Last webinars of the 2019-2020 season – thank you!

When we began our webinars for 2019-2020 in August last year, the intention was to build on a great track record of providing quality webinars to serve as free, accessible instructional resources via our archives for years to come. We are grateful to have been able to continue and build on that record this year, and want to say thank you to our sponsors over the past year that have helped us achieve unprecedented success and exposure of our webinars this year:

To all of the over 6,500 attendees we have seen in our webinars in 2019-2020, as well as thousands of others who have accessed our archives, we also say a heartfelt thanks. You are the reason we do what we do. Please continue to visit our archives via our YouTube channel or via the series archive sites at the following address:
https://www.ualberta.ca/international-institute-for-qualitative-methodology/webinars/index.html

Capping our 2019-2020 season are two webinars:

Tomorrow, June 3 at 9 am MDT with Bukola Salami’s “Community Based Participatory Action Research”

Visit https://www.ualberta.ca/international-institute-for-qualitative-methodology/webinars/master-class-webinar/index.html to register.

As well, join us on June 15, 2020 for an NVivo panel: Team Collaboration in the Field with Criminal Justice Researchers

Presenters:
Wilson R. Palacios, Ph.D. Associate Professor and Master’s Program Director, School of Criminology and Justice Studies, University of Massachusetts, Lowell
Amber Horning, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, School of Criminology and Justice Studies, University of Massachusetts, Lowell
Rebecca Stone, PHD, Assistant Professor, Sociology, Suffolk University, Boston
Kimberly R. Kras, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, School of Public Affairs, San Diego State University.

Fieldwork is a fluid process defined by seemingly never-ending negotiation of both the professional and personal expectations of what it takes to be an effective qualitative researcher.  The following webinar is a confessional tale by four dynamic criminal justice researchers with experience navigating collaborative qualitative research projects. These projects involve a range of participants from those who are incarcerated to hidden populations. This panel discussion will cover topics including challenges in recruiting people who use drugs for community public health surveillance projects, accessing & managing key informants and reciprocity, applied methods in criminal justice settings, and interdisciplinary collaborations for participatory research.

To register, visit https://www.ualberta.ca/international-institute-for-qualitative-methodology/webinars/qsr-webinars/index.html

Stay safe and have a wonderful summer – we’ll be back later this year with a host of new offerings.

Advertisement

Two Webinars left in May and New Master Class webinar added for June

IIQM and ATLAS.ti are very excited to be hosting Kendra Rieger and Christina West in next week’s Master Class “Creating Collaborative, Shared Research Initiatives with Colleagues: Strategies and Approaches”

Kendra Rieger is an Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing at the University of Manitoba. Her research program explores the unique features of the arts as ways of knowing and expressing in healthcare. Her research interests include arts and health initiatives, arts-based research methods, arts-based educational strategies, and systematic reviews. Her current research projects involve investigating mindfulness-based expressive arts interventions for the psychosocial care of patients with cancer, using digital storytelling as an arts-based method to understand Indigenous women’s experiences of breast cancer, and incorporating creative multimedia pedagogical strategies in nursing education. She is also conducting two systematic reviews related to these projects, including a review of digital storytelling as a method in health research. She uses qualitative and mixed methods approaches and is enthusiastic about constructivist grounded theory as a research methodology.

Christina West is an Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing at the University of Manitoba, and a member of the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba. Her research program focuses on family systems-expressive arts interventions in health. Her work is guided by constructivist grounded theory and arts-based research methodologies. She is currently conducting a multi-site constructivist grounded theory study that uses a family systems-expressive arts framework to explore child and family experiences of hematopoietic stem cell transplant. Christina is also conducting two systematic reviews, one of which focuses on  digital storytelling as a method for health research. Christina also has a passion for graduate student mentorship, and has led an innovative four -year mentorship initiative for graduate students in partnership with the International Institute of Qualitative Methodology.

Also, just added today we have Dr. Bukola Salami joining us on June 3 with “Community Based Participatory Action Research”, rescheduled from March.

