The Epistemological and Ethical Challenges of Archiving and Sharing Qualitative Data

2018 ◽  
Vol 63 (6) ◽  
pp. 699-721 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelley Feldman ◽  
Linda Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Public Access ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Context Specificity ◽  
Ethical Problems ◽  
Use Of Data ◽  
Qualitative Evidence ◽  
Data Production

This article identifies the epistemological and ethical problems that accompany the growing mandate to archive and share qualitative data. We call attention to the potential consequences of “shared access” for data that is premised on meaning-making and interpretation embedded in interactions between the researcher and those they study. We argue that context specificity and the co-constitutive processes of qualitative data production preclude the separation of “evidence” from the relations of its production that is required when evidence is archived for future use by others. Furthermore, we identify the ethical challenges that attend to ensuring the rights and confidentiality of those we engage and the particular concerns such engagement entails for vulnerable populations when securing informed consent for the use of data by future unknown researchers. Finally, we ask whether the claim for greater efficiencies and accountability of public access are appropriate for the co-constitutive character of qualitative evidence and what these demands portend for knowledge production. We conclude by calling for the development of protocols to guide researchers who are sensitive to these issues but must respond to calls to archive and share their data.

scholarly journals Complex Qualitative Data Analysis: Lessons Learned From the Experiences With the Qualitative Analysis Guide of Leuven

2020 ◽  
pp. 104973232096698
Author(s):  
Bernadette Dierckx de Casterlé ◽  
Kristel De Vliegher ◽  
Chris Gastmans ◽  
Evelyne Mertens
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Critical Factors ◽  
Use Of Data ◽  
Qualitative Evidence ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Oriented Approach

In this article, the authors discuss critical factors to be considered when analyzing complex qualitative data. The experiences with the use of the Qualitative Analysis Guide of Leuven (QUAGOL) to analyze qualitative data were used as starting point to develop a deeper understanding of what a good qualitative analysis requires and how to deal with its challenges in less optimal research contexts. A critical analysis and discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the guide in a broader methodological context supports its potential for use in developing strong qualitative evidence. The analysis highlighted three key strategies of undertaking the analysis of complex narrative data: the case-oriented approach, the method of constant comparison, and the use of data-generated codes. Having a good understanding of the underlying principles and how to implement them are key to conducting methodologically sound analyses.

Social organization in the Orcadian Neolithic: identification of elite domestic structures and settlements through analysis of excavation data

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
David MacInnes
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Published Data ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
Late Neolithic ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Qualitative Evidence ◽  
Methods Of Analysis ◽  
The Subject

The nature of social organization during the Orcadian Neolithic has been the subject of discussion for several decades with much of the debate focused on answering an insightful question posed by Colin Renfrew in 1979. He asked, how was society organised to construct the larger, innovative monuments of the Orcadian Late Neolithic that were centralised in the western Mainland? There are many possible answers to the question but little evidence pointing to a probable solution, so the discussion has continued for many years. This paper takes a new approach by asking a different question: what can be learned about Orcadian Neolithic social organization from the quantitative and qualitative evidence accumulating from excavated domestic structures and settlements?In an attempt to answer this question, quantitative and qualitative data about domestic structures and about settlements was collected from published reports on 15 Orcadian Neolithic excavated sites. The published data is less extensive than hoped but is sufficient to support a provisional answer: a social hierarchy probably did not develop in the Early Neolithic but almost certainly did in the Late Neolithic, for which the data is more comprehensive.While this is only one approach of several possible ways to consider the question, it is by exploring different methods of analysis and comparing them that an understanding of the Orcadian Neolithic can move forward.

Capturing life histories about movements into and out of poverty: A road with pits and bumps

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tineke Schiettecat ◽  
Griet Roets ◽  
Michel Vandenbroeck
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Dynamic Interaction ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Social Work Interventions ◽  
A Current

In order to take into account the power imbalances typically implicated in knowledge production about the complex social problem of poverty, social work researchers have increasingly acknowledged the importance of grasping the viewpoints and perspectives of people in poverty situations. In this contribution, we accordingly reflect on a current life history research project that retrospectively explores the life stories of parents with young children with regard to their mobility into and out of poverty that is examined in dynamic interaction with social work interventions. In this article, we discuss methodological and ethical challenges and complexities that we unexpectedly encountered in our research venture, as illustrated by three exemplary vignettes. These examples demonstrate issues of power between the researcher and the research participants that are not only inevitable, but also generate dilemmas, struggles and ambiguities that often remain underexposed in the ways scientific insights are reported. Rather than disguising these pits and bumps, we argue for a reflexive research stance which makes these issues of power in knowledge production susceptible to contemplation and scrutiny.

An Essay on Evidence and Authority

2019 ◽  
pp. 213-224
Author(s):  
Wesley C. Hogan
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Public Access ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Entire Nation

Movements themselves are important sites of knowledge production. They have the potential to illuminate how young people, often under 25 years old, shape the entire nation for the better. Their history is our public patrimony, one that should not be held hostage by bureaucratic restrictions that universities and archives often follow. Public access to creativity and memory, not reserved or made secret, has the potential to open up gatekeeping so that scholars and archivists are not the center of reference for knowledge production. This essay examines topics of extractive versus collaborative scholarship, oral history methodologies, and documentary epistemologies to address two questions: Who gets to tell the story? What counts as historical evidence? These are deceptively simple questions and so vital to knowledge production that this essay at the end of the book addresses them more thoroughly. Such inquiries lead to thornier issues underneath: who gets to establish what does and does not “count” as documentary evidence on freedom movements, and thus what is left in the archive for future generations of civic actors to build on?

