Week 14 Documents, visual methods,

and other qualitative research sources and methods

Social Research MethodsAlice Mah

“almost anything can be thought of as data.” - Seale 2004, p. 273

Lecture OutlinePersonal and official documentsVisual sociology and visual methods

Focus: photo-elicitation interview method (including participant photography)

Visual, spatial and mobile methods Focus: walking methods / ‘psychogeography’

(researching relationships between people & place)ConclusionsSeminar: readings and activities

PERSONAL AND OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS

What are personal and official documents?

History is defined by those who write storiesAnd (most often) victors get to be the ones who write

Documents provide access to a world we cannot observe… but a manufactured and created view

Tend to think of written documentsBut these also include audio and visual documents

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What are personal and official documents?

Distinction between oral accounts, observations and written records

Social researchers tend to concentrate on certain categories of documents Public records Media reports Private documents Organisational records

Personal data includes: Written records upon which historians/sociologists concentrate But also oral information (e.g. oral or life histories; recordings are

often deposited in archives/local libraries)

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Official documents

Documents generated by the state, city, a corporation, or other ‘authority’, eg:Administrative material created by governmentReports, discussion papers, legislationOfficial statistics Organisational documents

Patient filesSocial worker case notesTraining manualsCompany reportsCity Council minutes

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Diaries and memoirs

Diaries is a generic term that includes:Logs

Kept by a research informantDocumented evidence produced as part of self-record of

activities and attitudes (eg Time use surveys)Journals

An account kept by a researcher of a face-to-face interviewRecord of respondent’s retrospective recall of activities and

attitudesDiary

An account kept by the researcher that records the research9

Autobiographical accounts

Not produced for the purposes of researchAccounts of the famousAccounts of the powerfulAccounts of ‘ordinary lives’

Make visible the lives of the previously silencedThose whom historically have been ignored or

marginalised

But, majority from middle and upper class perspectives (Burgess, 1993: 91)

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Media SourcesNewspapers

Newspaper archives: http://www.bl.uk/collections/newspapers.html)Magazines Internet (see Hamman -reading 43- in Seale reader, and online

ethnography slides)TV Film (many accessible through film archives; Warwick Library

also has a collection)BFI's National Film and Television ArchiveImperial War Museum Film and Video ArchiveScottish Screen ArchiveNational Screen and Sound Archive of Wales8 English regional film archives

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Archives

National, state, local, interest group/ institutional archivesTexts, images, audio and video recordings, including a range of

official and personal documents Limitations of archival documents:Snapshots of time; purpose/ intentElites/ non-elitesGlobal north/ southQuestions re: truth and objectivityRe: digital/virtual archives in particular: lack of context;

digital exclusion; loss of “materiality” as data

Selected list of archives

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ http://

www.theherbert.org/index.php/home/history-centre/history-centre-collections http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc http://parlipapers.chadwyck.co.uk/marketing/index.jsp http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Corporation/LGNL_Services/Leisure_and_cult

ure/Records_and_archives/ http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/indiaofficeselect/welcome.asp http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/thewomenslibrary/ http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/?gclid=COLNu_DLiKECFSaElAodgFRpNw http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/ http://www.imagesofempire.com/bin/empire.dll/go?a=disp&t=home-loader.ht

ml&_max=0&_maxlb=0&si=

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/search?adv=y

Analysis of documentary material

May (1993) suggests analysis needs to considerAuthenticityRepresentativenessCredibilityMeaning

Look at the context in which the document is produced (eg socio-cultural context)

Further discussion on analysis in weeks 14 and 15…

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VISUAL METHODS

‘Seeing comes before words… and establishes our place in the surrounding world.’ (John Berger, 1977, Ways of Seeing, p. 7)

Visual material is a central to the social realm, not simply a way we can study. We cannot understand social life without considering the visual aspects of social life.

Brief history of visual methods: 19th-20th century: photo-journalists and documentary photographers, use of film and photography in social anthropology, social investigators and social reformers as photographers; visual sociology established in 1980s, developed in the 1990s, and is now increasingly popular (digital age).