Dr Bukola Salami is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Nursing, University of Alberta. Her research program focuses on policies and practices shaping migrants health. As of May 2020, she has been involved in over 40 funded research projects. She is the lead on 20 of these projects with funding from national and international agencies. She has lead research projects on African immigrant child health, immigrant child mental health, access to healthcare for immigrant children, African immigrant youth mental health, migration of nurses as live-in caregivers, experience of temporary foreign workers in Alberta, downward occupational mobility of immigrant nurses and parenting practices of African immigrants. Dr. Salami has over 50 published scholarly articles in peer reviewed journals (with another 20 under review), 2 book chapters, and 8 reports. She represents the University of Alberta on the steering committee of the Worldwide Universities Network Global Africa Group. She founded and leads an African migrant child research network of 26 scholars from 4 continent. She is involved in several community volunteer initiatives including serving as a public member on the Council of the Alberta College of Social Workers. She has a solid track record of training students.  She has trained over 30 students (as graduate supervisor or research assistant supervisor), many of whom have received awards, including the Canadian Vanier Award and the International Development Research Center Doctoral Award. Dr. Salami has received several awards for research excellence and community engagement: 100 Accomplished Black Women in Canada; Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame, Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing Emerging Nurse Researcher of the Year Award; College and Association of Registered Nurses of Alberta (CARNA) Award for Nursing Excellence; and Alberta Avenue Edmonton Top 40 under 40.

We look forward to hearing from these dynamic researchers, and hope you can join us on May 28 and June 3. Details and registrations of the webinars can be found here, along with registration information for next week’s webinar :
https://www.ualberta.ca/international-institute-for-qualitative-methodology/webinars/master-class-webinar/index.html

Also a reminder that we have “Publishing Mixed Methods Research”, an IIQM/MMIRA Webinar presented by Dr. Elizabeth G. Creamer, 2018-2019 MMIRA President coming up on May 15. Details and registration for that Mixed Methods webinar can be found here:
https://www.ualberta.ca/international-institute-for-qualitative-methodology/webinars/mixed-methods-webinar/index.html

Sally Thorne and Catherine Houghton present two must see webinars

Since 2013, IIQM has been partnered with ATLAS.ti to bring free webinars on qualitative research methods to our community.

As a key founder of Interpretive Description, Dr. Sally Thornton provided an excellent primer on the method and it’s history in a webinar broadcast on April 30. The archive video and slides as well as all archived Master Class webinars can be found here:

https://www.ualberta.ca/international-institute-for-qualitative-methodology/webinars/master-class-webinar/archived-webinars.html

On Friday, May 7, “A Walk Through Thematic Synthesis” is the next webinar in this Master Class series. Presenter Catherine Houghton is a senior lecturer in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Catherine’s research interests are primarily around qualitative research methodologies, qualitative evidence synthesis and the integration of qualitative research in trials. Catherine is co-chair of QUESTS, qualitative research in trials centre and a qualitative evidence synthesis trainer for Evidence Synthesis Ireland. She has led and co-authored a number of qualitative syntheses including a recently published Cochrane rapid review  in response to COVID-19. For the webinar she will be discussing an example of thematic synthesis and the stages involved. 

Registration links can be found here for all Master Class webinars: https://www.ualberta.ca/international-institute-for-qualitative-methodology/webinars/master-class-webinar/index.html

Archive video now available – Mixed Methods in Spanish

We had outstanding success of our first Spanish-language webinar, with 1594 registrants.  The video of this webinar is now available on our free, publicly available youtube channel as below, along with all of the other webinars provided in collaboration with our three sponsors — Mixed Methods International Research Association, ATLAS.ti, and QSR.  The instructors who have provided these webinars are world-class scholars and hence the webinars constitute a great resource for those who teach qualitative and mixed methods research methods.

