Fieldwork

This post may well be incredibly vague, but I’d like to write it anyway for a few reasons – hopefully something I write might be of use to other people doing research in the same kind of area as me, people might have helpful suggestions, and I feel a bit of pressure (probably all from myself) to write something to keep this blog remotely up to date and have something in it about what I’m doing. So. This is a sort of ‘things I’ve learnt from fieldwork’ post, but I have to keep things vague for obvious reasons. I’ve applied the general idea that if someone involved in my research reads this post, it won’t give anything away, or cause upset, or influence the data I’m collecting.

I’m three weeks into a twelve week stint of fieldwork for my PhD. I’m in a secondary school with 1,000 students or so, from age 11 to 18 (years 7 to 13 in England). I’m focusing most of my research on people aged 14-16. For those who don’t already know, my research is about critical information literacy and political agency or, less elegantly, how young people form opinions and make decisions about political issues based on the information they encounter in all its forms, and whether they’d be in a better position to participate in political processes if libraries and educators taught them about how culture promotes certain views and approaches above other ones, and how they can use an awareness of this to address various forms of social injustice. I’m doing this because I want to address how librarianship needs to be more critical in its approach to information literacy, because we can help with a lot of the issues and need to stop perpetuating some of them.

I’m three weeks in and still finding my feet. I’ve written down some very general and quite specific things I’m learning, most of which is probably blatantly obvious, but I hope it might be at least a little bit useful to someone if they come across it when they’re in a blind panic about their research.

Some Things I Am Learning:

1) It’s nigh on impossible to describe your research

I’ve done elevator pitches at numerous training events, I’ve presented my work at conferences, I’ve written abstracts with incredibly limited word counts, I’ve bored the ears off my boyfriend’s friends at work parties, I’ve even, I’m fairly sure, managed to squeeze the gist of my research topic into a couple of tweets. I’ve done a fair amount of media interviews that have required me to discuss complex issues about libraries, local politics, and public services in a way that’s comprehensible and at least a little bit interesting and engaging. Put me in front of a year group, however, and I lose the ability to describe what I’m doing and what I want to find out about completely. I’ve written information sheets to go out with the consent forms and these seem to make sense on paper, but don’t translate well in speech for some reason. I’m fairly sure at one point last week I found myself describing it as ”if people are thinking about stuff when they think about stuff”, or something along those lines. This is for a few reasons, one of which is that I really have been immersed in the academic language for a long time and what makes sense to me doesn’t make sense to people who haven’t been reading about critical theory. This is actually a problem that’s raised by Rex Gibson in Critical Theory and Education (1986) – critical theorists are buggers for using long words that are difficult to think about in an everyday context. Library theory’s similar – information literacy isn’t a concept that all teachers have necessarily heard of even though it’s (arguably) a central concept for librarians. On top of that, I’m using an ‘out there’ method as part of my research – repertory grids. It’s a faff to explain and is very much one of those ‘you’ll get it when you sit down and do it’ things that works fine when you actually do it but involves several stages that are hard to describe in words. And of course, when I’m describing it, one of my usual approaches is to give “for examples”, which I don’t want to do because it might alter the responses I’d get from participants.

2) Good luck getting consent forms back

When it’s difficult to explain your research and methods, it’s difficult to explain why participation would be great and valuable and not that time-consuming and so on. As I said, my research is based in a school, where paper forms are circulated regularly and get left and lost as a matter of course. I’ve tried several approaches to urging people to bring consent forms back because I literally cannot do anything other than observe if I don’t have permission from a legal guardian because they’re under 18. There are very good ethical reasons for this, especially because although my research carries few risks and is in no way dangerous and of course participants will be anonymised, it’s about political views and where people get information from, which is potentially something that guardians don’t want their children to be involved in, and that’s entirely fair enough. I’m taking the active consent approach rather than the passive consent approach because I think it’s really important for guardians to know about what I’m doing beforehand – and if the consent forms aren’t being brought back, I can assume that the information sheets aren’t making their way into the hands of guardians.

