Workshop Notes
- Researchers must accepting and recognising their own bias
- There are strata of engagement with data
- Researchers must have an awareness of mode they are in (noticing/interpreting/enquiring)
- Noticing as an active process of blocking out information rather than absorbing more
- Embodied research – experience – sensorial – unconscious interpretation
- Prompts for categorising data findings; salience, glow and stumble (experiences of data making)
- Resonance, vividness, creativity
- Gray and Malins (2004) – visual research analysis
- Reflection in action
- Poetry would be immersion approach (as would creative analysis and composite characters)
- Funnel of data (primary/literature – selection)
- Types of experiences that you bring into the research (existing knowledge, experience, reading).
- Reading on semiotic analysis (Curtis and Curtis)
- Reading on survey analysis (Curtis and Curtis)
- Patterns of meaning- reflexive thematic analysis
- Familiarising/coding/generating initial themes/developing and reviewing/refining, defining and naming/writing up
- Idea of valid forms of knowledge
- Be aware of what you are doing and why
Presentation Advice from Workshop
- Tell an engaging story, bringing it to life
- (Take photos of materials used in research)
- Leading to the Q&A (post-it notes)
- Make a timeline or visual overview to start with (a summary)
- Think about sense making through visual means – layering and shifting ideas
- Think about what the one thing is that you want people to understand or see to end on
- It doesn’t have to be a powerpoint!
- Have a final slide with references
This workshop made me think about how I will collect data as well as process it:
Interviews and Focus Groups
I could use the poetry analysis for the general reflection on and thinking around sustainable practices, or some kind of more systematic coding, as I want to quickly pull out key elements which summarise these interactions. I could also do a spider diagram of key words used in relation to the different ideas presented per interview as broader thematic analysis.
“The richness of the resultant data (particularly in comparison to variable-centric methods such as the survey) may seem overwhelming for the beginning researcher, though this can be reduced by the adoption of good data management practices” (Curtis and Curtis, 2011)
Reading Kara’s Analysing Data (2015)
I found reading this article very helpful in establishing some ideas about how I will process data, and integrate it – particularly the qualitative data, which feels overwhelming and complex.
I am going to draw qualitative data from my interviews and focus group, using Microsoft Word’s transcription tool to initially transcribe data, to save time – but then go back through and check it manually. I will not use non-speech sounds, or body gestures, but just the key language used. I think that thematic analysis would be best for my focus group and interviews, and maybe phenomenological analysis.
I could use quantitative data in the analysis of my intervention. I would like to use a mixed method approach overall, depending on which interventions I take forwards. Elements of discourse analysis in interpreting interview and focus group transcripts will be useful, in that they speak to the localist, romantic approach I am taking in conducting them. I am seeking to understand participants attitudes, values, and feelings towards specific ideas and concepts.
In relation to the focus group, I could pull out themes, concepts and feelings about the different ideas proposed and visually analyse them/present them. Perhaps in a diagram, and/or using colour. Having already researched their creative benefits, a post-it note board of themes and ideas would be an interesting way to present them, and a creative way to synthesis and make connections.
Alternatively, I could use a visual metaphor – the obvious one being an eco-system, or soem kind of natural system, which I could parallel with the concept of creating the right environment for student to ‘blossom into sustainably conscientious practitioners’.
Reading Gray and Malins’ Interpreting the map : methods of evaluation and analysis (2007)
I found reading this article very useful in clarifying to me my own decision making, and creating a clearer plan for the specific ways in which I would like to process and evaluate the raw materials of data that I have collected.
“to ‘evaluate’ is to ascertain the value of something anf to judge or asses it’s worth” (pp.101, Gray and Malins, 2007)
“to ‘analyse’ is to examine something in detail in order to discover it’s meaning” (pp.101, Gray and Malins, 2007)
To “focus, capture, and distill meaning” (pp.101) I must have clear criteria with which to ‘sieve’ my data. I like the visual metaphor of filters, spectacles and sieves used in this essay:
- Filters: to pull essential distillations (this can be applied to the four intervention designs)
- Spectacles: new vision or shift in focus (this seems more holistic and reflective)
- Sieves: capturing precious materials (this can be applied to the whole of each transcript, and is much more subjective, as I will be selecting these as I deem them to be ‘precious’).
