After last night's demonstrations of QDAminer and Transana, I'm feeling even more grateful that I was able to get Atlas.ti to work on my Mac. I was simply not impressed with QDAminer. A fellow classmate summed up my feelings with her analogy of comparing Notepad to Word. They essentially perform similar functions, but Word is just more efficient. That's exactly how I feel when comparing QDAminer to Atlas.ti. I just feel like Atlas.ti provides more functionality for the kinds of things I'm hoping to get out of analysis software. As for Transana, the jury's still out until at least Monday, I suppose. It was really interesting to see the demo of what Transana can do with video, but I can't see how that will apply to my research agenda right now. I do think Transana could be helpful for me in analyzing my audio data, but I'm not sure I'm thrilled with how the coding process is done. I really like that Atlas.ti does not function under the assumption that everyone will be inputting a priori codes. And, while I realize that there are ways to get around that particular function in both QDAminer and Transana, I'm just not sure it's worth the time or effort to work through all that if I can basically get what I need in Atlas.ti. So, I'm willing to play around a bit more with Transana, but I am leaning towards Atlas.ti being my best investment of time and money for the time being.
Last night's conversation about this week's readings also have me thinking more deeply about writing up a methodology section for the course. It was really helpful to think/talk about the analysis process in class, especially in light of using software to aid in the process. I'm a bit nervous about writing this up because I'm still so new to the software, but I've been working on my analysis in Atlas.ti off and on all day today, so I'm hoping that as I become more comfortable with the software, I will be able to be more explicit in writing about my methods.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Atlas.ti.....not for the faint of heart!
Wow! Last night, I left class feeling completely drained: emotionally, physically, you name it. I do not believe I could have been more tired if I had run a marathon. With that said, however, it was a good state of exhaustion to find myself in. I left class feeling quite satisfied and excited about the prospect of utilizing Atlas.ti in my research. Considering the long hours and money spent simply making a virtual world on my Mac with which I could even access Atlas.ti, this makes me breath a huge sigh of relief. So far, I have been able to operate all the Atlas operations we covered in class with no glitches! Hip, hip, hooray! Now, the true test will be remembering how to use all those various operations when I'm sitting home alone working and not in class with others. I know that mastering Atlas.ti is going to involve a very steep learning curve for me, and it will take quite a bit of time, but I'm determined to give it my best shot.
With that said, I am planning to focus on Mendeley and Atlas.ti for my skill building activities. I will continue building my Mendeley library and exploring the various functions and capabilities of the program. Using Atlas.ti, I want to use my recordings and transcripts from the Discourse Analysis course last fall and practice coding them. I'm nervous about this because I know we have a very short amount of time left before the class ends, but learning about Atlas.ti was one of the primary reasons I wanted to take this class, so I feel like I have to devote what little time I have left to figuring it out. My finished products may not be as polished or as rigorous as I would normally hope for, but I at least want to walk away with a good working knowledge of the two tools and the confidence to proceed with each of them as I continue my work beyond this class.
With that said, I am planning to focus on Mendeley and Atlas.ti for my skill building activities. I will continue building my Mendeley library and exploring the various functions and capabilities of the program. Using Atlas.ti, I want to use my recordings and transcripts from the Discourse Analysis course last fall and practice coding them. I'm nervous about this because I know we have a very short amount of time left before the class ends, but learning about Atlas.ti was one of the primary reasons I wanted to take this class, so I feel like I have to devote what little time I have left to figuring it out. My finished products may not be as polished or as rigorous as I would normally hope for, but I at least want to walk away with a good working knowledge of the two tools and the confidence to proceed with each of them as I continue my work beyond this class.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Is there a "right" way to do things?
