What's the news in the last week? Well, I was given ethics clearance. That was really painless, actually. I'd like to give a shout out to one of my supervisors who helped flesh out my application back at the start of the year. Holla!
What else? I'm still writing my methodology chapter, though I'll have my second draft ready by Monday. I think it's starting to resemble what my other supervisor was hoping for, but as we all know there will be room for improvement.
What else? I'm still writing my methodology chapter, though I'll have my second draft ready by Monday. I think it's starting to resemble what my other supervisor was hoping for, but as we all know there will be room for improvement.
Possibly the most exciting news is that my recruitment has kicked up a notch. GWLG agreed to post my recruitment flyer and within a few hours I've already been approached by 5 individuals. I only needed 5, and I had a few already that I anticipated could snowball into a few others, so that's been really good. For a straight guy to successfully approach and insert himself into a lesbian community is no small task. It was probably my biggest fear, leading up to actually doing my research - what would happen if I failed miserably in recruiting? The good news is, I won't have to worry.
I feel like maybe it's a good idea to share a part of my methodology, in regards to approaching a community that the researcher exists out of. I was reading some stuff on internet research ethics recently, namely Christine Hine's Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Research on the Internet (2005), Virtual Ethnography (2000); The Ethics of Internet Research: A Rhetorical, Case-Based Process by Heidi McKee and James Porter (2009); and Boellstorff's Coming of Age In Second Life (2008). One salient thing that I learned from these texts is the need for 'authenticity'.
There was something by Janne Bromseth which I took from one of those texts. Bromseth did some research on gay and bisexual women's interaction on a Scandinavian litserv. She noted that when conducted ethnography online, it is important that the researcher sustains a 'cultrally appropriate image'. Such an image is necessary so as to appear legitimate and culturally sensitive toward the population that the researcher is studying, and, perhaps more importantly, reduces that the researcher can be seen as an 'other' (outsider).
Taking from this, I thought that it wasn't enough for my methodology that I simply have a tumblr blog for my research (though it would be where my potential participants could acquire the participant information and consent sheets). I would have to establish my own tumblr blog. Now, tumblr users can be assured that I am not just an amused researcher, looking down from high above in my ivory tower. This is also that is something which resonates with the standpoint epistemology that I've used, which calls for reflexivity and that the research operates as a participant, rather than an expert.
I feel like maybe it's a good idea to share a part of my methodology, in regards to approaching a community that the researcher exists out of. I was reading some stuff on internet research ethics recently, namely Christine Hine's Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Research on the Internet (2005), Virtual Ethnography (2000); The Ethics of Internet Research: A Rhetorical, Case-Based Process by Heidi McKee and James Porter (2009); and Boellstorff's Coming of Age In Second Life (2008). One salient thing that I learned from these texts is the need for 'authenticity'.
There was something by Janne Bromseth which I took from one of those texts. Bromseth did some research on gay and bisexual women's interaction on a Scandinavian litserv. She noted that when conducted ethnography online, it is important that the researcher sustains a 'cultrally appropriate image'. Such an image is necessary so as to appear legitimate and culturally sensitive toward the population that the researcher is studying, and, perhaps more importantly, reduces that the researcher can be seen as an 'other' (outsider).
Taking from this, I thought that it wasn't enough for my methodology that I simply have a tumblr blog for my research (though it would be where my potential participants could acquire the participant information and consent sheets). I would have to establish my own tumblr blog. Now, tumblr users can be assured that I am not just an amused researcher, looking down from high above in my ivory tower. This is also that is something which resonates with the standpoint epistemology that I've used, which calls for reflexivity and that the research operates as a participant, rather than an expert.
Anyway, as is customary when concluding posts on this blog, it's gif-time - for "teh kidz". Here is an apt representation of me presently, replying to all my participation requests:
References
Boellstorff T 2008, Coming Of Age In Second Life, Princeton University Press, USA.
Bromseth JCH 2006, 'Genre trouble and the body that mattered: Negotiations of gender, sexuality and identity in a Scandinavian mailing list community for lesbian and bisexual women', PhD thesis, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, accessed 28/09/20012, DiVa database, http://ntnu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?searchId=1&pid=diva2:122317
Hine C 2000, Virtual Ethnography, SAGE, UK.
Hine C 2005, Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Research on the Internet, Berg, UK.
McKee H A & Porter J E 2009, The Ethics Of Internet Research: A Rhetorical, Case-Based Process, Peter Lang, USA.