I’ve got a handful of returned forms and I’m still trying. That makes me worry about the time I’ve got left – I’d wondered about getting someone to circulate them before I got here, but they wouldn’t have been able to answer questions that people might have and I don’t think it would have helped. However, establishing and negotiating consent is an ongoing process, and as I have to alter my methods, I’ll keep talking to participants about what I’m doing and why. Kay et al. (Eds.) (2009) Researching with Children and Young People: Research Design, Methods and Analysis has been a really great source of recommendations for issues to take into consideration, like making sure potential participants don’t feel coerced into doing the research. It’s also encouraged me to do things like just ask the participants how they’d like to do something – would they prefer to have a chat as a group, or would they rather do it alone? Is this sort of thing hard to talk about, or is it fine? Would they rather stay after school or meet at lunchtime? These are decisions I’d had to make during the methodology design that don’t necessarily meet what the participants would prefer, and it’s no great shakes for me to change my plans. After all, what I want is lots of rich data, and that comes from the participants feeling comfortable and happy to take part, especially when part of what I want to know is what are the political issues that they feel most passionately about and see how they construct their world of political information.

3) It’s about quality over quantity

At least, that’s my argument and I’m sticking with it. For the type of research I’m doing, a small sample isn’t the end of the world. Given my issues with consent forms, I won’t have a huge sample. I think this will be okay – I’m not trying to identify trends or to make generalisations across a large group. I’m trying to get a sense of individuals’ perceptions and how that connects to information literacy, and the majority of the data collection is qualitative. As long as I record my field notes and observations in great detail and write about my methodology transparently, hurdles and all, I’m hoping it’ll be acceptable. If I don’t have enough data from the fieldwork, I’ve written a couple of backup plans into my methodology and can bring one of those out if it’s needed.

4) Organisation is key

Key to a) keeping on track and b) keeping you on the rails. I’ve got a spreadsheet with a page for a Gantt chart, a page with daily timetables, all kinds of things. This helps me make sure I’m getting stuff done, reorganise my schedule when I need to so that I still have time to record what I need to, and also make me feel like I’m vaguely on top of things. I also have a page where I’ve got a chart in which I record all my activities on a lesson by lesson basis. It’s easy for a day to slip by without feeling like you’ve achieved anything even though actually you have got stuff done and you don’t need to be so hard on yourself, and it’s also easy to miss opportunities for getting hold of pupils when you’ve often only got a 20 minute window per day during registration period. Google Calendar continues to be a godsend, because it reminds me about things I need to do that aren’t fieldwork. Keeping track is helpful.

I’m finding NVivo really useful not only for typing up observations (and soon I’ll be transcribing interviews), it’s also really useful for daily memos and reflections on what I’m doing and how things are changing based on circumstances and the decisions I’m making. I can imagine this will be helpful when I’ve forgotten what I was thinking when I decided to alter a way of going about something and I need to write about it.

5) No, no, flexibility. Flexibility is key.

I’ve had to make so many amendments to my planned research methods for practical reasons that I’m quite glad I don’t have anything too set in stone. Being organised (in theory) helps me work out how I can reorganise, but being flexible makes it possible. Even in terms of a research approach, I’ve found that the way I think about things is changing as I learn more about the research environment and the participants. Sometimes, no amount of theory can prepare you for reality. (I promised you I’d be vague…)

6) School life is really tiring!

This is a bit whinge whinge moan but also practical. It’s important to look after yourself and pace yourself! I’m not a late riser so I thought I’d be fine, but good grief 6:30am starts are kicking my ass. There’s something especially draining about strip lighting and the way air circulates around school buildings that I’d forgotten about. It’s also really hard to regulate your temperature (increasingly so as the weather gets warmer) and really easy to forget about lunch (or as happens more often for me, eat your lunch at 10am because 7am is no time to put food in yourself). I get home shattered and I’m good for nothing, which is not great because I could really do with putting another couple of hours in in the evening. Early nights are my friends. As is tea.

