specific study. POINT TO THINK ABOUT.
- Insists in the importance of doing theoretical coding as well as substantial coding. According to him, substantial coding are called this because they codify the substance of the data and often use the very words used by the actors themselves. I think I am on the right way for this one. What about theoretical coding? Is it categorizing?
This article was published on the Journal of Advanced Nursing, in 2000. Funny eh?
Monday, 12 May 2008
About using video
I read Jirotkas manual about it and also a couple of other things and my considerations are:
- It is true that in the long term video is a powerful tool, because it can store a moment for further consultation. If I am doing a PhD to build on this work, this might be a good idea.
- On the other side, video is a very difficult thing to analyse. And I have no training on that. I might be trying to bite more than I can chew.
- More than difficult, analising video takes a long time. And I don't have a long time now.
I will discuss it with Simon at our meeting this week.
Also meeting Paul Luff on Wednesday, at Kings College.
- It is true that in the long term video is a powerful tool, because it can store a moment for further consultation. If I am doing a PhD to build on this work, this might be a good idea.
- On the other side, video is a very difficult thing to analyse. And I have no training on that. I might be trying to bite more than I can chew.
- More than difficult, analising video takes a long time. And I don't have a long time now.
I will discuss it with Simon at our meeting this week.
Also meeting Paul Luff on Wednesday, at Kings College.
Thursday, 8 May 2008
Conversations
Great day yesterday! Met Marina Jirotka for a chat near Paddington station and it was very fruitful. She told me about her research in the City and how she did it. Highlights from conversation:
- She is not a very big fan of Activity Theory or of any theory really. She thinks they are not very useful and she never used them anyway.
- She gave me a print out of her to be published book - Notes towards applied Ethnography, which basically contains a lot of what I was going to ask her in the first place
- She reckons I should use a camera in my observations at The Newspaper. She believes it gives you a security of a resource that you can consult even after the observations.
- She thinks it is a good idea if I don't tell anyone about the fact I am a journalist myself.
- She advised me to talk to Kari Kuuti if I am really interested in Activity Theory. I shall do so.
She also advised me to talk to Paul Luff, who did an ethnography in a radio station in London.
- She is a great woman and really fun to talk to!
PS: It's sunny and I found dulce de leche at the supermarket! Yehyeeee!
- She is not a very big fan of Activity Theory or of any theory really. She thinks they are not very useful and she never used them anyway.
- She gave me a print out of her to be published book - Notes towards applied Ethnography, which basically contains a lot of what I was going to ask her in the first place
- She reckons I should use a camera in my observations at The Newspaper. She believes it gives you a security of a resource that you can consult even after the observations.
- She thinks it is a good idea if I don't tell anyone about the fact I am a journalist myself.
- She advised me to talk to Kari Kuuti if I am really interested in Activity Theory. I shall do so.
She also advised me to talk to Paul Luff, who did an ethnography in a radio station in London.
- She is a great woman and really fun to talk to!
PS: It's sunny and I found dulce de leche at the supermarket! Yehyeeee!
Tuesday, 6 May 2008
design interactions, not applications
Among my readings of the weekend, the paper by Saul Greenberg, who revisits the concept of context and analyzes why designers find it so difficult to build context awareness applications.
He gives a brief explanation of three theories of context: Situated Actions, (our most beloved) Activity Theory and another approach I have never heard of before, the "locales framework".
According to the author "the Locales framework was developed as a principled approach to help people understand the nature of social activity and work, and how a locale (or place) can support these activities ... In many ways, the Locales framework is about the social construction and use of context, and it too recognizes its dynamic properties. Locales (the site and means) are the external contributors to context; although locales can be fixed, most are fluid.
His overall argument, though, is more interesting: if in many cases some contextual situations are fairly stable, discernible and predictable, there are many others that are not.
That implies that 1) it may be impossible to determine an appropriate set of canonical states of context 2) determining what information is necessary to infer a contextual state may be difficult and 3) determining an appropriate action from a given context may be difficult, because the kind of responses that people expect from a context-aware application are very situation-dependable.
