Hierarchies of Place, Hierarchies of Empowerment: Geographies of Talk about Postsocialist Change in Uzbekistan

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgan Y. Liu
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
Ground Level ◽  
Soviet Rule ◽  
Focus Group Interviews ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Socioeconomic Changes ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Group Interviews

This study concerns how people throughout Uzbekistan were making sense of the tremendous socioeconomic changes taking place in their Central Asian republic during their first decade of independence from Soviet rule in 1991. This paper analyzes talk about the daily struggles of Uzbekistanis in order to arrive at ground-level insight about the kind of postsocialist state Uzbekistan was becoming in the 1990s, and how its citizens envisioned it. The extent to which people felt empowered to understand and potentially act on social issues, I argue, depended on geographical location. Looking at a series of focus group interviews conducted in three Uzbekistani cities in 1996, I identify spatial inflections in talk about social problems. The results of the study allow us to think about the Uzbekistani state's changing bases of legitimation since the late 1990s.

scholarly journals KAVA CONSUMPTION AND FAMILY VIOLENCE

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 303-310
Author(s):  
Malakai Ofanoa ◽  
Samuela Ofanoa
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
Family Violence ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
Family Income ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Focus Group Interviews ◽  
Convenience Sample ◽  
The Family ◽  
Group Interviews

Kava drinking has become an intrinsic part of Tongan culture. It involves regular participation and high consumption of kava drink in kava clubs and other kava venues in Tonga and New Zealand. However, mounting evidence has indicated that the reasons for, and perceived effects of kava consumption are yet to be fully understood (Nosa and Ofanoa, 2009, Ofanoa, 2010). A qualitative study to explore the issues related with Tongan men abusing kava consumption was conducted in Tonga and Auckland, New Zealand (Ofanoa, 2010).   The study used culturally safe, Pacific qualitative research approaches of Kakala (Thaman, 1997) and Talanga (Ofanoa, 2010) to obtain information related to the issue. There were focus group interviews conducted with a convenience sample of 104 Tongan men across 5 kava clubs each in Tonga and Auckland, New Zealand. The analysis of the focus group interviews in both places involved a general inductive approach.   The findings reported that kava use is socially sanctioned and easily accessible in both countries.  Further, kava presents concerning health and social issues. It increases poor family relationships that leads to family violence. Usually the family violence happens after kava sessions. The Kava men sleep long hours; they spent a lot of their family income in Kava sessions and makes many excuses. Moreover, kava men are usually very lazy to work, and slow to recover in the next day. Hence, the poor wives usually shoulder everything in the family. In many instances, some of them behave violently and aggressively.  When such practices happen consistently, family violence starts, and many husbands physically abuse their wives. Evidently, one end up in the hospital with serious injuries or both husband and wife appear in court. The study concludes that Tongan men in both countries cannot continue to hide the truth that their abusive consumption of kava contributes to family violence. Hence, there is a tremendous need for urgent actions to prevent and minimize this practice. Further, since addressing the issue is sensitive and complex, a call for multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary effort with the Tongan society in both Tonga and New Zealand is required to minimize the risks and optimize the benefits of kava use.

scholarly journals Making sense of global warming: Norwegians appropriating knowledge of anthropogenic climate change

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 778-795 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianne Ryghaug ◽  
Knut Holtan Sørensen ◽  
Robert Næss
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Warming ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Focus Group Interviews ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Group Interviews

This paper studies how people reason about and make sense of human-made global warming, based on ten focus group interviews with Norwegian citizens. It shows that the domestication of climate science knowledge was shaped through five sense-making devices: news media coverage of changes in nature, particularly the weather, the coverage of presumed experts’ disagreement about global warming, critical attitudes towards media, observations of political inaction, and considerations with respect to everyday life. These sense-making devices allowed for ambiguous outcomes, and the paper argues four main outcomes with respect to the domestication processes: the acceptors, the tempered acceptors, the uncertain and the sceptics.

scholarly journals Clarifying researchers’ subjectivity in qualitative addiction research

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-87
Author(s):  
Michael Egerer ◽  
Matilda Hellman
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Validity And Reliability ◽  
Focus Group Interviews ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Qualitative Work ◽  
Group Interviews ◽  
Verification Techniques ◽  
Initial Impressions

Aims: In addiction research, non-constructionist traditions often question the validity and reliability of qualitative efforts. This study presents techniques that are helpful for qualitative researchers in dissecting and clarifying their subjective interpretations.Methods: We discuss three courses of action for inspecting researchers’ interpretations when analyzing focus-group interviews: (i) adapted summative content analysis, (ii) quantification of researchers’ expectations; and (iii) speaker positions. While these are well-known methodological techniques in their own rights, we demonstrate how they can be used to complement one another.Results: Quantifications are easy and expeditious verification techniques, but they demand additional investigation of speaker positions. A combination of these techniques can strengthen validity and reliability without compromising the nature of constructionist and inductive inquiries.Conclusions: The three techniques offer valuable support for the communication of qualitative work in addiction research. They allow researchers to assess and understand their own initial impressions during data collection and raw analysis. In addition, they also serve in making researchers’ subjectivity more transparent. All of this can be achieved without abandoning subjectivity, but rather making sense of it.