Traces and Shadows

2021 ◽  
pp. 111-120
Author(s):  
Rob Kitchin
Keyword(s):  
World Wide ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Continuous Data ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Store Loyalty ◽  
Smart Systems ◽  
Digital World ◽  
Use Of Data ◽  
The World ◽  
Data Production

This chapter charts the transition from an analogue to a digital world, its effect on data footprints and shadows, and the growth of data brokers and government use of data. The World Wide Web (WWW) started to change things by making information accessible across the Internet through an easy-to-use, intuitive graphical interface. Using the Internet, people started leaving digital traces. In their everyday lives, their digital shadows were also growing through the use of debit, credit, and store loyalty cards, and captured in government databases which were increasingly digital. Running tandem to the creation of digital lifestyles was the datafication of everyday life. This was evident in a paper which examined the various ways in which digital data was being generated and tracked using indexical codes about people, but also objects, transactions, interactions, and territories, and how these data were being used to govern people and manage organizations. Today, people live in a world of continuous data production, since smart systems generate data in real time.

scholarly journals From Academia to Start-up: A Case Study with Implications for Engineering Education

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Bill Williams ◽  
José Figueiredo
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Role Play ◽  
Engineering Practice ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Mode 2

This study uses the characterization of contrasting modes of knowledge production to follow the activity of a group of engineers who migrated from an academic environment to a successful start-up firm. Qualitative data from interviews of two key members of the team were used to characterize their activities in the two settings. The authors relate the engineering practice described in the interviews to the Gibbons Mode 1 and Mode 2 knowledge production phases and note the importance of a phase change in the transition between the two modes. The resultant case-study contributes material for use in role-play activity with engineering students to help develop interdisciplinary skills. The study also presents a critical analysis to evaluate the merits of the Mode 1 and Mode 2 framework for analysis of engineering practice at the level of the firm.

Ethical challenges facing farm managers

2018 ◽  
pp. 61-76
Author(s):  
Harvey S. James
Keyword(s):  
Production Costs ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Financial Health ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Ethical Awareness ◽  
Potential Harm ◽  
Ethical Problems ◽  
Harm To Others ◽  
Farmer Ethics ◽  
Government Rules

Although an extensive literature examines how moral character and environmental context relates to ethical awareness, judgment and behaviour, very little work focuses on the ethics of farmers. Understanding farmer ethics is important because farmers face unique pressures and constraints that affect their ethical judgments and behaviours. Research shows that there are different types of ethical problems that farmers have to deal with, such as actions that cause harm or potential harm to others, the environment and non-human animals, and actions that are defined as wrong by law, contract or agreement. Important pressures and constraints affecting farmer ethics include increasing production costs and land prices, rising debt and worsening financial health, more stringent government rules and regulations, and reduced options for producing and marketing agricultural products.

Mixing Methods: A Bayesian Approach

2015 ◽  
Vol 109 (4) ◽  
pp. 653-673 ◽  
Author(s):  
MACARTAN HUMPHREYS ◽  
ALAN M. JACOBS
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Causal Process ◽  
Causal Inferences ◽  
Prior Beliefs ◽  
Joint Learning ◽  
Multimethod Research ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Qualitative Evidence ◽  
Process Level

We develop an approach to multimethod research that generates joint learning from quantitative and qualitative evidence. The framework—Bayesian integration of quantitative and qualitative data (BIQQ)—allows researchers to draw causal inferences from combinations of correlational (cross-case) and process-level (within-case) observations, given prior beliefs about causal effects, assignment propensities, and the informativeness of different kinds of causal-process evidence. In addition to posterior estimates of causal effects, the framework yields updating on the analytical assumptions underlying correlational analysis and process tracing. We illustrate the BIQQ approach with two applications to substantive issues that have received significant quantitative and qualitative treatment in political science: the origins of electoral systems and the causes of civil war. Finally, we demonstrate how the framework can yield guidance on multimethod research design, presenting results on the optimal combinations of qualitative and quantitative data collection under different research conditions.

Vom lokalen Bestand zur weltweiten Vernetzung. Mittelalterliche Handschriften im Netz

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 188-204
Author(s):  
Torsten Schaßan ◽  
Timo Steyer
Keyword(s):  
Digital Environment ◽  
Medieval Manuscripts ◽  
Semantic Enrichment ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Use Of Data ◽  
Data Production ◽  
The Web

Abstract Using the example of the Herzog August Bibliothek, the paper shows how (medieval) manuscripts are currently catalogued in the digital environment and how the data is published and shared with other relevant communities. The paper focuses both on the process of data production as well as the exchange and re-use of data. In particular, the paper will discuss the challenges of distributing the data into non-specialised databases. Two elements are crucial here: firstly, the standardised modelling of manuscript-related information, including semantic enrichment. Secondly, the challenge of providing as much data as possible on the Web and offering interfaces to access the data.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document