February 2004 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

FACCT Online Forum - Empowering Patients Online
by Aryne Blumklotz 20 Feb '04

20 Feb '04

Join us for a FACCT online forum Empowering Patients Online* featuring Gary Schwitzer Health care journalist and communications authority Tuesday, June 18 - Thursday, June 20 We invite you to participate in an online discussion about Web-based decision-support tools. Learn how these tools work, how they are developed, who is using them and how they benefit consumers. Log on for a few minutes each day to: * Learn about the top Web-based consumer support tools for online decision-making. * Discuss the pros and cons of the most popular tools. * Find out what consumers want and what these online products offer. * Generate ideas for building a consumer-centered model for online decision-making. *Empowering Patients Online is a free event - but you must register to participate. To register simply reply to this e-mail listing your name and e-mail address in the message space. We'll send you instructions on how to log onto the site and participate in the discussion. Aryne Blumklotz, MPH - Communications Coordinator FACCT - The Foundation for Accountability 1200 NW Naito Parkway, Suite 470 Portland, OR 97209 Phone: (503) 546-9717 Fax: (503) 223-4336 www.facct.org

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Re: [Air-l] research ethics - tips
by Irene Berkowitz 19 Feb '04

19 Feb '04

Hi Charles, Could you answer a quick question. If we wanted to do a cybergeography study where we were looking a listening patterns via internet radio, (cybergeographically) and we wanted to integrate some Census stats, are you aware of whether there is an IRB issue there ? Thanks, IB ---- Original message ---- >Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 12:24:50 -0600 >From: Charles Ess <cmess(a)lib.drury.edu> >Subject: [Air-l] research ethics - tips >To: <air-l(a)aoir.org> > >Colleagues: > >Nancy Baym has suggested that I post at least a brief version of my monthly >report to the list at large, just in case a few people didn't quite read the >executive committee report all the way through ... This is good advice, I >think - the lessons learned and directions we're taking may be helpful. > >The AoIR ethics working committee has discussed a recent case/study kindly >provided by two AoIR members. > >Several lessons emerged from the case/study and our discussion - two of >which I would like to highlight here > >One, significant problems can be avoided ahead of time if participants in a >multi-disciplinary research project spell out and discuss in detail their >methodological assumptions and ethical practices regarding publication of >research data. >In the case we examined, two different disciplines involved >in the research project, it turned out, had more or less opposite views on >this point - leading to difficulties _after_ much of the project had been >completed, IRB approval received, etc. > >In addition, the two different disciplines had different traditions and >expectations regarding the nature of shared authorship (or... _not_!). >Again, this is an important point to clarify at the beginning of research >rather than towards its conclusion. > >Along these lines: we would be grateful to hear from AoIR members more >general accounts of their experiences that focus on "Ethical tips / lessons >learned" in developing research proposals and negotiating with ethical >oversight authorities. > >On behalf of the committee - we look forward to receiving these from you! > >Charles Ess >Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies >Drury University >900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 >Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 > >Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html >Co-chair, CATaC: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/ > >Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23 > > >_______________________________________________ >Air-l mailing list >Air-l(a)aoir.org >http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l Irene Berkowitz Director of Curricular Publications Temple University Office of the Vice Provost 215-204-7596 Please note my new email address below and update your address records accordingly. irene.berkowitz(a)temple.edu

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Snow and Trom Case Study and Social Movements Citation
by Joseph W. Roberts 19 Feb '04

19 Feb '04

Maura Conway asked for the full citation of Snow and Trom. Here it is and I hope it is helpful. Snow David A. and Danny Trom. "The Case Study and the Study of Social Movements." In Methods of Social Movement Research, edited by Bert Klandermans and Suzanne Staggenborg. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. Joseph W. Roberts, Ph.D., ABD Instructor of Political Science E-Mail: nospam.roberts000(a)earthlink.net

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research ethics - tips
by Charles Ess 19 Feb '04

19 Feb '04

Colleagues: Nancy Baym has suggested that I post at least a brief version of my monthly report to the list at large, just in case a few people didn't quite read the executive committee report all the way through ... This is good advice, I think - the lessons learned and directions we're taking may be helpful. The AoIR ethics working committee has discussed a recent case/study kindly provided by two AoIR members. Several lessons emerged from the case/study and our discussion - two of which I would like to highlight here One, significant problems can be avoided ahead of time if participants in a multi-disciplinary research project spell out and discuss in detail their methodological assumptions and ethical practices regarding publication of research data. In the case we examined, two different disciplines involved in the research project, it turned out, had more or less opposite views on this point - leading to difficulties _after_ much of the project had been completed, IRB approval received, etc. In addition, the two different disciplines had different traditions and expectations regarding the nature of shared authorship (or... _not_!). Again, this is an important point to clarify at the beginning of research rather than towards its conclusion. Along these lines: we would be grateful to hear from AoIR members more general accounts of their experiences that focus on "Ethical tips / lessons learned" in developing research proposals and negotiating with ethical oversight authorities. On behalf of the committee - we look forward to receiving these from you! Charles Ess Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Co-chair, CATaC: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/ Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23

