Thursday, October 29, 2009
Ten crazy months!
It is remarkable that it has been so long since I posted anything to the blog. I guess it is a sign of how full my life has been over the past 10 months. Eeeek. I am not going to revisit history here, but I will say that I successfully defended my dissertation and the revisions requested by my committee are nearly finished. Not a bad place to be... :-) I have lots of stress and turmoil in my life these days and so knowing one major accomplishment has nearly been achieved is a very good thing. Yay!
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Cherish the Old and Welcome the New
It has been several months since I had the chance to come and post here. Things have been extremely busy for me in the interim, but I have been enjoying the sometimes crazy ride immensely. The last few weeks have been spent pulling together all of the various bits of information about my professional and educational experience in preparation for applying for faculty positions. For anyone who might have this road ahead of them - begin early if this is at all possible! Luckily I had a fairly solid bit of information already prepared in resume form and through the portfolio which is a continuously updated requirement as one passes through the PhD program at Drexel. It is remarkable how much time it takes to harvest all that information and plant it in a new context... of course all this is going on while holiday prep is in order, my daughter is home on holiday and I am chomping at the bit to be back at work on the dissertation. Lol! I can honestly say there is never a dull moment in my household.
The dissertation research has been progressing nicely. The transcription of the interviews are being worked on and these should be completed within the next few weeks. The data analysis is moving along as well, but I have been trying to catch up with the transcription before I move ahead. I have collected data from four individuals in each of the groups. The majority of the individuals within each group seem to share very similar behaviors,. However each of the artists speak very differently about their need and use of images. It will be fascinating to see what actually comes out of the data analysis over the course of the next few weeks. Once I have a better feel for the data I will go ahead with the remaining data collection.
Through the process of conducting the dissertation research I am discovering how much I enjoy interviewing people. (I still hate hearing the sound of my own voice, but the interviewing process itself is pure joy!) We are fascinating creatures and the individuals I am studying (architects, archaeologists, art historians and artists) are even more engaging to me because of my interests. I am so fortunate to have had the opportunity to interview and interact with such a wonderful, giving and talented group of individuals. Yay participants!
The data analysis process is going along well, although it is much more time-consuming than I would have ever thought possible. I am coding the data using NVivo which is a sort of tedious and non-intuitive process (the application, not the activity) . I sometimes feel like the app is getting in the way of the coding. It works well otherwise and I can create some wonderful graphical outputs from the data so I will stick with it. I am preparing for the first inter-coder checks and this is not without some degree of trepidation. I read a recent article about the process (Foster, A., Urquhard, C. & Turner, J. (2008.) Validating coding for a theoretical model of information behavior. Information Research, 13(4), paper 358. [Available at: http://informationR.net/ir/13-4/paper358.html]) and this didn't do much to allay my fears. As I felt would happen, these researchers found that the more detailed and nuanced codes had very low rates of co-occurrence among the coders. The more concrete and basic the codes, the higher the rates of inter-rater reliability. No surprises there! Regardless of the angst associated with the inter-coder checks, I know it is one of the best tests of my understanding of the data.
There is another paper from that same issue of IR (paper 361 by Pertiii Vakkari) that I will try to get through tonight. It discusses trends in the theory and methods of information behavior research within the field of information science. Looks like a good read that addresses the quali vs. quanti issue in research studies
The dissertation research has been progressing nicely. The transcription of the interviews are being worked on and these should be completed within the next few weeks. The data analysis is moving along as well, but I have been trying to catch up with the transcription before I move ahead. I have collected data from four individuals in each of the groups. The majority of the individuals within each group seem to share very similar behaviors,. However each of the artists speak very differently about their need and use of images. It will be fascinating to see what actually comes out of the data analysis over the course of the next few weeks. Once I have a better feel for the data I will go ahead with the remaining data collection.
Through the process of conducting the dissertation research I am discovering how much I enjoy interviewing people. (I still hate hearing the sound of my own voice, but the interviewing process itself is pure joy!) We are fascinating creatures and the individuals I am studying (architects, archaeologists, art historians and artists) are even more engaging to me because of my interests. I am so fortunate to have had the opportunity to interview and interact with such a wonderful, giving and talented group of individuals. Yay participants!
The data analysis process is going along well, although it is much more time-consuming than I would have ever thought possible. I am coding the data using NVivo which is a sort of tedious and non-intuitive process (the application, not the activity) . I sometimes feel like the app is getting in the way of the coding. It works well otherwise and I can create some wonderful graphical outputs from the data so I will stick with it. I am preparing for the first inter-coder checks and this is not without some degree of trepidation. I read a recent article about the process (Foster, A., Urquhard, C. & Turner, J. (2008.) Validating coding for a theoretical model of information behavior. Information Research, 13(4), paper 358. [Available at: http://informationR.net/ir/13-4/paper358.html]) and this didn't do much to allay my fears. As I felt would happen, these researchers found that the more detailed and nuanced codes had very low rates of co-occurrence among the coders. The more concrete and basic the codes, the higher the rates of inter-rater reliability. No surprises there! Regardless of the angst associated with the inter-coder checks, I know it is one of the best tests of my understanding of the data.
There is another paper from that same issue of IR (paper 361 by Pertiii Vakkari) that I will try to get through tonight. It discusses trends in the theory and methods of information behavior research within the field of information science. Looks like a good read that addresses the quali vs. quanti issue in research studies
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