Our recent readings and class discussion have me pondering the notion of the "right" way to do things. Of course, few things can be classified as "right" or "wrong"; in most aspects of life we live in the blurred gray areas, and qualitative research certainly finds itself in the category of gray for me! The readings about transcription methods, if nothing else, can attest to this. There are so many opinions about the "right" way to transcribe, from straight transcription, to pragmatic, to Jeffersonian, and all of the arguments have valid points. After taking the discourse analysis class last fall, I find that I can no longer look at transcription in the same way, and the readings simply helped solidify my thoughts on the topic. I see the transcription process as analysis, and while I will not pretend that Jeffersonian transcription is 'fun' it is certainly enlightening! Regardless of whether or not Jeffersonian notations are used or even necessary, though, one constant, or "right" way for me to do transcriptions is to do them myself! Yes, it is time consuming and somewhat tedious, but I suppose I'm amazed at how many researchers simply view this as meaningless chore, just a means to an end, and do not see the value in doing it themselves. Perhaps, a lot of my opinions on this matter stem from the control freak side of me, but nevertheless, I just feel it is important for me to deal with the data, not someone else.
The other notion of what is "right" or "wrong" that came up during our class discussion was the ethical dilemma of using data that is technically open to anyone, such as open access discussion threads, etc. I was really intrigued with the cut and dry opinions from IRB, as opposed to the inner struggle of personal views on the ethics of the situation. Is it okay to go ahead and use data just because we don't consider the population to be vulnerable? I don't know, and in fact, I don't believe there is a "right" or "wrong", which lands us right back into the world of gray! I suppose we have no choice but to accept this gray existence and strive to conduct ourselves in a manner that we can live with, knowing that some others will not agree with our choices.
The other notion of what is "right" or "wrong" that came up during our class discussion was the ethical dilemma of using data that is technically open to anyone, such as open access discussion threads, etc. I was really intrigued with the cut and dry opinions from IRB, as opposed to the inner struggle of personal views on the ethics of the situation. Is it okay to go ahead and use data just because we don't consider the population to be vulnerable? I don't know, and in fact, I don't believe there is a "right" or "wrong", which lands us right back into the world of gray! I suppose we have no choice but to accept this gray existence and strive to conduct ourselves in a manner that we can live with, knowing that some others will not agree with our choices.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Exporting Files from DiscoverText
Okay, so after playing around with trying to find a way to export the entire archive set in DiscoverText, I noticed that on the Data Set Details page, there is an option to export your dataset. So, for the demo we did in class last night, I had a dataset, named "researchers", and I found that I could export that dataset as a .csv file, .xml file, or .zip file. I experimented with all three and have all three versions in a folder on my desktop! I'm going to play around a bit more with how to make these file formats a bit more user friendly, if that's even possible (this is where, unfortunately, my lack of tech-savviness-ness comes into play!) BUT, at least there is an option for getting parts of the data from DiscoverText on my desktop, and potentially, into another piece of software.....
Finding My Place in a World of New Literacies
Our discussion in class last night left me pondering where I find myself in this world of new digital literacies. One profound insight I took away was this notion of no longer being able to consider oneself only an online researcher or only an off-line researcher. Technology permeates every aspect of our lives and it is naive to think researchers can ignore this. While I still crave some of the traditional ways of doing things, I can certainly see that I need to remain open-minded about the process.
Learning about DiscoverText was really interesting. At first, while I was intrigued with its capabilities, I wasn't certain I could see myself using it. Then, a fellow classmate share some of her ideas for using it and that, in turn, inspired some ideas for my own field of study. I can now see possibilities for possibly mining some of the online discussions surrounding hot topics in literacy by looking at the ongoing discussions between members of the International Reading Association, for instance. I am also interested in playing around with DiscoverText's capabilities with mining information from blogs, although I'm not certain right now how useful that will be if the tool will not grab the comments along with the posts.
Right now, I am playing around with trying to find a way to export the bucket list into some type of document that could then be used in conjunction with other tools, such as Atlas.ti. I really think that could be a great way of combining data collecting and data analysis tools.
On the Mendeley front, as I continue to try to build my library, I am finding it a bit frustrating that so many of my older pdfs are not recognized and I'm spending a great deal of time manually inputting all the information. I also found that when importing files that have already been renamed, the author/journal/publication date information isn't always recognized either, so again, I'm spending a lot of time manually inputting information. I haven't played around much with annotating within Mendeley, although I was pleased to find that previous annotations on the files I imported were still visible. I really did not think they would be, so that was a pleasant surprise.
