Navigating Ethical Quandaries with Close Personal Contacts in Qualitative Research

There are a variety of ethical situations that qualitative communication researchers must navigate. This point is especially true when the research involves close personal contacts, such as friends and family members. In order to problematize the ethical frameworks that guide qualitative inquiry and illuminate the complexities of relational ethics, we—the authors—reflected on our past experiences engaging in research with close personal contacts. Specifically, we took a collaborative autoethnographic approach that involved sharing personal stories, drafting autoethnographic narratives, and engaging in individual and collaborative sensemaking. In doing so, we highlight the following three quandaries specific to conducting research with close personal contacts: (1) challenging/affirming identity anchors, (2) challenging/affirming power relations, and (3) challenging/affirming ownership. We explicate each of these themes using autoethnographic vignettes and conclude by offering five lessons learned of relational ethics, which are organized using the phases of qualitative research: conceptualization and design, data collection, and representation.

StoryFacets: A design study on storytelling with visualizations for collaborative data analysis

Tracking the sensemaking process is a well-established practice in many data analysis tools, and many visualization tools facilitate overview and recall during and after exploration. However, the resulting communication materials such as presentations or infographics often omit provenance information for the sake of simplicity. This unfortunately limits later viewers from engaging in further collaborative sensemaking or discussion about the analysis. We present a design study where we introduced visual provenance and analytics to urban transportation planning. Maintaining the provenance of all analyses was critical to support collaborative sensemaking among the many and diverse stakeholders. Our system, STORYFACETS, exposes several different views of the same analysis session, each view designed for a specific audience: (1) the trail view provides a data flow canvas that supports in-depth exploration + provenance (expert analysts); (2) the dashboard view organizes visualizations and other content into a space-filling layout to support high-level analysis (managers); and (3) the slideshow view supports linear storytelling via interactive step-by-step presentations (laypersons). Views are linked so that when one is changed, provenance is maintained. Visual provenance is available on demand to support iterative sensemaking for any team member.

We need to talk about dialogue: Accomplishing collaborative sensemaking in homicide investigations

In this paper, we explore the importance of dialogue for collaborative sensemaking during homicide investigation, focusing upon interactions between detectives, forensic scientists and other experts involved in managing and undertaking forensic work. Drawing on data from a 4-year ethnographic study of British homicide investigations, we provide insights from criminal justice actors about both the value of, and barriers to, inter-professional and cross-disciplinary dialogue. We explore how and why organisational arrangements may limit opportunities for forensic scientists and other experts to engage collaboratively with detectives and prosecutors. We conclude by considering ways to enhance collaborative sensemaking during the investigation of homicide.

Generating insights into what matters to emergency nurses and family members when caring for older people with dementia: how to use generativity as a principle of appreciative inquiry

Background: Participatory research approaches aim to hear the voices of those who give and receive services in order to co-create insights into future improvements in care experiences. Appreciative inquiry is one such participatory approach. Its purpose is generativity, which is defined as helping people to see old things in new ways. Generativity shows much potential but there is little research describing the ‘how to’ of doing this in practice. This article describes the how to of generativity in the dream phase of an appreciative inquiry study. Aim: The aim was to share and co-analyse, with emergency nurses, family member experiences of being in an emergency department with an older person with dementia. Methods: Three critical methods were used to generate data – storytelling, appreciative framing and dialogue, and collaborative sensemaking. The principles of appreciative inquiry provided a framework for data analysis. Findings: In using appreciative inquiry methodology, emergency nurses were able to envision a preferred future based on what people value and what matters in approaches to care. Generativity enabled them to visualise what it would take to bring this new way of nursing to reality. Conclusion: Creative methods, when maximised, can be powerful tools in reframing narratives and helping practitioners to transcend the rut that perpetuates the status quo and obscures hope of future improvement. Generation of new insights and perspectives is critical to identifying and developing strategies for practice enhancement. Implications for practice: Generativity is an underexplored concept yet it has the potential to help practitioners to see things with new eyes Patient and/or family member stories play an important part in practice development, to determine what matters and is valued in enhancing experiences of care Finding ways to integrate the relational aspects of care provides a mechanism for nurses to articulate their skills and contribution in highly technical and task-orientated clinical environments

Using Design Thinking to improve Strategic Decisions during Collaborative Sensemaking

Human cognitive limitations affect strategic decision-making. One of such effects is emergence of cognitive biases, deviations from rationality in judgment. These biases can negatively influence an organisation's capability to capture and utilize new ideas, thus inhibiting innovation. Researchers have documented different strategies for mitigating cognitive biases – and many of them overlap with the ones emphasised in design thinking. However, research so far does not offer any specific “recipes” for mitigation of cognitive biases. This paper links together research on challenges of strategic decision-making, cognitive biases and design thinking. The paper investigates the effects of applying design-thinking tool in collaborative sensemaking stage, within a small business team, aiming to mitigate confirmation bias. The study indicated that newly introduced design-thinking tools did not have the expected positive influence on decision-making. The research contributes to the field by developing a new framework on how to identify and mitigate confirmation bias in strategic decision-making.