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Re. Case Justification for Internet Research
by Maura Conway 19 Feb '04

19 Feb '04

Joseph, Could you please post the complete reference for Snow and Trom's "The Case Study and the Study of Social Movements" to Air-L. Many Thanks, Maura Maura Conway Teaching Fellow School of International Relations University of St. Andrews St Andrews KY16 9AL Scotland Tel.: +44 (0)1334 462939 Fax.: +44 (0)1334 462937 E-mail: mc52(a)st-andrews.ac.uk

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Re: [Air-l] re: ethnography
by Jonathan Marshall 19 Feb '04

19 Feb '04

Danny Butt <db(a)dannybutt.net> writes: > The model is: > > 1) There's a question, framed in an academic context, which I as a > researcher don't have the answer to (the answer is therefore exotic) Well i guess it beats being in the office with all your answers all ready :) I'd say that without ethnography you frequently do not know what the 'real questions' are. Your questions are likely generated by the office, without modification. Thats why the ethnographers tended to be a bit sus about the 'armchair theorists' - who i'd defend in another context :) > 2) The answer is held by others, who will surrender it (or > something like > it, but altered by my "experience") under observation So we should not observe anything other than our selves.. ? My self is pretty uniformative to me, i'm afraid. Further, the answer may not be *held* by anyone... Thats partially the point. Although the answers provided by other people, may be interesting and informative, and may provoke thought and investigation, but i don't get this without talking to those other people. I'm not that creative. or am i missing something here? > 3) I will, more or less depending on my positioning, take > responsibility for > this answer's circulation in an environment where it will be > "meaningful" but not controlled by those who held the answer. yep like all social research, unless its a 'partnership' of some kind. and even then its probable that different groups will get different kinds feedback and uses. The work can serve more than one function. At the moment i read you as seeming to be seeing societies as monliths, rather than as possibly having competing values and factions. There may be no *one* outcome anywhere. > All I'm asking for from those privileging > ethnography as > a research method is some sensible dialogue around those issues, > and being > honest about what we want. Well no problem there, but it would be nice to have it from others about their research methods as well. > The point I'm pressing becomes more obvious if I outline another > way of > conceiving of cross-cultural research: > > 1) There are issues identified by people who are excluded from > knowledge infrastructures (and associated academic salaries) such > as Universities > > 2) A researcher is engaged by those people as a way of gaining > access to > particular forms of knowledge, money, and representation that > might address these issues > > 3) Reporting on the "results" of this quest for knowledge, money, and > representation goes back to the people (but there may also, for > "ethical or > pragmatic reasons" be a report given to the institutions which are > the home of the researcher). That can happen in ethnography too, you know :) indeed it is closer to what you would expect from ethnography. Something like it arises during most ethnographies (not in mine' i confess, although my advice has been asked on oaccassions) I see heaps of research projects which don't have these features and which are not ethnographic. why single out ethnography? It seems to be a hell of a lot easier to get approval to do research were people sign forms allowing you to inject posions into them, than it does to produce ethnographic work which might embarass some unknown reader not connected to the research. (This is a personal bitch, here of dubious relevance :) But in any case this point is not about research methods or tools, this is about the responsibilities of the researcher. And if you have no interaction with people, how is this kind of application going to arise? If you have some interaction and its relevant then you are approaching ethnography. Again you need to know the conflicts of the society, otherwise you may simply be aiding one side in a power struggle and thinking you're pure. > I would say: the desire for no problems is the problem. But no one is saying that ethnography is without problems.... But we might be trying to find out where it has problems not shared by other methodologies - or not worse in other methodologies. > As Haraway puts it, ethnography should not be seen as a "method" > to be > "applied" but a way of being radically open to the forces > structuring a situation. sure.... But isn't that what the ethnographers are saying? > My perception - which is significantly influenced by > ongoing conversations with those not defining research situations - > is that research > situations are generally dominated by our basic assumptions as > researchers,and the only way of really dealing with this is to be > as clear as possible > about what these assumptions are (which is to say, if you're > confident about > the benefits of your research for your subjects, and your immunity > from the > historical forces that shaped your methods, you probably need to > spend some > more time in the library before heading out). Same with all social research or research on humans... > I don't know if anyone cares about this stuff and I've got that > feeling like > I misread the dress code for the party, so I'll finish up there. No but i'm a bit puzzeled as to why its ethnography in particular that calls forth these strictures. jon UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F DISCLAIMER ======================================================================== This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views the University of Technology Sydney. Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects. ========================================================================

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Case justification for Internet research
by Joseph W. Roberts 18 Feb '04

18 Feb '04

Hello all- I have been having trouble finding literature that examines how to justify a particular case within the context of internet research. I am finishing my dissertation on how a particular social movement (the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights/Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia) uses CMC to generate support and action for its message against the Saudi government. I have suggested that the case is a synecdochical or revelatory case (using Snow and Trom, "The Case Study and the Study of Social Movements") because the case reveals specific evidence of a strategy for social movement action. In other words, the use of CMC by the movement is important and is overlooked in existing discussions of media-movement relations. I have one reader who is skeptical of this logic. I would appreciate any suggestions. Joseph W. Roberts, Ph.D., ABD Instructor of Political Science E-Mail: nospam.roberts000(a)earthlink.net

