Housekeeping

1
Housekeeping

• If I havent responded to emails, tomorrow . . .
• Stop tonight at 745, lit review workshop
• Next week, proposals
• Keep me busy on emails, ask questions (I really
  mean it)
• Send via email before class starts. That way I
  can give you feedback electronically. Word Docs
  or something I can open in Word (Pls)

2
Where were we?

• Ontology What is the nature of reality?
• Epistemology What is my relationship to that
  reality?
• Methodology How can I go about investigating
  what I think can be known?
• Paradigms socially constructed approaches to
  inquiry including ONT/EPS/METH and varying more
  specific theoretical and value orientations.
• (Positivist), post-positivist, constructivist,
  critical theorist

3
So, what is qualitative research?

• A range of approaches to research with varying
  theoretical foundations.
• Focus cases and that cases have analyzable
  features. Case individual, couple, community,
  organization, event, country, etc.
• Involves in-depth investigation of a small number
  of cases, including even a single case study
  (like Ethno of Speaking)

4

• Seeks detailed knowledge with the goal of finding
  out HOW things happen.
• Grounding or starting explanations with the data,
  vs. with researchers assumptions (now, theres
  always caveat)
• Seeks to make the facts understandable, rather
  than focus on causal inference or predictions.

5

• QI some different standards of evaluation than
  quantitative research.
• Reliability of field notes of observations,
  audio-recordings, transcripts, teamwork, etc.
  (not, replicability w/same results)
• Validity (Truth) being reflexive about your
  values, authentically and truthfully as possible
  representing participants perspectives,
  comparing different kinds of data when possible,
  member checking when possible, etc.

6
Ethnography - Now its your turn?

• How would you describe ethnography as an broad
  approach to research?
• What did you hear, see, smell, taste, or touch in
  your mini-journal observations?
• What was it like to sit there and just observe?
• What was fun? What was challenging?
• What did you jot down, what didnt you jot down?

7
Varying Approaches to Ethnography

• Rachel
• Went to Galicia, Spain
• Anthropologist
• Studying Separatist Movements
• Lucilla
• Sociologist
• Vocational Training
• Educational Organization

• Franklin
• Went to Germany
• Tensions between Serbs and Croats in community.
• Garrett
• Refugees community from former Yugoslavia in his
  home town

8
Tensions or issues to manage (Note in one
semester)

1. How much you have a specific focus vs. letting
   the data completely guide
2. How structured are your observations, interviews,
   focus groups vs. how much you leave things
   unstructured in order to (again) allow the
   participants to drive your research agenda.
3. Extensive of interaction with professor along the
   way vs. go and do and then come back.
4. Small number of deep observations/interviews
   vs. more with narrower focus?
5. How and where does the literature come in?

9
So, how might your projects be ethnographic (in
a limited but important sense)?

• field work going out and talking to people,
  listening and watching.
• If youre working with one organization!
• Looking for various sources of information where
  ever it may be media, research, informal
  conversations, etc.
• Youll be making field notes after interviews,
  focus groups . . .
• Your focus on a case, for example, BP Oil
  Crisis, or Temporary Workers or community of
  technology users or different types of
  phenomenon with more or less definable
  communities or events, phenomenon.

10
Ethnography of Speaking . . .

• One type of ethnography focus on language how
  meanings are created in communities or in
  particular speech events.
• We do things with language in social settings.
• Eth of Speaking looks at the relationships
  between form and content of communication and the
  creation of meaning.
• How we talk has consequences for how we see the
  world and create meanings in organizational life
  broadly speaking.

11

• What does a competent speaker do in a
  particular situation, for example
• In response to corp crisis?
• In an executive speech to stakeholders?
• On Facebook or writing a Blog?
• As a temporary worker in a meeting?
• In an interview? While recruiting executives?
• What is the repertoire of language and
  communication skills? What are the hidden rules
  of interaction? Styles? Dialectics? Code
  switching? How is power communicated?

12
SPEAKING

• When you want to study a particular speech event
  or a particular speech community (bloggers, IT
  employees, academics), useful approach.
• Analyze SPEAKING model in this class?

13

• S etting
• P articipants
• E ends
• A ct sequences
• K ey
• I instrumentalities
• N orms
• G enres

14
What about the Last Lecture?

• Backstory . . .
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vji5_MqicxSo

15
Caryn Medveds Top 10 List on Literature Reviews

• 10. Goal Your take, your way of
  interpretation of a body of work.
• 9. Careful reading is KEY before writing.
• 8. You need to read to know what you will use and
  wont use . . .
• 7. So, by extension, youll read a lot of
  research, you wont use.
• 6. Databases are your friends, librarians can
  become your friends . . .

16

• 5. Find some space to make piles.
• 4. Then, reorganize your piles.
• 3. Some ways to create piles by theme across
  articles, by date of publication, by
  sub-discipline, by findings, etc.
• 2. Cite within the text have a reference page.

17

• Tell me what YOU think, in fact, tell me up front
  what your conclusion is, how youll proceed and
  visually organize for me please.
• Give a clear thesis statement
• While the research on maternity leave
  negotiation tells us much about organizational
  policies, it tells us little about the variety of
  womens experiences of returning to work after
  childbirth.
• Preview
• This review of literature is organized in the
  following way . . .
• Use an introduction, subheadings, transitions,
  conclusions and, my favorite spell check.