7) Doing something creative and/or destressy is really important

I’m worried about not collecting enough data. I’m worried about not collecting the right data. I’m worried about running out of time. I’m worried about doing something wrong. I’m worried about not being able to talk to the participants well. I’m worried about technical issues. I’m worried that I still haven’t got a proper neat and tidy literature review let alone a well-written methodology. I’m worried that I haven’t even started writing a conference paper that’s due in less than a fortnight (even if I do have a detailed plan carved out of the last productive anxiety streak). I’m worried about my cats in Glasgow even though I know they’re being very well looked after by my incredible friend. I’m worried that all of my friends have forgotten me and never liked me anyway. Inwardly, I’m a knot of anxiety. I really don’t know what I’d be like if I didn’t have knitting and spinning to come home to.

I’ve made about 70 projects since last February, from facecloths to cardigans and elaborate shawls. I’ve tried as wide a variety of techniques as I’ve felt brave enough for (not onto steeking just yet…). I’ve also taken up spinning, which I swore I Would Not Do until I was a Grownup and had the time and money to devote to another craft. I was also a bit reluctant to go Full Yarny I think. However.

This is my Joy. It’s from a second hand shop and is the victim of a terrible stain-job. It needed a bit of doing up, which helped me get to know how it works and what it needs. It’s very helpful when I’m feeling too shattered to do anything complicated. I can’t tell you how theraputic spinning is. It can be the complete opposite of course when you’re learning, but although I’m not very good yet, I have got to the stage where I can spend a couple of hours spinning merrily away making consistent yarn and drafting (badly) without it breaking and having to stop to set things back up again. I’ve started taking my drop spindle on train journeys for when my brain’s too fried for reading or knitting. It’s relaxing and the source of some interesting chats with passengers. Spreading the fibre love! (Yeah…I’m one of those now.)

As well as really enjoying the process, I also really enjoy the feeling of having made something. When I feel like everything’s going wrong, to be able to wrap myself up in a shawl that was a pile of fluff not very long ago, and feel like I’ve created something beautiful makes all the difference.

I guess all I’ve really said in quite a lot of words is that I’m finding it helpful to work hard but keep a sense of perspective. I’d love to know how other people are finding or found their first few weeks of fieldwork, because it can be quite an isolated and detached experience.

LIS DREaM Workshop 3: Edinburgh

Last week I attended the last of three workshops in the LIS DREaM series, in Edinburgh (I’ve also reported on workshops one and two). The sessions were all informative, and some were of particular interest as potential research methods for my PhD.

Repertory Grids

I found the session on repertory grids particularly useful. The repertory grid (RG) is an interviewing technique that enables the researcher to elicit “both the conceptual content embodied in an individual’s mental model and the relationships which exist among these concepts” (Latta and Swigger, 1992). This is something I’m going to investigate further because a lot of the reading I’ve been doing around political behaviour and how people conceptualise politics highlight the issue that politics is a very personal topic. In addition, people’s attitudes and behaviours are not always rational or directly influenced by knowledge, and are often influenced by heuristics or rules of thumb.

I want to talk to teenagers about their attitudes towards politics and participation, and what political issues they think are important to them, rather than assuming that I know what matters to young people. In order to do that properly, and talk about issues that are actually relevant, I need to be able to identify and define those topics. The use of repertory grids as a scoping tool prior to in-depth interviews seems like a good way of doing this. Dr. Turner pointed out that using a method like this with cards and scraps of paper is a very unthreatening way of getting a lot of information out of people, and I think this will be a benefit when talking about such a personal and potentially emotionally-charged issue.

I can also use my findings to identify any possible trends and groupings of concepts when the data from the grids is turned into chart form. Dr. Turner recommended Repgrid for this, but there’s also an open source alternative. OpenRepGrid – this is an add-on to R, which is free statistical computing software. I’d never heard of R until a Researcher’s Digest session in my department a few weeks ago, and I’ve never used statistical software before, so at some point in the future I’m going to have to acquaint myself with it. I imagine bucket-loads of coffee will be required.

