[Air-L] Field notes best practice
Kiersten Greene
kagreene at gmail.com
Sat Jul 13 04:33:53 PDT 2013
Hi Katie,
I wanted to add one more idea. I just finished my dissertation, which was
an exploration of anonymous blogs written by NYC public school teachers.
Although my main methodology was qualitative thematic analysis, there were
elements of ethnography as well. I was interested in developing a tool on
my own that would be flexible and, if possible, utilized a blogging
platform.
I was able to develop a fairly simple tool -- which I dubbed my 'metablog'
for the purposes of the study -- using a secure WordPress site via
opencuny.org (a multi-user WP site that was developed for and by students
at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York), to help me organize my data. I
was able to collect, annotate, and aggregate my data using this metablog.
By using the highlighting feature (just like you might in MS Word or email)
to code my data, and using the category and tag functions to introduce and
track new themes as they arose, I was able to easily keep track of and
build on my analysis as I collected notes and data. I used the comment
function for my annotations as the study developed, and wrote up and stored
any fieldnotes in the metablog, along with the data. Everything was in one
digital 'place,' I was able to export and back up the metablog periodically
so that I never lost any data, and it worked out surprisingly well!
I am currently working on a manuscript about my methods, so don't have
anything officially published yet, but would be happy to share the methods
chapter from my dissertation with you (and anyone else who'd like to see
it) if you're interested.
Good luck!
Best,
Kiersten
On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 1:54 PM, Katie Derthick
<derthick at u.washington.edu>wrote:
> Thanks, everybody who responded, for the very helpful and diverse advice.
> Much appreciated!! Happy, too, to have a listserv where I can put forth
> such requests and receive kind feedback from experienced and growing (like
> me) researchers. Thanks, AoIR!
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 8:32 AM, Knight, Kimberly
> <kim.knight at utdallas.edu>wrote:
>
> > Hi Katie,
> >
> > I don't do ethnographic research so I have no idea if this is really
> > appropriate but it struck me while reading your inquiry that Evernote
> might
> > be a good way to manage this. You can set up notebooks to organize notes,
> > but most importantly for your case, you can tag individual notes with
> > keywords. The search is quite good so if you are consistent with your
> > keyword tagging, you could use this to pull up common threads across
> notes
> > and notebooks.
> >
> > Best of luck,
> > _____
> > Kim Knight
> > Assistant Professor
> > Emerging Media and Communication
> > UT Dallas - Arts and Humanities
> > kim.knight at utdallas.edu
> >
> >
> > ________________________________________
> > From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org [air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org]
> > on behalf of air-l-request at listserv.aoir.org [
> > air-l-request at listserv.aoir.org]
> > Sent: Monday, July 08, 2013 5:00 PM
> > To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> > Subject: Air-L Digest, Vol 108, Issue 8
> >
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> >
> > Today's Topics:
> >
> > 1. Field notes best practice? (Katie Derthick)
> > 2. Re: Field notes best practice? (James Robson)
> > 3. Why and How to Read Marx?s ?Capital?? Reflections on Johan
> > Forn?s' book ?Capitalism. A Companion to Marx?s Economy Critique?
> > (Christian Fuchs)
> >
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2013 09:19:14 -0700
> > From: Katie Derthick <derthick at u.washington.edu>
> > To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> > Subject: [Air-L] Field notes best practice?
> > Message-ID:
> > <CAHHyWPcJkYEMOahc7Gns0shHLOctqsQB=
> > Oz-2cmPGGOKxpZe0g at mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> >
> > Hi everybody. I'm about to embark on my dissertation research study,
> which
> > will include year-long ethnography at 3 different communities. I'm
> > wondering what will be better for me: to have one long field notes
> document
> > where entries for each community simply appear one after the other, or
> > three separate documents, one for each community. In the end, I'd like to
> > be able to paint a picture of each community, but also make claims about
> my
> > overarching research goals.
> >
> > I appreciate any advice or insight you have to offer! For the record, I'm
> > studying the relationship between values, meditation practice, and
> > technology use, and looking at a monastery, a meditation center, and a
> > virtual org.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Katie
> >
> > --
> > Katie Derthick
> > PhD Candidate
> > Human Centered Design & Engineering
> > University of Washington
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 2
> > Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2013 16:57:09 +0000
> > From: James Robson <james.robson at gtc.ox.ac.uk>
> > To: Katie Derthick <derthick at u.washington.edu>,
> > "air-l at listserv.aoir.org" <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> > Subject: Re: [Air-L] Field notes best practice?