Find our YouTube Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCexSuWcPpxhZdLO2T7FC7Vw?view_as=subscriber

Or at our archive, including PDFs of presentations
https://www.ualberta.ca/international-institute-for-qualitative-methodology/webinars/mixed-methods-webinar/archived-webinars.html:

For upcoming webinars in any of our ongoing Webinar series, check out our QVENTS calendar in the tabs above, or here: https://iiqm.wordpress.com/qualitative-events/

Upcoming IIQM/MMIRA Webinar: Publishing Mixed Methods Research

Presenter: Dr. Elizabeth G. Creamer, 2018-2019 MMIRA President

Friday, May 15, 2020 11 AM EDT, 9 AM MDT

This webinar challenges the idea that it is difficult to publish mixed methods research. It provides a practical list of strategies to identify journals that are receptive to mixed methods. It also offers writing tips about crafting a manuscript that is transparent about its approach, attuned to a cross-disciplinary audience, and alert to the difference between submitting to a content- and methodologically oriented audience.

The webinar will be interactive: you will be able to ask questions via the chat that will be read by our IIQM host at the mid-way point and after the presentation. Any questions outstanding will be addressed by PDF that will posted on the IIQM archive site along with video of the webinar and slides.

Objectives:

1.    Provide examples of statements in the aims of a journal that signal receptivity to mixed methods research.
2.    Identify ways to be transparent about mixed methods within the word limits of most journals.
3.    List journals that routinely publish mixed methods research.
4.    Pursue the differences between writing approaches for methodological- and content -oriented journals.
5.    Describe how to build a claim for the originality or innovativeness of research.
6.    Recommend strategies for writing that are sensitive to a cross-disciplinary audience.

Click here to register: https://forms.gle/PKZ96xhVhTcP6n3fA

Welcome back to the IIQM Blog!

We hope you will return often to learn more about IIQM programs and upcoming events.

We are pleased to provide this link to the webinar recently given by PengFei Zhao, who was the winner of the 2017 IIQM Dissertation Award sponsored by ATLAS.ti.  Pengfei Zhao holds a PhD. in Inquiry Methodology from Indiana University-Bloomington, and has an interdisciplinary background in qualitative inquiry, education, and sociology. In her research, she brings together long-term empirical fieldwork and critical social-cultural theories to advance a qualitative methodology focused on intersubjectivity and social justice. In her dissertation, she combined oral history, ethnography, and archival studies to tell a forgotten story about rural Chinese youth who came of age in China during the massive social changes associated with the post-Mao transition. Her work is the first book-length study of the experiences of rural youth during and immediately after the Cultural Revolution. Based on her dissertation, she is completing a book manuscript entitled Changing Fate: The Cultural Revolution’s Rural Youth in Transition to Post-Mao China.

To view this webinar, click here: https://www.ualberta.ca/international-institute-for-qualitative-methodology/webinars/dissertation-award-winner-webinars/dissertation-award-webinars.html

Pengfei Zhao, 2017 Dissertation Award Winner

For other archived webinars, please visit the archive tabs under each of our categories at the following site: https://www.ualberta.ca/international-institute-for-qualitative-methodology/webinars/index.html

Participatory video: Taking a no-editing- required approach

Participatory Video is sometimes seen as a daunting approach by those who have not worked in the areas of film, video and digital media. However, with the ubiquity of cellphones and other low cost technologies, along with approaches that place the emphasis on group processes such as storyboarding and what is termed an N-E-R [no editing required] approach, the technical aspects of PV are quite straightforward. In the webinar we will emphasize this, but also attend to critical issues related to ethics, ownership and power.

Bios

Claudia Mitchell is a James McGill Professor in the Faculty of Education, McGill University.  She has written extensively in the area of participatory visual methodologies, and has authored or co-edited numerous publications in the area of  visual research based on her research on gender, HIV and AIDS and teacher identity in Canada, South Africa, Ethiopia and Kenya. Her publications including theHandbook on Participatory Video, Doing Visual Research,  Drawing as Visual Methodology, and Putting People in the Picture: Visual Methodologies for Social Change.

Katie MacEntee is near to completing her doctoral thesis at McGill University. Her research focuses on the integration of participatory visual methods with HIV and AIDS education in South Africa. This has included conducting various research interventions with young people, pre-service and in-service teachers in rural KwaZulu Natal using digital storytelling, photovoice, and cellphilms. Katie also has interests on gender and agricultural training and development in Ethiopia and directed the documentary film, Enset: A documentary, which explores the role of women in agricultural development in rural Ethiopia.  Her co-edited volume, What’s a cellphilm? Integrating mobile phone technology into participatory arts-based research and activism will be published by Sense in the Spring of 2016. 