Huzzah! Great going with the recruitment, sounds like it's all getting underway nicely. Will be very interesting to see what comes out of your interviews. I think it's certainly a positive to become more involved in the methods and communications of the community you are researching rather than being as you say, a detached observer. With an excellent reaction to your initial approach, I would imagine that this impression could draw out information from your participants that might otherwise stay 'in check'. Don't know if you've come across him but Alessandro Portelli has done a great deal of work re: oral histories and the ethics of interviewing (his paper 'Peculiarities of Oral History' (1981) might be work a look- accessible in Oxford Journals through the library). He examines how people construct their narratives of self and the processes of omission and construction implicated in this.
ReplyDeleteHi Matt
ReplyDeleteWell done on establishing a medium to collect data for your research.
You mention that your sampling method follows a self- selection approach whereby the participant opts to participate in the research following some sort of communication strategy actioned by the researcher. Although you are obviously putting your feelers out into that niche online community to see what emerges through the selection process in a fairly fluid and unstructured format rather than approaching the self- selection process with a quota for a more purposive sample. Irrespective of this, what are the parameters of the population that you are actually drawing your research sample from? For instance, this does not only include the typical socio/demographic indicators of age, sex, gender, locality, but also access to education, level of educational attainment, cultural norms and uses of phraseology, expectations and objectives, etc.?
One of the main criticisms of self-selection as a sampling methodology, particularly for social research, but not so much for medical and clinical research in which randomised double blinding sort of arrangements render the biases of self-selection fairly harmless, is that the people who sometimes approach the research setting for inclusion can be atypical to their normative groups. One good example of this is seen a lot in political inquiries where a request for submissions on a social issue will not obtain a representative range of community views on an issue, but rather from those who have particularly benefited from a situation or had particularly bad experiences (at the skews of the target population distribution). Resultantly, through the method it is sometimes difficult to obtain a balanced picture of what is going on for average joe blow who in the case of your research may have no preoccupations other than to use the dating/networking site in clandestine. However, at times, self-selection could be totally appropriate if the target groups in demand for research within a population are those at the skews of the population distribution.
Have you devised any controls to identify the degree of similarity (I won’t say “representativeness” because 5 or 6 participants is too few to obtain statistical power) of your self- selected sample in as far as your study sort of represents a case based analysis of the phenomena of online dating on a particular online site/forum targeted at particular groups? If so, how well does your sample thus far relate to the characteristics of other site users?
Glad all is going well! See you Monday
Peter :)
Hey Peter,
DeleteI'm not really concerned with level of education or access to in my sample. Though I have and will continue to ask each participant at the start of each interview to inform me of their biographic narrative, in which their level of education tends to come out in the wash. I anticipate that most will have a tertiary education of some sort.
As far as cultural norms go, I'm not sure what you mean? I'm not sure what their expectations are, but I do ask them to describe what their objectives and expectations are in regards to what they do on tumblr, yes.
As far as your second and last points, I'll try and answer them briefly. The research methodology lends itself to self-selection. I didn't want to "cold call" any individual people. Part of my inquiry is about the presentations and performances these people put on. I could certainly approach people that I *think* represent a certain sample type (ie a 'goth', or a 'hipster'), but how can I know for certain that what they display is a true reflection of their self? Some people's tumblr blogs aren't personal in the least - they could decide to make their own blog entirely about cats in hats. For this reason, it made more sense to allow the respondents to self-select and reflect on their cultural processes in the course of the interviews.
As for controls to identify similarity, I'm working on a basic principal of diminishing returns, once I start to hear the same / quite similar things, I'll know I've probably canvassed enough people. I can't really answer your question as yet re representativeness as I have only conducted 1/10 interviews ;-)
At the end of the day, it's an honours thesis, with a qualitative methodology. I'm using it as a pilot-study for my phd, wherein I can ponder the concerns such as yours in greater depth at a latter date!
Hope my response wasn't too much of a quantitative cop-out!
Regards,
Matt
Hi Matt
DeleteIt sounds as if there is good reason for your use of methodology and it appears you have a sound philosophical basis for it. So what you are basically saying is that practices and "narratives" on tumblr are all so highly individualised and fluid that it would almost be redundant to identify the "typical character" and his or her patterns in using the site. If this is the case, I would agree that there is probably little use in trying to establish the validity of the sample in relation to the whole of the site population.
I'm sensing a postmodern flavour in your work through the implicit rejection of "essences" and affirmation of the validity of ungeneralisable individual narratives through your statement "how Goth is goth or hipster?" I suppose what you are saying is that even when an apple appears to be similar to another apple, there is always something unique about the two apples which is not captured in generalisation and blurring the boundaries.
Your comment wasn't a quantitative cop out, but it certainly leaves much for the quantitative methodologist to ponder regarding categories of being and establishing "likeness" in research samples!
See you later today.
Peter