As I am working through the book 'Transforming Qualitative data' by Harry F. Wolcott I would like to share a few key things from this book that are really helping me at the moment and my thoughts on it. It's a massive book so hopefully these little 'nuggets of wisdom' are useful. Would love to share idea's and thoughts on them!
Page 10
Wolcott discusses the three major ways to 'do something' with descriptive data:
1. Stay close to the data as originally recorded. This may result in long excepts from fieldnotes, or reapeat informants' words so that informants themselves seem to tell their stories. --> Underlying assumption is that the data 'speak for themselves'.
2. 'Expand and extend beyond a purely descriptive account with an analysis that proceeds in some careful, systematic way to identify key factors and relationship among them'
3. Calling for interpretation. --> It does not claim to be as convincingly or compulsively 'scientific' as the 2nd. The goal is to make sense of what goes on, to reach out for understanding or explanation beyond the limits of what can be explained with the degree of certainty usually associated with analysis. --> can be starting point and culmination.
Page 44
On ways to approach interpretation;
Connect with personal experience;
-reference to I-witnessing from Geertz, 1988 pp. 73-101. --> two interpretations
1. personalize: 'this is what I make of it all'
2. 'this is how the research experience affected me'
For me this distinction was very interesting. I started to reflect on how this degree and my research is influencing my work as a filmmaker and how I am shaping my personal opinion on the research subject as I gather more data.
On analysing the interpretive process:
What seems to be holding you back? What piece of the puzzle are you still missing? 'Be aware how your analysis may reflect fashionable point of view rather than important underlying issues.'
These questions are very interesting as I move into my last interviews. What keeps me from asking certain questions? How can I change that? What do I really want to address in my next interview? How do I keep an open eye to the research at hand when my own stance becomes clearer and clearer?
Page 48:
A quote from Barbara Frankel (1987) that got mentioned and was really food for thought for me:
'While it has been trendy for some years to take sides ''for'' or ''against'' interpretive social science, no one has yet paused in the game long enough to explain how one would go about doing non-interpretive science of any sort. (p170)
Page 65:
Descriptive data need to be studied, not merely skimmed.
A good reminder to keep going over the recordings and to keep referring back to the original artefacts. My first interpretation of it might not be the only/right one. There is no right one.
Page 67:
'Overburdening readers with data seems an academic cop-out on the part of a researcher holding too tightly to the belief that data speak for themselves.'
Everyone's interpretation of data is different; this research is a way to share my interpretation through critical analysis. It's not up to the reader to analyse my data.
Page 113:
On generalisation of a case study:
'There must be a capacity for generalisation; otherwise there would be no point to giving such careful attention to the single case. The art of descriptive research, I believe, is in portraying the case at hand so well that readers themselves make the generalisations for us.'
For me a particular film is a case study. I want to keep the analysis to the film I am reviewing. Not generalise to every film. At the same time my analysis must be so careful and through that the reader (hopefully) find their own examples of other films that my analysis might apply to.
Page 407:
About preparing for qualitative data, these questions are helpful:
-If I want to shed light on this topic, I will need such-and-such data?
-What kind of data would I have to get?
This made me review my preparations and tailor some of the questions to be more specific. And others to widen the point of view to allow a variety of answers/data to shine through.
No comments:
Post a Comment