Learning about DiscoverText was really interesting. At first, while I was intrigued with its capabilities, I wasn't certain I could see myself using it. Then, a fellow classmate share some of her ideas for using it and that, in turn, inspired some ideas for my own field of study. I can now see possibilities for possibly mining some of the online discussions surrounding hot topics in literacy by looking at the ongoing discussions between members of the International Reading Association, for instance. I am also interested in playing around with DiscoverText's capabilities with mining information from blogs, although I'm not certain right now how useful that will be if the tool will not grab the comments along with the posts.
Right now, I am playing around with trying to find a way to export the bucket list into some type of document that could then be used in conjunction with other tools, such as Atlas.ti. I really think that could be a great way of combining data collecting and data analysis tools.
On the Mendeley front, as I continue to try to build my library, I am finding it a bit frustrating that so many of my older pdfs are not recognized and I'm spending a great deal of time manually inputting all the information. I also found that when importing files that have already been renamed, the author/journal/publication date information isn't always recognized either, so again, I'm spending a lot of time manually inputting information. I haven't played around much with annotating within Mendeley, although I was pleased to find that previous annotations on the files I imported were still visible. I really did not think they would be, so that was a pleasant surprise.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
This is just the beginning......
.....but I'm already having a bit of technology overload!! I'm learning about tools I've never even heard of, such as Evernote and Diigo (which I now have on both my laptop and iphone), and I'm finally being forced (in a good way!) to take a much closer look at Mendeley, which I first heard about close to a year ago. After attending the webinar yesterday and talking about it in class last night, I really wish I had jumped on the Mendeley bandwagon sooner. I'm very excited about the potential for this tool and definitely plan to work with it for one of my skill building activities.
I'm realizing more and more that as a consumer of technology, I'm going to have to become much more proactive in embracing the possibility of digital tools for my academic work and research. I am a procrastinator by nature, not because I am lazy or don't want to do something, but because I have some perfectionist tendencies and only want to do something when I know I have adequate time to "do it right". Unfortunately, this causes me to miss out on some great opportunities to learn about new ways of doing things because I'm stuck in the here and now of what absolutely must be accomplished on a daily basis. This personality trait finds me left behind when it comes to new technology, among other things, because I take this "someday when I have a little more time" mentality about playing around with various tools. And let's face it---"someday" is never going to come! So, as a professional and an academic, I am going to try to make more of an effort to just play around with tools a bit when I hear about them and see potential in them, even if it means not being able to fully devote my time to them (which is hard for a perfectionist!!).
On another note, I really enjoyed our class conversation about conducting literature reviews. I always live in dread of writing literature reviews. It's such a tedious and messy process of wading through material and narrowing that material to what is actually going to be useful and applicable. Last night's conversation didn't alleviate any of my feelings in that regard, BUT I did walk away with some insights into taking more ownership of the process. I especially like the idea of explicitly describing how I conducted my searches, where I searched, and how I decided what to include/not include. I feel like laying all of those delimitations on the table, so to speak, will give me a bit more confidence, especially in situations like proposal defense, and dissertation defense, if my methods and sources in the literature review are challenged. At least I will have reasons outlined to help me defend my actions.
I'm realizing more and more that as a consumer of technology, I'm going to have to become much more proactive in embracing the possibility of digital tools for my academic work and research. I am a procrastinator by nature, not because I am lazy or don't want to do something, but because I have some perfectionist tendencies and only want to do something when I know I have adequate time to "do it right". Unfortunately, this causes me to miss out on some great opportunities to learn about new ways of doing things because I'm stuck in the here and now of what absolutely must be accomplished on a daily basis. This personality trait finds me left behind when it comes to new technology, among other things, because I take this "someday when I have a little more time" mentality about playing around with various tools. And let's face it---"someday" is never going to come! So, as a professional and an academic, I am going to try to make more of an effort to just play around with tools a bit when I hear about them and see potential in them, even if it means not being able to fully devote my time to them (which is hard for a perfectionist!!).