Management Strategy for Distributing Questionnaires and Interview Guidelines in the Research Data Collection Process

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-111
Author(s):  
Po. Abas Sunarya ◽  
George Iwan Marantika ◽  
Adam Faturahman
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Management Strategy ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
Focus Group Interviews ◽  
Good Management ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
Data Collection Process ◽  
Group Interviews

Writing can mean lowering or describing graphic symbols that describe a languageunderstood by someone. For a researcher, management of research preparation is a veryimportant step because this step greatly determines the success or failure of all researchactivities. Before a person starts with research activities, he must make a written plan commonlyreferred to as the management of research data collection. In the process of collecting researchdata, of course we can do the management of questionnaires as well as the preparation ofinterview guidelines to disseminate and obtain accurate information. With the arrangement ofplanning and conducting interviews: the ethics of conducting interviews, the advantages anddisadvantages of interviews, the formulation of interview questions, the schedule of interviews,group and focus group interviews, interviews using recording devices, and interview bias.making a questionnaire must be designed with very good management by giving to theinformation needed, in accordance with the problem and all that does not cause problems at thestage of analysis and interpretation.

scholarly journals Counter-talk as symbolic boundary drawing: Challenging legitimate cultural practices in individual and focus group interviews in the lower regions of social space

2021 ◽  
pp. 003802612110144
Author(s):  
Riie Heikkilä ◽  
Anu Katainen
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Focus Group Interviews ◽  
Moral Boundaries ◽  
Popular Classes ◽  
Group Interviews ◽  
Symbolic Boundary

In qualitative interviews, challenges such as deviations from the topic, interruptions, silences or counter-questions are inevitable. It is debatable whether the researcher should try to alleviate them or consider them as important indicators of power relations. In this methodological article, we adopt the latter view and examine the episodes of counter-talk that emerge in qualitative interviews on cultural practices among underprivileged popular classes by drawing on 49 individual and focus group interviews conducted in the highly egalitarian context of Finland. Our main aim is to demonstrate how counter-talk emerging in interview situations could be fruitfully analysed as moral boundary drawing. We identify three types of counter-talk: resisting the situation, resisting the topic, and resisting the interviewer. While the first type unites many of the typical challenges inherent to qualitative interviewing in general (silences, deviations from the topic and so forth), the second one shows that explicit taste distinctions are an important feature of counter-talk, yet the interviewees mostly discuss them as something belonging to the personal sphere. Finally, the third type reveals how the strongest counter-talk and clearest moral boundary stemmed from the interviewees’ attitudes towards the interviewer herself. We argue that counter-talk in general should be given more importance as a key element of the qualitative interview. We demonstrate that all three types of counter-talk are crucial to properly understanding the power relations and moral boundaries present in qualitative interviews and that cultural practices are a particularly good topic to tease them out.

scholarly journals We Want More Than Life-Sustaining Treatment during End-of-Life Care: Focus-Group Interviews

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (9) ◽  
pp. 4415
Author(s):  
Mirinae Kim ◽  
Minju Kim
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
End Of Life Care ◽  
Life Care ◽  
Treatment Needs ◽  
Focus Group Interviews ◽  
Care Needs ◽  
Basic Care ◽  
Life Sustaining Treatment ◽  
Group Interviews

We qualitatively investigated end-of-life care needs. Data were collected via focus-group interviews with three groups: young adults, middle-aged adults, and older adults. The key question was, “What kind of care would you like to receive at the end of life?” Interview data were transcribed and analyzed using content analysis. End-of-life care needs were classified into six categories: life-sustaining treatment needs, physical care needs, emotional care needs, environmental needs, needs for respect, and needs for preparation for death. Because the Korean culture is family-oriented and talking about death is taboo, Korean patients at the end of their life do not make decisions about life-sustaining treatment or actively prepare for death. Therefore, to provide proper end-of-life care, conversations and shared decision-making among patients and their families are crucial. Further, we must respect patients’ dignity and help them achieve a good death by understanding patients’ basic care preferences. Future research should continue examining end-of-life care needs that reflect the social and cultural context of Korea to inform instrument development.

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