Syllabus

DATE TOPIC READINGS (please read before class) SLIDES
Thu 8/26/10 What is Qualitative Research? intro
Tue 8/31/10 Components of Research Design - Becker, Epistemology of Qualitative Research (handed out in class, and available here)
- Haraway, Situated Knowledges [CR]

Optional:
- Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, Appendix 		research design
Thu 9/2/10 Sampling and Corpus Construction - Lofland and Lofland, Chap. 1-3
- Becker, 'Sampling' from Tricks of the Trade [CR]
- Bauer and Aarts, 'Corpus Construction' [CR] 		corpus construction
Tue 9/7/10, Thu 9/9/10 Observation, Participation, and Ethnography For Tuesday:
- The UC Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects the Belmont Report
- Lofland and Lofland, on logging data

For Thursday:
- Clifford, 'On Ethnographic Authority' [CR]
- Geertz, 'Thick Description' [CR]
- Rosaldo, 'Subjectivity in Social Analysis' [CR] 		Questions on Readings

participant-observation

ethnography
Tue 9/14/10 Discussion of Observation Exercise Slides
Thu 9/16/10 Locating Fieldwork: Multi-Sitedness and Virtuality in Ethnographic Research - Marcus, 'Ethnography in/of the World System' [CR]
- Burrell, 'The Fieldsite as a Network' [CR]
- WRITING EXAMPLE: Boellstorff, Selections from Coming of Age in Second Life [CR] 		multi-sited and virtual ethnography
Tue 9/21/10 Discussion of Observation Exercise
Thu 9/23/10 Analysis Practices - Coding and Generating Themes - Charmaz, 'Invitation to Grounded Theory' and 'Coding in Grounded Theory Practice' [CR]
- Lofland and Lofland, chap. 9		 grounded theory
Tue 9/28/10 Analysis Workshop 1 [come prepared with your note cards]
Thu 9/30/10 After Analysis: Writing Up Based on Participant-Observation Work - WRITING EXAMPLE: Spitulnik, Zambian Radio Culture[CR]
- WRITING EXAMPLE: Hutchins and Klausen, Distributed Cognition in an Airline Cockpit [CR]
Tue 10/5/10 Analysis Workshop 2 [come prepared with your note cards]
Thu 10/7/10 Interviewing 1 - Introduction
[Assignment 1 Due]		 - Suchman and Jordan, 'Interactional Troubles in Face-to-Face Survey Interviews [CR]
- Kvale, 'The Interview as Conversation' [CR]
- Lofland and Lofland, on designing interview guides (Chapter 5, section III)
 interviewing
Tue 10/12/10 Workshop - Critique of Interview Techniques writing interview guides
Thu 10/14/10 Projective Interviewing - Harper, 'Talking about Pictures: a case for photo elicitation' [CR]
- Young and Barrett, 'Adapting Visual Methods: action research with Kampala street children' [CR]
- Gaver, 'Cultural Probes' [CR]		 interviewing
Tue 10/19/10 Focus Groups and Expert/Elite Interviews Required:
- Morgan and Krueger, 'When to Use Focus Groups and Why' [CR]
- Thomas 1995, 'Interviewing Important People in Big Companies' [CR]

Optional:
- Albreecht et al., 'Understanding Communication Processes in Focus Groups'
- Odendahl and Shaw, 2002, 'Interviewing Elites' in the password-protected section.
New Date!
Thu 10/21/10		 The Role of Document Analysis in Field-Based Research - Garfinkel, 'Good Organizational Reasons for 'Bad' Clinical Records [CR]
- WRITING EXAMPLE: Heath and Luff, 'Documents and Professional Practice' [CR]
 document and text analysis
New Date!
Tue 10/26/10		 Discussion of Interviews
Thu 10/28/10 Guest Speakers: Janaki Srinivasan, PhD student, School of Information and Melissa Ho, PhD student, School of Information

Topic: "Interacting with the Bureacracy"
Tue 11/2/10 The Role of Image Analysis in Field-Based Research - Rose, Content Analysis [CR]
- Rose, Semiology [CR]		 image analysis
Thu 11/4/10 Behind the Scenes, grounded theory analysis from beginning to end

Operationalizing Theory in Technology Studies
 - WRITING EXAMPLE: Burrell, 'Evaluating Shared Access: mobile phones in rural Uganda'

- Grint and Woolgar [CR]
- Cowan, [CR] 		Behind the Scenes
New Date!
Tue 11/9/10		 Guest Speaker: Joseph Kaye, Senior Research Scientist and Ethnographer, Nokia Research-Palo Alto
[Assignment 2 Due]
Thu 11/11/10 Veteran's Day - NO CLASS
Tue 11/16/10 Evaluating Qualitative Research - Bauer and Gaskell, 'Towards Public Accountability: beyond sampling, reliability, and validity' [CR]
- Kvale, 'The Social Construction of Validity' [CR]
- Jordan and Dalal, 'Persuasive Encounters: Ethnography in the Corporation' [CR]		 evaluation
New Date!
Thu 11/18/10		 Ethics
 - The UC Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects the Belmont Report
- Thorne, "You Still Takin' Notes?" Fieldwork and problems of informed consent." [CR]
- de Laine, 'Ethical Dilemmas' [CR]		 ethics
Tue 11/23/10 Project Discussion and Thoughts on Writing Up - Lofland and Lofland, on writing up
- Kvale, 'improving research reports' [here]		 analysis pointers
Thu 11/25/10 Thanksgiving - NO CLASS
Tue 11/30/10 Ethnographic Research for Technology Design - Dourish, 'Implications for Design' [here]
- optional: Blomberg et al., 'An Ethnographic Approach to Design'
[here - 13.1 MB file]		 ethnographic research for design
Tue 12/2/10 Discussion and Exercise
 - (reread) Becker, Epistemology of Qualitative Research. Available here.