Here is a link to a special issue of Forum: Qualitative Social Research on visual methods. The issue includes examples and discussions of current issues related to the use of photography, video, photo-elicitation, and mapping.
Because fieldwork depends on the researcher as instrument, developing a sense of self is important for a variety of reasons. First, understanding the unchangeable attributes one brings to fieldwork is useful–things like the impact of gender, race, ethnicity, and religious beliefs. Second, monitoring your reaction to places, people and interactions may be key to identifying both over and under sampling within the research context. Third, using your own feelings, thoughts, reactions may be a pathway to developing an empathetic stance in the research context.
I have found Alan Peshkin’s notion of subjective “I”s useful. Take a look at In Search of Subjectivity.
Participant observation is a central data collection strategy in much interpretive and critical research. This article <participant-observation> is a quick overview of PO–why and how it is done, and some cautions as well.
This special issue of Forum: Qualitative Social Research covers a range of topics in digitizing information for and in interpretive research.
A key strategy for establishing the veracity of interpretive/critical research is triangulation. The term is over-used and often mis-used. Many researchers imply that triangulation will lead to the truth by eliminating bias and is not based on the presumption that there is indeed a single truth to be gotten to, but in reality the value of triangulation is more nuanced. Sometimes, data from different sources or collected by different methods do converge, but often they are inconsistent or even contradictory. Convergence is not more analytically useful (or closer to the truth) than inconsistence or contradiction. Triangulation provides the researcher with rich data from which to discern meaning, but this is a task for the researcher not an inevitable result of using a technique. For a more thorough discussion of what this means and some examples, click on the article link below.
The increased use of virtual space as a cultural site for communication and social interaction opens a new space for social inquiry. The latest issue of the Forum: Qualitative Social Inquiry is devoted to this topic.
This peer reviewed journal is completely online and is truly international in its scope, indeed articles are available in several languages. You can subscribe to the journal and will get an email when each issue is published.