> > Message-ID:
> > <57D7EB1459457843BB6353F570CB70570FA85D at MBX10.ad.oak.ox.ac.uk>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> >
> > Hi Katie,
> >
> > Your study sounds really interesting.
> >
> > I'm just (hopefully) coming to the end of my doctorate where, like you, I
> > conducted an ethnography and spent a year in 3 communities.
> >
> > I think it depends on how closely linked your communities are. If they
> > form part of a single network with users interacting across all three
> > spaces, then a single document would probably be best. On the other
> hand,
> > if you're essentially doing 3 ethnographic case studies in independent
> > communities, then it's potentially a little different.
> >
> > My study (on teacher communities) was more akin to the latter and I
> > started using using three separate documents. However, it became fairly
> > irritating flicking between them and I was never quite sure where to put
> my
> > more reflexive thoughts about the whole process. Therefore I quickly
> > started using just one document but had 4 colours within it - one colour
> > for each community and one for general reflexive thoughts and emergent
> > analysis.
> >
> > I found this more user friendly and pretty useful as it provided a more
> > holistic narrative of the whole research process, while easily allowing
> me
> > to separate out the different communities if I wanted to for analysis.
> It
> > was a good way to keep track of my cross-community thoughts and helped
> with
> > reflexive insight - ie it helped me see where some of my experiences in
> one
> > community might potentially influencing the way I behaved in another.
> >
> > I don't know if it's best practice but I found the
> > single-document-multiple-colours approach really helpful.
> >
> > Good luck with your fieldwork
> >
> > Thanks
> > James
> > ________________________________________
> > From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org [air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org]
> > on behalf of Katie Derthick [derthick at u.washington.edu]
> > Sent: Monday, July 08, 2013 5:19 PM
> > To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> > Subject: [Air-L] Field notes best practice?
> >
> > Hi everybody. I'm about to embark on my dissertation research study,
> which
> > will include year-long ethnography at 3 different communities. I'm
> > wondering what will be better for me: to have one long field notes
> document
> > where entries for each community simply appear one after the other, or
> > three separate documents, one for each community. In the end, I'd like to
> > be able to paint a picture of each community, but also make claims about
> my
> > overarching research goals.
> >
> > I appreciate any advice or insight you have to offer! For the record, I'm
> > studying the relationship between values, meditation practice, and
> > technology use, and looking at a monastery, a meditation center, and a
> > virtual org.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Katie
> >
> > --
> > Katie Derthick
> > PhD Candidate
> > Human Centered Design & Engineering
> > University of Washington
> > _______________________________________________
> > The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> > is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> > Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> > http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
> >
> > Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> > http://www.aoir.org/
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 3
> > Date: Mon, 08 Jul 2013 22:44:15 +0100
> > From: Christian Fuchs <christian.fuchs at uti.at>
> > To: List Aoir <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> > Subject: [Air-L] Why and How to Read Marx?s ?Capital?? Reflections on
> > Johan Forn?s' book ?Capitalism. A Companion to Marx?s Economy
> > Critique?
> > Message-ID: <51DB32AF.7030800 at uti.at>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
> >
> > Fuchs, Christian. 2013. Why and How to Read Marx?s ?Capital??
> > Reflections on Johan Forn?s' book
> > ?Capitalism. A Companion to Marx?s Economy Critique?. tripleC:
> > Communication, Capitalism & Critique 11 (2): 294-309.
> > http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/488
> >
> > Abstract
> > This paper is a reflection on Johan Forn?s book ?Capitalism. A Companion
> > to Marx?s Economy Critique? - a new introduction to all three volumes of
> > Karl Marx's "Capital". It contextualizes the book with the help a
> > comparison to other contemporary introductions to Marx's "Capital".
> > The reflection is organized in the form of 8 sections:
> > 1) Context
> > 2) Method and Logic of Presentation
> > 3) The Logical and the Historical in Marx?s Works
> > 4) From Karl to Adolf Marx in German Marxist Theory?
> > 5) Visualization
> > 6) Crises
> > 7) Read this Book!
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
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> > http://www.aoir.org/
> >
> > End of Air-L Digest, Vol 108, Issue 8
> > *************************************
> >
> _______________________________________________
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--
kierstengreene.net
brookerhollow.com
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