Stop bashing methods. Help create a better world. #BMJnoQual

Originally posted at www.21stcenturyscholar.org

1.

Last year, the British Medical Journal rejected an article. Such an action does not ordinarily generate attention; editors reject articles every day. The author, however, tweeted the rejection: “Thank you for sending us your paper. We read it with interest but I am sorry to say that qualitative studies are an extremely low priority for the BMJ. Our research shows that they are not as widely accessed, downloaded or cited as other research.” The tweet produced a lively strand of responses, responses like “shocking and shameful,” “epistemological oppression,” and, “I guess nothing qualitative ever happens in a clinical setting.”

As scholars, we learn where to submit (and where not to submit) our work. I conduct qualitative research with policy implications. I know, however, if I submit an ethnographic article to Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, the editor is likely to swiftly drop-kick it back to me. Similarly, I know my quantitative-oriented friends will not be submitting to Qualitative Inquiry any time soon.

Without getting into nuances like impact factors, tenure decisions, and research standards, most qualitative researchers understand the landscape. To be honest, when I read the BMJ rejection note, I thought it was quite civil. I have received a few rejections that would make that rejection blush. I once submitted a life history on a late Friday evening. Within an hour, I received a rambling three-paragraph response from the editor, perhaps assisted by a nightcap or two, stating that anything with an N of one is neither research nor policy-relevant. Okie dokie. Thanks for the quality feedback. On to the next journal.

2.

Last week, Stephen Porter, a professor of higher education at North Carolina State, published a strongly-worded blog denouncing the #BMJnoQual incident, in particular, and qualitative research, in general.

I do not know Porter. He is a senior scholar with a fine record and numerous accomplishments. He is far more accomplished than I—so, take everything with a grain of salt. I am sure he is a reasoned, thoughtful person. However, after even a generous interpretation, the blog demonstrates a provincial understanding of qualitative research and a paternalistic and mean-spirited tone towards qualitative scholars.

Consider a few points:

(1) The title of the blog—“Speaking Truth to Power about Qualitative Research”—is ironic. Whether intentional or not, the blogger alludes to Aaron Wildavsky’s classic Speaking Truth to Power: The Art and Craft of Policy Analysis. Wildavsky, a hugely influential policy scholar, argued that policy analysts need to account for the interpretive nature of policy-making—something that qualitative work is particularly well-suited to accomplish.

(2) Porter argues that qualitative research has little impact and will have less. I agree that qualitative researchers need to redouble their efforts to collaborate with scholars and practitioners across disciplines and methodologies in an effort to produce and advocate for rigorous policy-relevant research. NSF isn’t funding many six- and seven-figure qual studies. But, many examples exist—as models for early career faculty to follow—of scholars who have achieved wide impact with well-designed studies that include qual methods. I’m fortunate to have two of them as mentors: Bill and Yvonna. Even more, look at the list of past AERA presidents over the last few decades. That’s an awful lot of impactful and innovative “dinosaurs,” a term Porter uses to describe qualitative researchers.

The blogger also introduces the technology argument: tech will enable scholars to create, gather, and analyze larger and larger datasets. The argument works both ways. Technology and social media will provide new opportunities for qualitative researchers to collect, synthesize, analyze, present, and share data. Big data will magnify, not lessen, the need for interpretive and site-based inquiry. As we’ve learned from previous examples, policies based on one-sided approaches are often ineffective. Some even reinscribe the same inequities they seek to remedy.

(3) The idea that qualitative research does not appear in well-read publications is fiction. I have read numerous articles and blogs at the NY Times and Washington Post. I am a sociologist of education who examines neighborhood-level issues. For a recent example of impact, search Google for MacArthur Fellow Matthew Desmond’s newest book Evicted, based on ethnographic research. And, while federally-funded qualitative studies in education are rare, there are numerous foundations who do fund multiple methodologies. I’m thinking of the Russell Sage Foundation, which has funded, published, and promoted significant projects that have reached beyond academia and into public and policy discourses.

(4) Porter presents a straw-man argument about generalization and qualitative research. Of course, qualitative research can’t (and shouldn’t) generalize—while a conversation for another time, most quantitative work shouldn’t either. And yet, from rigorous, well-designed qualitative studies, scholars can and have provided actionable findings and policy implications. At school and community levels, researchers and participants creatively and meaningfully employ strategies like action research and participatory action research to improve practice, research, and policy.