So here I must agree with Suchman when she says that human beings don't plan anything: they just react. We do, we are opportunistic creatures who optimize the path to accomplish a task that will require the least effort.
From his brief description of the "context theories", general perceptions arise:
- interactions evolve over time, therefore the historical character of activity is relevant for understanding the interaction
- people have particular views of the same things (or places, or practices) so the individual's history counts when analyzing a context
- artefacts are the media by which people achieve goals, they are not (or shouldn't be) the goal itself
We should aim to design interactions, not applications.
He gives a brief explanation of three theories of context: Situated Actions, (our most beloved) Activity Theory and another approach I have never heard of before, the "locales framework".
According to the author "the Locales framework was developed as a principled approach to help people understand the nature of social activity and work, and how a locale (or place) can support these activities ... In many ways, the Locales framework is about the social construction and use of context, and it too recognizes its dynamic properties. Locales (the site and means) are the external contributors to context; although locales can be fixed, most are fluid.
His overall argument, though, is more interesting: if in many cases some contextual situations are fairly stable, discernible and predictable, there are many others that are not.
That implies that 1) it may be impossible to determine an appropriate set of canonical states of context 2) determining what information is necessary to infer a contextual state may be difficult and 3) determining an appropriate action from a given context may be difficult, because the kind of responses that people expect from a context-aware application are very situation-dependable.
So here I must agree with Suchman when she says that human beings don't plan anything: they just react. We do, we are opportunistic creatures who optimize the path to accomplish a task that will require the least effort.
From his brief description of the "context theories", general perceptions arise:
- interactions evolve over time, therefore the historical character of activity is relevant for understanding the interaction
- people have particular views of the same things (or places, or practices) so the individual's history counts when analyzing a context
- artefacts are the media by which people achieve goals, they are not (or shouldn't be) the goal itself
We should aim to design interactions, not applications.
Coding
Difficult day after a long break (bank holiday). I managed to do some reading during the weekend, but didn't succeed much in concentrating.
Today I read Strauss & Corbin, Chapter 8 on "Open Coding", all about phenomena, concepts, categories, subcategories, properties and dimensions. We give names to phenomena, transforming them into concepts so we can make sense of them, compare them, group them and analyze them, and in the end, make theory out of them. When we put names on things we fix our attention on them and ask questions about them. This is why coding is important.
I was not entirely convinced by Strauss and Corbin's arguments and even less clear about how to do it. So I gave it a go and did it to the data (interview) I collected at The Newspaper last week. I am not quite sure about how accurate my understanding is, but as I told Simon: the advantage of researching versus doing journalism is that with research you don't find out that you had the long lead by reading all the other newspapers the morning after. In research you are all the other newspapers and even better: you can come back and re-write the lead if you find out it is wrong.
Today I read Strauss & Corbin, Chapter 8 on "Open Coding", all about phenomena, concepts, categories, subcategories, properties and dimensions. We give names to phenomena, transforming them into concepts so we can make sense of them, compare them, group them and analyze them, and in the end, make theory out of them. When we put names on things we fix our attention on them and ask questions about them. This is why coding is important.
I was not entirely convinced by Strauss and Corbin's arguments and even less clear about how to do it. So I gave it a go and did it to the data (interview) I collected at The Newspaper last week. I am not quite sure about how accurate my understanding is, but as I told Simon: the advantage of researching versus doing journalism is that with research you don't find out that you had the long lead by reading all the other newspapers the morning after. In research you are all the other newspapers and even better: you can come back and re-write the lead if you find out it is wrong.
Friday, 2 May 2008
A little 45 dgrees difference
Just a comic note: I was very amused to find this book in the library today:Pink, Sarah.: Doing visual ethnography : images, media and representation in research / Sarah Pink.. 2nd ed.. London : SAGE, 2007..
There she is, Dr. Pink, interested in how images can be introduced in the ethnographic analysis, published author and good writer (you have to be if you are an ethnographer, right?)
Funny!
