Blogging about blogging

I started posting writing online long before I had any academic ambitions. I wrote for self-promotion, self-expression, and because I wasn’t sure what else to do with myself. I did a lot of what I would now call a reflexive and reciprocal process for research into music and related topics. As it turns out, this …

Examining the Assumptions Underpinning Interpretive Inquiry

Note-taking for Approaches to Qualitative Inquiry with Colleen Larson Willis, J.W., (2007) Foundations of Qualitative Research, Sage, chapters 5-6. Postpositivist social science research involves six steps: Find an idea to research. The idea can come from anywhere, including your experience or whatever qualitative data. Develop or select a theory. It can be a nineteenth century …

Games for learning research method overview: interviews

Note-taking for Research on Games and Simulations with Jan Plass Magnusson, C., Rassmus-Gröhn, K., Tollmar, K., and Deaner, E. Haptimap User Study. Gomoll, K. & Nicol, A. (1990). User Observation: Guidelines for Apple Developers. The Apple developer guidelines recommend incorporating user observation and feedback early and often in the software design process. Rather than receiving …

The Interpretive Turn: From Sociological Positivism to Constructivism

Note-taking for Approaches to Qualitative Inquiry with Colleen Larson Willis, J.W., (2007) Foundations of Qualitative Research, Sage, chapters 1-4. The simplest way to define the difference between quantitative and qualitative research methods is that one uses numbers and the other uses words. But in reality, qualitative researchers use stats too, and all quantitative studies contextualize their …

More salsa-dancing social science

Note-taking for Principles of Empirical Research with Catherine Voulgarides Continuing with Salsa Dancing Into The Social Sciences by Kristin Luker. See the first part of the discussion here. Canonical sociologists usually have well-bounded sets of questions, and answer them using well-bounded sets of theories and previous findings. Qualitative researchers have questions that emerge out of theoretical and …

The role of culture in interpretive inquiry

Note-taking for Approaches to Qualitative Inquiry with Colleen Larson Geertz, C. “Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture.” In The Interpretation Of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, pp. 3-30, 1973