Digital tools for qualitative research: A world of possibilities

I am looking forward to exploring the intersection of digital tools and qualitative research with you as part of the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology Master Class Webinar Series on February 11, 2016.

Technology, ever marching forward, has changed what it means not only to be human, but to engage in qualitative research more broadly. Whether described as “digital natives” or “Millennials”, researchers today need to know how to harness the power of their mobile devices, cloud computing and social media culture in their inquiries.

While most researchers have at least heard of qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) packages such as ATLAS.ti, NVivo and MAXQDA – tools that were developed by qualitative researchers, for qualitative researchers to help visualize and analyze data in powerful ways – fewer think about how digital tools are impacting every phase of the research process. From connecting with collaborators to reviewing the literature to generating data to representing findings, digital tools are, or should be, changing our practice. Blogs and social media, for example, can be used to share research updates with stakeholders and the participants themselves. Cloud-based note-taking devices, such as Evernote, can be used on smartphones to capture images, audio and video segments in the field and then synchronize them for analysis on more powerful desktop computers. Literature reviews no longer need to involve sifting through and highlighting piles of papers alone in a dark room. Instead, PDFs of articles can be stored in Dropbox, uploaded to an iPad and annotated with an app such as GoodReader, shared with collaborators on Mendeley, and synthesized using your favorite QDAS program. Interview transcripts, dry relics devoid of the emotion with which the words were spoken, can be given new life with programs such as Inqscribe which, with one click on a line of the transcript, re-plays the recorded conversation.

For those of us who came of age before personal computers and the Internet were even invented, these developments might be overwhelming. But, as inquirers into social life, and educators of the next generation of scholars, we can hardly afford to ignore them. The communities that we work with certainly aren’t.

I have been fortunate in the past couple of years to connect with like-minded folks to co-author a text on this topic, Digital Tools for Qualitative Research (link to: https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/digital-tools-for-qualitative-research/book239271), published by Sage, as well as create a special interest group as part of the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. For more information on digital tools, check out our Facebook page (link to: https://www.facebook.com/DigitalToolsforQualitativeResearch/) or follow us on Twitter at Digital_Qual.

Trena M. Paulus, Ph.D.
Professor, Qualitative Research Methods
University of Georgia

Philosophical positioning in grounded theory: Striking the balance

Hello and welcome to this introductory blog for the webinar ‘Philosophical positioning in grounded theory: Striking the balance’.

We are looking forward to discussing with you concepts relating to philosophical positioning of the researcher. In preparation for this webinar, we are posing the following questions. Philosophical concepts can be complex and so we encourage you to post your responses to these questions to promote discussion and enhance understanding from different perspectives. Remember – there are no right or wrong answers!

1. What is philosophy? Ontology? Epistemology?
2. How do you define reality? How do you gain knowledge of the world?
3. What is theoretical sensitivity? How do you get it? Once you have it, what do you do with it?

We look forward to meeting you at the webinar.

Critical realism and realist evaluation: Fashion, fad and better futures

It’s great to suddenly be in fashion. For years, having been judged as niche, obscure or variously a bit of an oddball, suddenly everyone seems to want to come to the realist party.

Approaches, notably the Medical Research Council framework for Complex Interventions (Craig et al 2008), that invoke key realist concepts – including mechanisms and context – have never been more popular, frequently cited and used. Quality assurance frameworks now exist to help us accord with realist principles and practices when doing reviews (Wong et al 2013). Around a quarter of the academics I know now speak of wanting or doing forms of realist evaluation. Those of us who have, for years, toiled in relative realist obscurity now find ourselves surrounded by old colleagues making new chatter about “Pawson & Tilley”, “mechanisms” and “what works for whom, when and why.”

We should be pleased. Critical realism may not have come to the mainstream of health services research, but the mainstream has come to this realism.