Visual methodologies produce rich data, are open to a range of interpretations, and can provide insights into producers of visual material, consumers of visual material, and social contexts of image production and consumption.

Visual sociology

Visual methods Three types of visual methods (Banks, 2001):

1. making visual representations (studying society by producing images)

2. examining pre-existing visual representations (studying images for information about society)

3. collaborating with social actors in the production of visual representations

Different types of visual material two-dimensional pictures- drawings, maps, diagrams and charts,

photographs, paintings, etc. moving or electronic images, for example TV, video and film, websites material objects themselves, such as toys, homes, streets, signs

Visual methods can be used as stand-alone methods or as complementary with other qualitative methods such as interviews and participant observation.

Focus: photo-elicitation interviewsPhoto-elicitation interviews: researchers introduce

photographs into the interview context Photographs may be researcher-produced, existing

photographs, or produced by research participantsThree main uses of photographs (Harper, 2002):1. As visual inventories of people, objects and artefacts2. As depictions of events that are part of collective or institutional paths

(photographs of schools or events)3. As intimate dimensions of the social (photos of family, friends, the self,

the body)Advantages: ease rapport, provide structure, prompt

questions, richer data, greater balance of power dynamicsChallenges: confidentiality, ethics, trust, technical skill,

sensitivity to context, power relations

Example of photo-elicitation ‘auto-driven’ interview instructions, Clark-Ibáñez

Clark-Ibáñez: photo-elicitation images

Clark-Ibáñez: photo-elicitation images

Byrne and Doyle: photo-elicitation with focus groups, using existing mining images

Byrne and Doyle: photo-elicitation with focus groups, using existing mining images

Les Back: participant street photography, Brick Lane, East London

Les Back: participant street photography, Brick Lane, East London

SPATIAL METHODS

Spatial Methods ‘Spatial’ methods: Particularly useful for investigating relationships

between people, images, places and objects (meanings, understandings) and for gaining deeper qualitative insights

Examples of places/spaces: communities, cities, neighbourhoods, homes, public spaces, parks, rural spaces, natural spaces, confined places, policed places, streets

Material culture studies (Daniel Miller- see course extracts) people’s relationships with objects, photos, materials

Site observations (drawing maps, photographing areas of research; spatial part of ethnographic lens)

Mobile methods: researching while on the move (participant and/or researcher), conducive to spatial research

Research example: Diary-photo diary-interview method (Latham), time-space diagram, diary, photo and interview as complementary

Focus: walking methods and psychogeography ‘Walking whilst talking’ (or driving or on public transport):

research participants guide researchers through places: city streets, neighbourhoods, shops, churches, parks, and talk about meanings, memories and ideas related to places. Informal, good for rapport, multi-sensory, rich material.

Psychogeography: researchers explore the social and psychological impacts of places on people; primary method through researcher walking and observing. Earlier antecedents: Walter Benjamin’s flaneur and George Simmel’s Metropolis and Mental Life, 1903; ‘founded’ by Guy Debord 1955, contemporary example: Ian Sinclair’s London Orbital).

Criticisms: spectator/voyeuristic/detached/popular.

Research example: Industrial Ruination, Community, and Place (Mah 2012)See in particular chapter 5 ‘Reading

landscapes of ruination, deprivation, and decline,’ pp. 129-152

Outlines social and spatial analysis approach of ‘reading’ social and spatial landscapes of industrial and urban decline

Combines visual, spatial, mobile, and ethnographic methods

Driving tours with research participant in Ivanovo, Russia: Mah

Driving tour with research participant (taxi driver) in Walker, Newcastle: Mah

Conclusions

There are a number of possibilities for collecting qualitative data… depending on your research question(s)… be creative!

Further possibilities: using the senses more widely in social research

(smell, sound…)using video and social mediacollaborative (co-produced) researchcombining qualitative methods

Seminars

This week: bring a short video, document, image, or object for analysis, practical exercises and discussions in small groups.

Readings: first two short readings in the Seale reader, plus journal article by Pink!

For next week: download NVivo to your laptops and bring to seminars! Available on:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/its/servicessupport/software/nvivo