In reading this article, I think that mixing my data from the focus group and the first interview, to review the potentiality of each design would be best, as a way of seeing the two perspectives side by side – which may produce some interesting outcomes. I could alternatively, discard the interview data, to focus the results down, and have less materials to process.
Given the limitations of this project in terms of time, I would be best of employing a quick and imaginative approach, rather than a slow and methodical one. On reflection, it may have been more sensible to collect less qualitative data, and more quantitive data for this reason. Although qualitative data of course provides depth and nuance, and I have established reasons for wanting to use this kind of data, this project is also a very short one.
I am furthermore going to focus in on the intervention designs themselves for this part of the project, with a view to utilise other parts of the data sets later on. Even if this data is not used, it was important in framing the intervention designs within the interview and focus groups.
The criteria I use to sieve the focus group and/or interview transcript data must be simplistic, but have some nuance. Perhaps, this could involve drawing out ‘positive remarks’, ‘negative remarks’, and ‘ideas’, in response to each intervention design presented, and quantifying them. These could each equate to a visual representation that draws on the analogy of a natural environment. For example, a ray of sun or a blade of grass. Each could be worth 1, 2, or 3 rays or blades, depending on how positive they are (or polluting particulates/dry grass). Within this, one essential word could be noted within the diagram, or elsewhere, so as to understand the what. This analogy could be quite generative – a raincloud could represent ‘ideas’ or ‘suggestions’ that emerge within the interview and focus group, later iterations of which could be represented by rain. This visual generative analogy would provide a way of comparing the technical and student views on each, visually and clearly.
Inspired by the section on Gray (1998) in Gray and Malins’ ‘Interpreting the map : methods of evaluation and analysis’ (2007, pp.137) I would also be very interested in utilising a triangulation method or ven diagram for the final analysis of ways of supporting students, in order to combine qualitative data sets from focus groups and interviews in a way that allows connections to be made. This also reminds me of a technique used in our introductory costume workshops, which are designed as an ice-breaker, whereby common skills related to costume are written in the middle.
Alternatively, I could utilise the concept of post-it notes as ways of making creative connections and problem solving (Ball et al 2021). This would work well as a reflective tool to understand and connect different perspectives and attitudes to sustainable practice, across my qualitative data sets, and is a familiar tool in my own practice.
Reading Linnedberg and Korsgaard (2019)
“with a limited amount of data, simple color coding with markers may suffice, with one color for each code” pp. 260
References
Gray, C, & Malins, J (2007) ‘Interpreting the map: methods of evaluation and analysis’ in Visualizing Research : A Guide to the Research Process in Art and Design. Taylor & Francis Group, Abingdon, Oxon. pp.1349 – 158. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [Downloaded: 05 December 2024]
Linneberg, M.S. and Korsgaard, S. (2019). ‘Coding qualitative data: a synthesis guiding the novice’ in Qualitative Research Journal, 19(3), pp. 259-270. Available at: file:///Users/FlorenceMeredith/Library/Mobile%20Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Pg%20cert/Sustainable%20practcies%20transfer%20/Codign%20qualitative%20data%20.pdf (Accessed on 2 January 2025)
Kara, H (2015) ‘Analysing Data’ in Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences : A Practical Guide‘, Policy Press, Bristol. pp.99 – 119. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [05 December 2024].
Ball, Linden & Christensen, Bo & Halskov, Kim. (2021). Sticky Notes as a Kind of Design Material: How Sticky Notes Support Design Cognition and Design Collaboration. Design Studies. 76. 10.1016/j.destud.2021.101034.
Curtis, B. and Curtis, C. (2011) In-Depth Interviewing – the Interactive Base. In: Social Research: A Practical Introduction. 55 City Road, London: SAGE Publications, Inc. pp. 27-54 Available at: <https://doi.org/10.4135/9781526435415> [Accessed 06 December 2024].