I might write to her...
Thursday, 1 May 2008
First impressions... 'blink' rules
Had first taste of The Newspaper today. Some interesting findings, some confusing ones. They are in the middle of an "integration process" between the online and the paper editions. This can be good and bad news. It can be good to watch that happen, it can be bad because I will just miss it by a month. To catch it still "separate" I would have to start there tomorrow.
According to the "integration project leader" - to whom I talked today -- regarding my question about how the journalists work is divided he said that there isn’t a division to write in one and not in the other ...that distinction has really drindled away.
That leads us to the question: so it did exist one day?
Yes, we did for a period, and it is not entirely integrated, we did have a period where they worked for the online only, but that distinction is now pretty much gone. There is still a little bit of that in “news” but things are changing, we will soon rearrange part of the newsroom so some of those guys will be re-housed, this distinction we will get away from. They are reporters for The Newspaper and that’s it.
The whole thing is part of a big structure re-organization that happened when the new editor took over last year. He created a position called "head of news", who is "a crossing platform", is "the director of traffic on both sides" and "roles the ship".
Now here is where we get interesting: The journalists just write the text and deliver it "raw" to the sub-editors. These guys are the ones who are going to cut it and dress it to the different outlets: print or online.
Also had the chance of watching the morning editorial meeting, which is pretty crazy for an outsider. I tried not to get bogged down with things I already know, like what is the document they all follow, and how these meetings are generally. The strange thing, I realized, is that I have always participated of these meetings by phone, never live.
It is exciting to watch people. It was also difficult to take notes of the "what was happening" instead of the "content". There were times I started taking notes about the stories they were discussing, as if I were in a press conference.
Tried to identify people by what they were saying and match it to what they were wearing -- a silly attempt of remembering them latter). I have good face recognition features and spent time trying to fix their faces in my head.
Lots of questions in mind. Lots of note taking. Lots of reporting back. Created a flow chart of the "life of a story" as of these first of today.
Will get the chance of another interview, this time with another guy who is quite senior (but wasn't at the editorial meeting today)
Uf, it's happening. I can't scape!
PS: strangely enough I read an article about this book Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, which I read sometime ago, and talks about the power of first impressions. They do!
According to the "integration project leader" - to whom I talked today -- regarding my question about how the journalists work is divided he said that there isn’t a division to write in one and not in the other ...that distinction has really drindled away.
That leads us to the question: so it did exist one day?
Yes, we did for a period, and it is not entirely integrated, we did have a period where they worked for the online only, but that distinction is now pretty much gone. There is still a little bit of that in “news” but things are changing, we will soon rearrange part of the newsroom so some of those guys will be re-housed, this distinction we will get away from. They are reporters for The Newspaper and that’s it.
The whole thing is part of a big structure re-organization that happened when the new editor took over last year. He created a position called "head of news", who is "a crossing platform", is "the director of traffic on both sides" and "roles the ship".
Now here is where we get interesting: The journalists just write the text and deliver it "raw" to the sub-editors. These guys are the ones who are going to cut it and dress it to the different outlets: print or online.
Also had the chance of watching the morning editorial meeting, which is pretty crazy for an outsider. I tried not to get bogged down with things I already know, like what is the document they all follow, and how these meetings are generally. The strange thing, I realized, is that I have always participated of these meetings by phone, never live.
It is exciting to watch people. It was also difficult to take notes of the "what was happening" instead of the "content". There were times I started taking notes about the stories they were discussing, as if I were in a press conference.
Tried to identify people by what they were saying and match it to what they were wearing -- a silly attempt of remembering them latter). I have good face recognition features and spent time trying to fix their faces in my head.
Lots of questions in mind. Lots of note taking. Lots of reporting back. Created a flow chart of the "life of a story" as of these first of today.
Will get the chance of another interview, this time with another guy who is quite senior (but wasn't at the editorial meeting today)
Uf, it's happening. I can't scape!
PS: strangely enough I read an article about this book Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, which I read sometime ago, and talks about the power of first impressions. They do!
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