Much of this makes sense. As someone who has been engaged in realist-driven work, including realist evaluation, since 2000, I truly know the heady excitement of not only thinking of interventions differently, but also of asking different and new questions on a fundamentally different ontological basis (Clark et al 2010). Questions that were once the most sensible and pressing (“Does this intervention work?”) are suddenly rendered laughably simplistic and foolish (Clark et al 2012a). Whole new doors of inquiry open to understand and explain intractable old problems in promising new ways (Clark et al 2012b). Our party indeed has an alternative vibe. It promises much to those looking in.

Yet, this does not always sit well. Is realism ready for the scrutiny that this new popularity brings? Why did some who so readily come to realism now, dismiss so much in the past? I guess that’s progress – but do you fully understand what you are getting into?

Hopefully this webinar will help. In the meantime, and for the future, for all party go-ers, I make the following suggestions:

Get deep

Seasoned realists identify with the enthusiasm of the newly acquainted realist. We have been there too – we get it. We think it’s good. But also, it’s only just the start. Don’t think reading parts of ‘Realistic Evaluation’ (Pawson & Tilley 1997) will suffice? Realist evaluation is not about method but ontology (Porter 2015).  Read Bhaskar’s earlier philosophical works, or the great concise overview from Collier (1994). Become familiar with key arguments relating to critical realist epistemology; the mind dependence and mind independence of our worlds. You won’t regret it, and will understand far more the potential of realism if you do.

Get specific

There’s more to realism than mentions of methods of mechanisms, context and “what works for whom, when and why.” Yes, that is neat and helpful – but can also be vague and messy, particularly when you are working with all-too-real quantitative and qualitative data. Too much supposed ‘realist-driven’ research includes only the most superficial of realist conceptions or ignores fundamentally central facets, notably context (Marchal et al 2012). Make sure you include all concepts necessary to the realist project in your work, define these clearly (e.g. “what are mechanisms?), and be transparent and consistent regarding how and when you will infer them from data.

Get critical

It’s easy to be caught up with new and beguiling waves. Yet, don’t merely follow the realist fashion – seek to shape its future too. Rather than ignoring the challenges of using realism in real research (Marchal et al 2012), contribute to the all-too-few published examples of realist work. Describe the unique and distinctive methodological challenges in doing this challenging work. Be part of the emerging critical scholarship that seeks to improve the use and application of critical realism and realist evaluation (Porter 2015).

Enjoy yourself and this webinar…this party is just starting. You are part of it. Who know’s where it will go?

Alex Clark PhD FCAHS
Professor & Associate Dean (Research)
University of Alberta, Canada
Co-Editor International Journal of Qualitative Methodology
@alexclark1944
alex.clark@ualberta.ca

References

Clark, A.M., Redfern, J., Thirsk, L, Neubeck, L., & Briffa, T. (2012a). What football can teach us about researching complex interventions. British Medical Journal, 345(e8316).

Clark, A.M., & Thompson, D.R. (2012b). Heart failure disease management programmes: a new paradigm for research. Heart, 302572.

Clark, A. M., & Thompson, D. R. (2010). What type of heart failure program is best? Wrong question, wrong assumption. European Journal of Heart Failure, 12, 1271-1273.

Collier, A. (1994). Critical Realism: An introduction to Roy Bhaskar’s Philosophy. London: Verso.

Craig, C., Dieppe, P., Macintyre, S., Michie, S., Nazareth, I., & Petticrew, M. (2008). Developing and evaluating complex interventions: new guidance. London: Medical Research Council.

Marchal, B., van Belle, S., van Olmen, J., Hoerée, T., & Kegels, G. (2012). Is realist evaluation keeping its promise? A review of published empirical studies in the field of health systems research. Evaluation, 18(2), 192-212

Pawson, R., Tilley N. (1997). Realistic Evaluation. Sage, London.

Porter, S. (2015) The uncritical realism of realist evaluation. Evaluation. 21: 65-82.

Wong, G., Greenhalgh, T., Westhorp, G., & Pawson, R. (2013). RAMESES publication standards: realist syntheses. BMC Medicine, 11, 21.