This week I’m reading about the use of RGs in Information Science, including the following journal articles:

• Birdi, B. (2011). ‘Investigating fiction reader characteristics using personal construct theory’. Aslib Proceedings, 63 (2/3), pp.275-294.
• Crudge, S.E. & Johnson, F.C. (2004). ‘Using the information seeker to elicit construct models for search engine evaluation’. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55 (9), pp.794-806. 
• Latta, G.F. & Swigger, K. (1992). ‘Validation of the Repertory Grid for Use in Modeling Knowledge’. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 43 (2), p.115.
• Madigan, D. et al. (1995). ‘Repertory hypergrids for large-scale hypermedia linking’. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 43, pp.465-481.
• McKnight, C. (2000). ‘The personal construction of information space’. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51 (8), pp.730-733.
• Mengshoel, O.J. (1995). ‘A reformulation technique and tool for knowledge interchange during knowledge acquisition’. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 43, pp.177-212.
• Oppenheim, C., Stenson, J. & Wilson, R.M.S. (2003). ‘Studies on Information as an Asset II: Repertory Grid’. Journal of Information Science, 29 (5), pp.419-432.
• Potthoff, J.K. et al. (2000). ‘An Evaluation of Patron Perceptions of Library Space Using the Role Repertory Grid Procedure’. College and Research Libraries, 61 (3), pp.191-203.
• Rugg, G. & McGeorge, P. (2005). ‘The sorting techniques: a tutorial paper on card sorts, picture sorts and item sorts’. Expert Systems, 22 (3), pp.94-107.
• Whyte, G., Bytheway, A. & Edwards, C. (1997). ‘Understanding user perceptions of information systems success’. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 6 (1), pp.35-68.

Discussions about research and practice

Much as the sessions were all interesting introductions to different research methods, I found that the conversations snuck in between talks were also of great value (and wish we’d had time for more). Along with the final session of the day – impact snakes and ladders – I found that some issues I have about the ‘state of the profession’ and current goings on are shared with others. For the final session we were split into groups and asked to answer some questions, then join with another group to share our responses, which roughly lined up with one another. My group, full-time PhD researchers, was paired with the group of public library workers.

The questions we were asked to answer were these:

1. To what extent do you consider that it is a PhD student’s responsibility to ensure that their PhD study has impact?
2. What strategies have members of your group developed to ensure that your PhD project is having/has impact?
3. Are there any particular difficulties with ensuring that your project has impact when you are a PhD student?

And the public librarians were asked these:

LIS researchers would like to complete projects to support librarians in delivering their services.
a) What do researchers need to do to make this happen?
b) Are there any particular difficulties for public librarians in accessing and using LIS research? How could these be addressed?

We were asked to discuss issues of relationships between research and practice and come up with recommendations about how to improve communication and getting research into practice etc. The usual suggestions came up, including ‘continuous discourse’, ‘networking events’ and ‘communicating with each other’. This is all well and good, and I appreciate the value of events such as the LIS DREaM Project and the work that goes into them, but I think the issues we have go far deeper than putting researchers and a few interested practitioners in a room with each other. No amount of that will solve the underlying systemic issues that exist within higher levels of the profession, and stem from a lack of appreciation of the values and principles of public libraries and the point of academic research.

This isn’t something new and is an ongoing problem. A number of our ‘solutions’, ironically, were things that used to exist. And quite frankly, it’s a crime that they don’t any more. Public Library Journal, for example, was the only UK journal that published the kind of research that’s actually useful and potentially implementable by practitioners. And without consultation or notice, CILIP killed it.

We suggested publishing research that promoted improvement and innovation in library services, and demonstrated the value of libraries to society. If only there was some kind of government department that ‘got’ that kind of thing. It could maybe include related services…museums, and archives, perhaps. We could call it the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. What’s that, we had one? Oh, the coalition government got rid of it? Bummer.