(5) The blogger writes, “Some qual researchers insist there are multiple realities. What do you think the average person, who lives in a single reality like most of us, thinks of this idea?” The answer is—while probably not using the pedantic words of academics—they would agree. As accomplished scholars like Gloria Ladson-Billings, Rich Milner, Luis Moll, Michelle Fine and numerous others have demonstrated, education research and policies often propagate white, privileged perspectives. Deficit-based policies represent dominant beliefs and assumptions about whose knowledge matters and how it is defined and measured. The “average” person who has experienced persistent poverty and endured racist policies would probably argue that their voices are not heard and their experiences are not represented in policy discussions and designs.

Critical (and necessary) exchanges about epistemologies and ontologies and axiologies and other fancy words and concepts are easy targets. From a policy perspective, overly theoretical arguments unmoored from practice—Latour refers to these stances as “fairy positions”—become counterproductive. I agree that navel-gazing rarely influences policy design. But, skilled academics have the ability to connect theory and practice, something the aforementioned scholars (who have employed qualitative methods) have done to great and consequential success.

I could go on, but I won’t. Again, I do not know Porter. I’m sure he has reasons for his fervent and seemingly unyielding opinions about qualitative research. He certainly has years of experiences to inform his perspective. But, a narrow approach to research—and, by extension, knowledge, beliefs, values, assumptions, etc.—is misguided, at best, and harmful, at worst. When has a one-size-fits-all approach to education ever worked, particularly for underrepresented populations? Social inquiry and policy design require a plurality of approaches. Each has strengths and limitations. We have a large toolbox of methods to examine complex, intractable issues. Why would we limit ourselves to just one?

Interviewing and the importance of listening

Originally posted at www.21stcenturyscholar.org

Have you ever read a Henry James novel? I have, as an undergraduate in an American lit class. I, along with 20 or so of my peers, read Portrait of a Lady. James—the brother of psychologist William James—is known for long, descriptive passages and a focus on the minutiae of life and consciousness. You can imagine, for a group of 20-year-olds with the attention spans of hummingbirds, the novel was a tough sell.

In one class, during a discussion of the book, the professor said something I think about often: “We should all have the ability,” he argued, “to sit quietly on a bench and observe.” How much do we miss, he wondered, when we live a life of constant motion?

Be still. Watch. Listen. Contemplate. 

In a well-known article, “On Seeking—and Rejecting—Validity in Qualitative Research,” Henry Wolcott makes a similar point about interviewing: “Talk little, listen a lot.”

As a qualitative researcher, I have the unbelievable privilege of listening to people’s life stories. A few weeks ago, I met with a second-generation Latino teenager who lives in a low-income neighborhood in New York City. He wants to go to college. He will be the first in his family to attend a four-year university. He is an exceptional young man; however, his grades and test scores don’t completely represent that. He worries that he won’t get into a college.

During the interview, we talked about his family. He has an unstable home life, having lived with several relatives. As a follow-up question, I asked, “Is that tough?” He looked at me for a few seconds. His face changed, almost imperceptibly. He had the look of someone who knew, if he spoke, he would cry. I imagined, as a 17-year-old young man, he didn’t want to do that. He nodded. I nodded. And, we both looked away. I paused for about thirty seconds to give us both time to recompose and then redirected the interview.

I don’t know if I could ever truly represent those few thick moments and the moments afterwards when neither of us spoke. I don’t pretend to know what the student felt or thought. In time, I might have a better idea. But, I know for that moment I, at least partially, grasped a depth of emotion and significance that participants do not always reveal.

Life tends to be full of constant motion. Sometimes people want their stories heard, and it’s the researcher’s job to listen.

After-school activities improve college access and save lives

Originally posted on October 04, 2011.

Last Friday, I sat in a trailer at Madison Continuation High School, one of my field sites in South Los Angeles. Teachers and administrators in the district call the school an “emergency room.” “Once the students get to us,” said the principal,” they’re in desperate need of some love and care.”