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RE: [Air-l] Re: ethnography
by Nafus, Dawn 18 Feb '04

18 Feb '04

Dear All, I'm new to this listserv and have been enjoying the fact that there is actual debate rather than just announcements. So my two cents will take the form of raising a new twist on the issue-- on this 'unintended effects' business. One thing that's going on with UK researchers is a major research council is considering (or have they made it mandatory now?) requiring people to deposit their 'qualitative data' into a bank to be used by other researchers. Depositors can put restrictions on other users' access to the data, but it's to encourage data recycling. Part of me likes the idea of opening the books, so to speak... I believe that there is a student at (Kent??) that is blogging his fieldwork which seems an admirable way forward. Nevertheless, this 'depository' strikes me as HUGELY controversial, not only for reasons of informant confidentiality, but also because it requires some consensus on the part of depositors to agree on what 'data' is and does--not something we could say exists even within disciplines. Ethnography raises a special point with regard to this, because it's always meant to be more than transcripts. The ethnography is not even the fieldnotes, or even the being there itself, it's (in my book anyway) the dialogue between the categories the researcher thinks she's hearing and the categories meaningful for the audience she's writing for(maybe I've deconstructed my own craft to the point of oblivion! It's always a bad idea to say ethnog is this or that...esp. on a first posting). This is what gets published anyway. This qualidata project seems to multiply the 'unintended effects' by asking in what way can 'data' be circulated as a stand-alone entity. But then again how much 'intention' do authors really think they have in the first place? In our texts, perhaps, we can represent context but I work in contexts like Maxmilian where any 'representing' I do is more marginal than the people I 'represent'. Does anyone see any merit in 'depositing' data, and would depositing data actually make you think twice about the kinds of textual representations you make? I so much prefer to share rather than deposit...but that's idealistic I suppose. You are welcome to my fieldnotes, but I reserve the right to share a cup of coffee with you first:). An example of what disturbed me. I went to a one day workshop on this sort of thing. There are a number of projects already in place, outside the goal of making a megadatabank. Interestingly though, in one (http://www.icbh.ac.uk/icbh/witness/welcome.html) the transcripts of elites sitting round a table were considered narratives in and of themselves. They are complete, un-break-apart-able pdf documents, which readers are meant to read through. They usually do. Another project on everyday life in the Edwardian period generated much discussion about how to do the metadata (http://www.qualidata.essex.ac.uk/edwardians/about/introduction.asp) Ordinary Edwardians had to be searchable. The decisions on the metadata did not bother me--what bothered me was that ordinary Edwardians could only stand for pieces that needed to be added up (searched, categorized, etc.), while elites' speech only had to amount to itself. I'm not one to harp on everyone's voices getting heard (to whom? For what? I usually find myself asking), but still there's a mathematics here that just doesn't seem right. Sorry I can't put my finger on it more than that. Maybe it's the attempt at standardizing scales of knowledge when these two projects clearly show there is no agreed scale. Hopefully someone else can do better... Dawn Dawn Nafus Senior Research Officer Chimera Institute for Socio-Technical Innovation and Research University of Essex Adastral Park Martlesham Heath, Suffolk IP5 3RE http://www.essex.ac.uk/chimera/people/dawn_nafus.html

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re:My first survey
by Eero Tarik 18 Feb '04

18 Feb '04

Frank wrote.... "Doing research on gender myself, it always annoys me when there's only a binary choice for gender on a survey. Is it so hard to include an "other" category there?" Frank, being a person who likes to laugh and be happy, I was going to label the gender selection "sex" and then have three options - "male", "female" and "love it" but I feared this might be seen in some quarters as sexist humour and therefore refrained, and it might have spoilt the serious tone of my internet research work. As for a university server adding more legitimacy to the survey. Perhaps for some, however my little survey is doing just fine and pulling them in by the hour hidden away on my ramshackle website. I was able to get this up and running in 24 hours - imagine how long it would take to go through a university and get this approved and online??? One day when my baby survey is ready to graduate from Little to Grand and become the GIUS, then perhaps I will allow a university to grace the GIUS pages with a logo :-) This all is conditional upon me thinking up a second question for the survey - all ideas welcome. see ya Eero Tarik

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Re: Oops there goes the thread RE: [Air-l] Re: first post (An Internet Withou...
by Steffasong＠aol.com 18 Feb '04

18 Feb '04

Frank, You wonder how your students have become so much younger than you all of a sudden? :-)My students are about TWO decades younger than me and I am finding the same thing that you are finding. This semester I have five sections of students- about 125 students. In an informal poll last month I discovered that only about 1% know anything about usenets, discussion lists, etc. As you can see from the sig file, I am from the States. Most of my students are not internationals. What do you think is the reason for their lack of Internet savvy? I am perplexed. Stephanie Bennett Department of Liberal Arts Division of Humanities--Parker 380 Nova Southeastern University 3301 College Avenue Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33314 "People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

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