A number of us also felt quite strongly that although high-quality research is being conducted in academic departments across the UK, its impact is severely limited if those in control within library services find it inconvenient to listen and respond to the results in a meaningful way. This is if researchers can even get access to library services to research within in the first place, which for various reasons can be incredibly difficult.

Thanks to Hazel and everyone involved in the workshop for another useful and thought-provoking day.

Piled Higher and Deeper

I wasn’t sure when would be the right time to write about this, because it’s still half a year away, but it was all confirmed yesterday and I’m just too excited not to share…

I am incredibly fortunate to have been offered two PhD scholarships; at The University of Sheffield’s Information School and The University of Strathclyde’s Department of Computer and Information Science.

For those new to my blog and me (hello!) I completed an MA in Librarianship at the University of Sheffield in September 2010. I wrote a PhD proposal for a project based on my Masters research into public libraries and democratic engagement in December/January and applied to Sheffield in the hopes they’d have a scholarship available. It turned out that AHRC funding wasn’t available for the School in the coming year (which we found out about afterwards) but I did manage to secure Faculty funding, for a half scholarship. Before that, when it looked like I wasn’t going to be able to get anything at all, though, I started looking around for alternative places to apply, and Strathclyde became an option. I applied and was offered a place, and was then offered an ESRC scholarship as part of the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science, which is an ESRC Doctoral Training Centre. Deciding which offer to take has been incredibly difficult for a lot of reasons, but I realised that full funding in a place I’ve wanted to live for ages is just too good an opportunity to turn down, so I’m off to Glasgow in January. You can download the full proposal (including cringey bigging-up of self section) if you’re particularly interested, but here’s what I’ll be researching (subject to changes when I actually get started of course!):

Title: What is the role of public libraries in improving the democratic engagement of UK citizens?

Research Questions

1. What information about national and local democratic processes do public libraries provide? Is it enough to facilitate democratic engagement?
2. What formal schemes to promote and develop democratic engagement do public libraries participate in? How successful are these?
3. What factors influence public libraries’ involvement in formal democratic engagement schemes and related information provision, in terms of:
   a) Central government, local council and library authority policies?
   b) Staff perception of the meaning of these policies, and the associated concept of the ‘neutrality’ of public libraries?
   c) Library users’ perceptions of the role of libraries in democratic engagement?

Objectives

1. To discover extant areas of democracy-related information provision, and:
   a) Identify areas of strength;
   b) Establish areas in need of improvement.
2. To determine which of the formal schemes available are used by public libraries and assess the impact they have on democratic engagement.
3. To explore the barriers to libraries’ involvement with democratic engagement activities and suggest ways these could be overcome in order to strengthen the role of public libraries in improving democratic engagement.

Outcomes

• A novel contribution to the framework for greater citizen engagement through a focus on the role of public library and information services;
• The suggestion of amendments in policy which would reduce barriers to libraries’ involvement in supporting democratic engagement;
• The recommendation of ways library services could develop schemes and justifiably integrate democratic engagement into library service strategies;
• The encouragement of library services to explore their role in democratic engagement, thereby adding value and enhancing libraries’ position within local councils.

I thought it might be useful to give some pointers in case anyone else is thinking about applying for a PhD (for example, this fantastic opportunity at Sheffield) so here are some tips and useful links:

1. Everyone who’s supported me throughout the process, including current PhD students and researchers, has said: Only apply for a ready-made PhD if you’re really interested in the topic, and if you’re going to write your own proposal, make sure it’s something you love. Otherwise, researching it for three years will destroy you. I’m inclined to believe them.
2. Be prepared to justify why your chosen topic is really important and why you’re the right person to research it. You’ll be in stiff competition with people who want to research topics similar to you and a lot of completely unrelated competition too, if you’re going for a University scholarship or research council funding, so you need to be able to explain the value of your research and your skills. Plus, research in the Arts and Humanities (all research, really) is going to have to defend itself even more over the next few years. If you’ve got doubts about the relevance of your topic or your dedication to it, think twice about applying.
3. Follow the guidelines for the application process. Different institutions want different levels of detail. For example, I had to massively reduce the length and detail of my original Sheffield proposal to meet the preferences of Strathclyde. This can (seriously) be the hardest part of the process, so make sure you’ve set aside enough time to do it.
4. Don’t be afraid to show other people your proposal as you’re writing it. I’m very fortunate to have the support of some incredible and experienced people and can’t thank them enough for reading through my drafts and making recommendations for improving/clarifying parts. Potential supervisors will want to see your proposal, and they’ll have their own recommendations. Listen to them.
5. Look into who might be able to supervise you and approach them early. I know from working in an academic department that deals with postgraduate research that it’s extremely beneficial to do your homework. Departments can’t take you on as a research student if they don’t have a member of staff with the relevant expertise or they’re on research leave etc. It’s also good for the potential supervisor to know that they might be asked to supervise – it’s up to them to accept you in the first instance, so make yourself known to them if you aren’t already!
6. Finding funding is confusing and messy and takes time. I found it really difficult to find out what kind of funding was available and where. There are two research councils that can fund LIS research: ESRC and AHRC, and then there are internal scholarships within universities. Unfortunately, databases like Find a PhD don’t necessarily show you exactly what’s available and aren’t brilliantly searchable. If there’s nothing there, don’t assume it doesn’t exist. Keep looking! Having a scout around university websites is time-consuming and sometimes difficult too, but you can uncover some opportunities that you might not have otherwise found.
7. Consider interdisciplinary research. When it looked like all hope was gone for me I started contacting departments with links to areas such as social policy and democratic engagement, and asked them about the possibility of research within their department looking specifically at libraries. They seemed keen, but ultimately there weren’t any scholarships going there. I think this is something that might have legs, though.

Useful Links:

• PhDs explained and FAQs – Find a PhD
• Applying for a PhD – Prospects
• PhD Funding: Library Sciences –  Postgraduate Studentships

I can’t wait to get started; January seems absolutely ages away! I know it’s going to be a very tough and busy few years, but I really believe in what I’m going to be studying and hope it makes a valuable contribution to LIS research and UK public libraries.

We Come from the Land of the Ice and Snow

Just as it looked like maybe, just maybe, the snow was gone…

I’m off to Edge 2010 in Edinburgh tomorrow, which I’m very excited about, but I have a feeling it’s not going to be an easy trip up there – severe weather warnings and bad snow are forecast! If I get there and back alive I’ll blog about it, it’s going to be really interesting.

It’s dissertation preparation time, which I’ve been looking forward to at the same time as being a bit scared of for a while. It’s my first research project, really, and with all that new territory has to come a certain amount of trepidation, I suppose. I’ve known what I want to research for a while – how public libraries are, to put it simply, very important, and play a valuable role in community engagement and, as a result, democratic engagement. Which is fascinating, to me. Researching it and then demonstrating the findings, however…well, it’s a bit of a minefield. Of course there has to be a whole heap of qualitative research, but translating that into something that will say something important loudly and clearly in a language that the people I’d (in dreamland) like to read it, is difficult. It’s widely known that it’s difficult, I’m not saying anything new here.

So, I’ve been banging my head against a wall for a couple of weeks, trying to work out just what methods to use and how to use them well. I think I’m getting there. I want to do something a bit different, based on recommendations in the literature by people who know their stuff, avoiding reinventing the methodological wheel.

Hopefully, this book will come in handy: Applications of Social Research Methods to Questions in Information and Library Science by Barbara M. Wildemuth. If it doesn’t, I just wasted £43! (I know, I know, bad librarian, buying a book, but it was published last year and isn’t easily available. Plus, it’s had such good reviews that I have a feeling it’s a keeper.)

Oh yes, (hopefully) this blog now comes with added RSS feed. I have to be honest, I’m not an expert at blogs and haven’t actually got my head around RSS feeds yet. If I’ve done it wrong, please let me know.