In front of me was a thick binder with student schedules. For the past 15 minutes, I received bad news as the teacher’s assistant reported that student after student was absent. Mrs. Rainard, an all-purpose administrator, said, “Oh, I should have told you: A lot of students don’t come on Fridays. Who’s next on the list?”

“Alberto Morales,” I said.

“That boy is a pot-head. He’s also as old as water,” joked Mrs. Rainard.

A few minutes later, Alberto walked through the door. I met Alberto once before to explain my study. He was skeptical of me and in a daze. As I began the interview on Friday, however, he was friendly and lucid.

I asked Alberto, whose GPA was around 1.8, about college: “Oh yeah, I want to go to college. I take classes right now. Silk screening. I made this shirt.”

He excitedly took his backpack off to show me the back: a woman smoking a bong.

Over the next 30 minutes, he told me about his life. I heard stories about fights, tagging, and beefs with gangs: “My crew, we do graffiti,” he said. “Sometimes gangs get pissed when you tag in their spots.” Throughout the interview, Alberto never mentioned after-school activities like soccer, academic decathlon, or student government. Silk screening, as it turned out, was his only extracurricular. “I’ve been trying to make something of myself,” he admitted. “I don’t want to get in any more trouble with the cops.”

I’ve conducted nearly 30 interviews for my dissertation. I’ve met a lot of amazing young men. I count Alberto in that group. One fact, however, is alarmingly clear: after-school activities are critical to success for teenagers in low-income neighborhoods.

All students benefit from after-school activities. That’s true. But, all students don’t need after-school activities to keep them off the streets and save their lives. These young men do.

Across the country, reformers are creating extended-learning opportunities to keep young men engaged. Get students in early. Keep them late. Charter schools, for instance, often have longer school days. USC’s Neighborhood Academic Initiative (NAI) is another example. The pre-college program supplements the school day with classes before and after school.

Unfortunately, without external funding or the support of universities, such reforms are unlikely to occur in money-strapped urban school districts. After-school activities, however, offer a cheap alternative. Often, with at-risk students, administrators and teachers require less, not more, when the students begin acting out. For instance, they go from honors to general level classes. That’s wrong. At the moment students disengage, schools need to demand more. If we are serious about getting teenagers like Alberto to college, we need to offer more after-school activities and we need to make them part of their required coursework. Otherwise, we have no chance against, what Alberto called, “the pull of the streets.”

The shape of neighborhood ethnography to come: Blurred spaces, elastic time, and shareable culture

I. Facebook is a street corner

Before entering the field, I proposed an outline of my dissertation, a neighborhood study in South Central Los Angeles. “You’re not going to write Street Corner Society,” one of my committee members predicts, “The world’s changed.” I nodded, recognizing some of the immense variations—shifting demographics, rising inequality, and globalizing economies—that had occurred after nearly seven decades. I didn’t fully appreciate my mentor’s council.

Fast-forward two years. I completed my dissertation (which was not like Street Corner Society or Tally’s Corner or In Search of Respect) and accepted a job as assistant professor at St. John’s University. 

I now stand at a street corner near a cluster of housing projects in Brooklyn, New York. I observe five young black men. Wearing basketball shorts and tank tops, they endure humid summer temperatures while discussing a potential pick-up basketball game. One teenager jokes about me on the team and asks about my game. As a white, middle-aged researcher, I am neither part of their group nor at risk of “going native.” However, I feel a sense of camaraderie with DeJuan, the jokester. The scene reminds me of classic neighborhood ethnographies in which the authors examine the extraordinary meanings hidden in quotidian moments. Was this how Liebow felt with Tally? 

During a lull, DeJuan looks at his phone. He makes a comment about Facebook. Two others check their phones. They discuss a mutual friend’s post. At once, I feel the teenagers are both here and somewhere else. I am all of the sudden a part of and apart from an important conversation. Later, I recall my committee member’s statement—“The world’s changed.” 

Common among all neighborhood ethnographies is a commitment to place, time, and culture. What happens when social media create new digital spaces and blur spatial, temporal, and cultural boundaries? After over a century of placid existence, social media have irrevocably changed neighborhood ethnography. Facebook is the new street corner, and it exists simultaneous to the old street corner.