On another note, I really enjoyed our class conversation about conducting literature reviews. I always live in dread of writing literature reviews. It's such a tedious and messy process of wading through material and narrowing that material to what is actually going to be useful and applicable. Last night's conversation didn't alleviate any of my feelings in that regard, BUT I did walk away with some insights into taking more ownership of the process. I especially like the idea of explicitly describing how I conducted my searches, where I searched, and how I decided what to include/not include. I feel like laying all of those delimitations on the table, so to speak, will give me a bit more confidence, especially in situations like proposal defense, and dissertation defense, if my methods and sources in the literature review are challenged. At least I will have reasons outlined to help me defend my actions.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Being a Qualitative Researcher
The purpose of this blog is to reflect on my ever-evolving thoughts around what it means to do qualitative research. Yes, it is a requirement for the digital tools class I am currently taking, but I am going to make a concentrated effort to challenge myself to take it further than that and make it the beginning of a true reflexive research journal as I move towards my dissertation.
As part of that reflective process, I can't help thinking about how much my understanding has changed in the last year and half. I entered the Intro to Qualitative Research class in the Spring semester of 2010 as a completely blank slate. I had NO IDEA what I was getting myself into, and I chuckle now when I think back to some of my early thoughts. I remember thinking what a chore transcription was and how it would be nice to have someone (or something?) do it for me, and when I first heard about Atlas.ti, I thought, ooh, it will code the data for me!
Now a year and half later and a couple more qualitative classes under my belt, I can't imagine removing myself from my data in those ways. I now see transcription as analysis and would never want anyone but myself handling that "chore." In fact, thanks to my introduction to discourse analysis, I can't even look at transcripts as text anymore, but now see the need to be listening to the original recordings and reading the transcripts simultaneously. And as for any sort of tool coding for me, I now realize that just wouldn't be qualitative research. I, as the researcher, am in control of determining those codes.
With all that said, though, I am very eager to learn about digital tools that can aid me in doing a more efficient job with the intensive, time-consuming work involved in qualitative research. I see a lot of potential in tools such as Mendeley, Atlas.ti, or Transana. I am not very tech savvy, so it will be wonderful to learn alongside others. I'm a bit anxious about some of the programs working for me. I am a die-hard Mac user, and I really hope I can make Atlas.ti work for me, so I am playing around with a program called Parallels, as I have heard others have not had as much success with Bootcamp. Any other Mac users out there with tips on this issue?
As part of that reflective process, I can't help thinking about how much my understanding has changed in the last year and half. I entered the Intro to Qualitative Research class in the Spring semester of 2010 as a completely blank slate. I had NO IDEA what I was getting myself into, and I chuckle now when I think back to some of my early thoughts. I remember thinking what a chore transcription was and how it would be nice to have someone (or something?) do it for me, and when I first heard about Atlas.ti, I thought, ooh, it will code the data for me!
Now a year and half later and a couple more qualitative classes under my belt, I can't imagine removing myself from my data in those ways. I now see transcription as analysis and would never want anyone but myself handling that "chore." In fact, thanks to my introduction to discourse analysis, I can't even look at transcripts as text anymore, but now see the need to be listening to the original recordings and reading the transcripts simultaneously. And as for any sort of tool coding for me, I now realize that just wouldn't be qualitative research. I, as the researcher, am in control of determining those codes.
With all that said, though, I am very eager to learn about digital tools that can aid me in doing a more efficient job with the intensive, time-consuming work involved in qualitative research. I see a lot of potential in tools such as Mendeley, Atlas.ti, or Transana. I am not very tech savvy, so it will be wonderful to learn alongside others. I'm a bit anxious about some of the programs working for me. I am a die-hard Mac user, and I really hope I can make Atlas.ti work for me, so I am playing around with a program called Parallels, as I have heard others have not had as much success with Bootcamp. Any other Mac users out there with tips on this issue?
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