II. Neighborhood ethnography 1.0

Neighborhood ethnography occupies a unique (and, to me, hallowed) space among social science research in the United States. Interest in neighborhood scholarship has blossomed and decayed over the last century. The blooms often correlate to significant political and social events—like the Great Migration and the War on Poverty—and increased attention to race, class, and inequality. The methodology focuses in-depth on the complex, context-bound textures of social life among disadvantaged and disenfranchised groups. It includes a tradition of researchers toiling in low-income neighborhoods, befriending residents, documenting local life, and connecting micro and macro forces. 

The best works illuminate inequalities and contest stereotypes. W.E.B. Dubois, for instance, used an innovative mix of door-to-door interviews and census data to create an exhaustive analysis of neighborhood life for black residents in The Philadelphia Negro. Carol Stack, refuting prevalent stereotypes about the “culture of poverty,” examined sharing and reciprocity among low-income mothers in All Our Kin. And, Mitch Duneier, remixing the methodology to focus on Slim’s table, documented the stories of working-class men and presented a nuanced portrait of their lives within a larger context.

Neighborhood ethnography relies on three critical ingredients: place, time, and culture. Place is the simplest concept. For traditional place-based ethnographies, researchers go somewhere (i.e. churches, parks, schools, street corners) and spend time with someone (i.e. parishioners, parents, teachers, teenagers). 

Time is a little more complex (but not too much). Researchers sample across time to get a varied data sample and ensure validity and reliability. Identifying significant times and gaining access during them is the challenge. 

Culture is the most intricate, and engenders the greatest disagreement among scholars. There are two broad (and, for our purposes, crude) cultural perspectives. The first divides culture into two categories, mainstream and sub-mainstream. A dominant culture exists and then non-dominant, local groups introduce their own variations. Think of Gerald Suttles’s The Social Order of the Slum, a study of ethnic enclaves in Chicago. The second perspective interprets culture as heterogeneous, consisting of dominant and non-dominant cultural fragments. Sure, a mainstream culture exists, but so do sub-cultures, and the boundaries are malleable and intertwined. Consider Ulf Hannerz’s Soulside, a study of low-income residents in Washington, D.C. 

III. Neighborhood ethnography 2.0

How do social media redefine place, time, and culture? First, they obfuscate classic definitions of place. Recall the teenagers in the above example. They interact on a street corner and across multiple social media platforms. A single place is no longer the defining characteristic. Methodologists must attend to multiple, blurred locations.

Next, social media magnify the elasticity of time. The teenagers’ interactions—using synchronous and asynchronous communication—disrupt conventional notions of time. They talk to each other in real time and also respond to posts that could be seconds, minutes, or hours old. Researchers must capture and account for varied forms of time.

Last, social media increase the availability and portability of culture. DeJuan and his friends scavenge the internet for resources. They take, edit, view, and upload cultural bits like text, pictures, gifs, and video. They share them with friends and general audiences. Other users then view, comment, and share. Social media allows individuals to access and share different cultures in ways that have not previously existed. Neighborhood scholars must incorporate social media into their research designs and cultural analyses.

IV. What’s next?

Technologies have always influenced the research process. Pencils allowed researchers to sketch settings and jot quotes. Tape recorders enabled new levels of accuracy and verisimilitude. Word processors transformed the editing process. Each of the above examples produced incremental revisions. Social media substantially alters the research landscape. Digital technologies reform place, time, and culture and empower individuals, creating new conditions among researchers and researched. They produce previously hidden opportunities (and challenges) and provoke neighborhood ethnographers to deepen their commitment to rigorous, creative methods.

To some, neighborhood ethnography and social media may be at odds. After all, the methodology emphasizes context and prolonged engagement whereas social media can be fragmentary and ephemeral. However, neighborhood ethnography is uniquely positioned to capitalize on technological trends. To make sense of social media requires time, context, and thoughtfulness. Key to examining the connections among local life, social media, and global social forces is the use of hybrid methods, including a mixture of robust, rigorous traditional tools with innovative new tools. While some may argue that social media diminish the importance of place and, as a result, neighborhood ethnography, I can think of no better methodology to untangle the wonderful, complex, and evolving social media knot.