3.28 Informed Consent and Designing interviews

Informed Consent materials. The previous post has a pdf for the signature page of the informed consent form (with my signature). You will need to sign this page and get your participants to sign it as well. It should be presented as the last page of the Informed Consent Form . You will need to print the first two pages of the Informed Consent Form , and then attach a copy of the signature page for the informed consent.

At your preliminary meeting with your participants, talk through the purpose of the study, information about being a subject, and procedures sections, and all that follows, making sure to answer any questions your participants might have. After you have made your presentation on your project = get 2 signed copies. One for your participant, one for you (that you will then turn in to me).

If you are doing interviews, you will use this preliminary meeting to provide a copy of the interview protocol, to arrange a time for the interview, to make sure your participant knows the interview will be recorded, and to answer any other questions your participant might have. Be sure to make clear that participating in the study is voluntary.

Developing the interview protocol: We spent a good chunk of class talking about how interviews are organized. Interviews are conversations - and they work like conversations. Like conversations, it takes people a while to "warm up" to a subject and generally they will have lots to say if you provide lots of chances to follow up on the ideas and language they have associated with the topic of conversation. Your primary role as an interviewer is to keep the participant focused on the topic of conversation. If they go "off-topic", listen carefully to make sure it isn't really "on topic" but just somethng you weren't thinking of - and if you need to re-direct the talk - do it generously (Wow, that was interesting) and tactfully bring the focus back (could you tell me some more about what you said earlier about. . .).

Your interview should be no longer than 30 minutes. You will need a good, rich body of talk to have enough material for your project, but transcribing is time consuming so you don't want to bury yourself.

To make sure you have the kinds of questions that will "work" for you:

• Design them carefully using the "pointers" we discussed in class
• Test/time/voice record your interview questions with a "practice" participant
• Listen to your recording for your "test" and think about what worked and what you can do better
• Remember that each interview will depend on your participant - and be prepared to be flexible,

Interview features for "conversation" interviews:
1.Lead (short - less than a minute). Begin with your "lead" = write a statement of the project's focus as part of your interview protocol (like on the sample). When you actually DO the interview, be sure to state your name, get your participant to state his/her name, state the focus of your project, where you are, and the date.

2. Set up questions. (2-5 minutes) These should be short, factual, easy to answer questions. (Think back to the examples we gave in class). They might be information about the participant's background, identity, training or memberships assoicated with your focus.

3. Orienting question (5-7 minutes). Often, the first story will give you a preview/foreshadowing of where the interview will go. This question gives your participant a chance to let you know how they see your focus. Pay attention to this answer and as you talk, pick up on your participant's language and ways of seeing things and work those words/views into the questions the form the body of your interview.

4. The main section of the interview (about 15-20 minutes)
We noticed in the Literacy narrative interview protocol that the questions were organized chronologically and by setting = and that some of the same questions were asked about experiences from different times and places. Give some thought about how you organize your questions. Choose about 2-4 big categories or subjects/focuses for your questions. Spend about 5 minutes on each set and cycle through and back through a related point of view. Think of the examples from class.

5. Closing (2-3 minutes). Your last question should again invite your participant to open up your focus in any way they want - check to see if there is anything that you might have forgotten to ask that they feel is important.

I'm afraid I didn't leave you much time to work on your interview protocols in class - but if you post them on your blog I will give you lots of feedback - and we can talk about them in class.

For Tuesday:
Blog 16:
If you are doing an interview as part of your research project => post your draft interview protocol.

If you are not doing an interview, look back through your research plan, and write up any data collection tools: you might need. These might include surveys, plans for making your observations (what, where, who, how long etc you will observe), timelines for completing your data collection, ideas about how you might focus and analyze your data = the more writing you get up on your blog the more I can help you with your project.

I will return your short analysis essays and give you some general feedback on what we need to work on in terms of analysis.

Research paper grading criteria. We will review/write up the specific criteria for the research paper and negotiate how we will assign the grade. To do this we will take into account what we learned about the form for research papers (reading the model essays) =what information needs to be included in what order, what we learned about doing analysis (the rubric + what we learned from doing the short analysis papers), how much credit you want for your research process (collecting + analyzing your data) versus how much you credit you want for the paper itself, and anything else you think should be counted for your grade. We will also set up a timeline for completing the project + doing your presentations.

We are definitely getting to the fun part of this course! Have a great weekend and see you on Tuesday.

3.28 Signature page for informed consent

This is the link for the signature page for the informed consent form.

3.26 Oral history, interviews, and finishing up the Short Analysis paper

We started class by talking about how to include references to the texts you are analyzing. If you are going to refer to a "quote" that is more than two lines long - you should include it as a block quote. Conventions for putting quotations into the flow of an essay, both for short quotes and block quotes are at the Purdue OWL = a great place to look up how to do most anything related to writing. Set up your quote by introducing what it will show, insert the quote (as described at the OWL) and then develop your discussion and state the point that you make regarding what the quote SHOWS with respect to your focus.

Oral History
We reviewed the introduction to oral history at the link (posted to the right). We talked about how oral histories can open up mainstream ideas of "what happened" in the past - or what counts as history. We noted that all history is written from the perspective of whoever is writing the history - and that oral histories represent a move to include more and different voices in accounts of "what happened" in the past.

We talked through, step by step, what to do if you are going to collect an oral history from your pre-interview preparations (researching the historical period - what was going on in the time/place you want to talk about); finding a suitable archive/repository => some place where you can "file" your oral history so people can read it, identifying who you want to talk to, and designing a set of questions. At this point you will want to contact your participants to set up a time and place to meet, give them about how long the interview will take and let them know you will be using a voice recorder, and to send them a copy of the informed consent forms (see forms under course documents).

During the interview - you need to find a quiet place (recorders pick up EVERYTHING), and as you begin your recording - set it up with a "lead" = a short statement that identifies you and your participant, the focus of your conversation, and the date when you talked.
Then talk through your questions in a conversational manner (you might want to review the suggestions listed at the Oral History link posted to the right).

After the interview, provide your participant with a debriefing form (posted to the right), and answer any questions. Make any notes you may need to help transcribe your interview, and label or tag your interview so that you will be certain about what it contains.

After this introduction you talked with a partner about your experience of 911. We then came back together as a group and we talked (briefly) about some of what yout
Great class!

For Thursday:
Due: Short analysis. I know I said to post your paper in my last blog - but I meant to say to send it to the course email as an attachment. I will grade your papers over the weekend and hope to return them with comments by April 2.

Blog 15: post your sound file/notes from your oral history interview - along with your observations about what you learned about doing oral history

Come to class prepared to learn about writing interview protocols. After we go over interviews - you will have a chance to set up the details for your research projects (check in with me on how you will collect data + what data collection tools you will use, who your research subjects will be). We will also go over the protocols for getting imformed consent - so you should be ready to go on your research projects by the beginning of next week.

3.21 Another workshop for the Short Analysis project

You did a great job working on your papers today.  You worked in pairs using the workshop sheet to guide your talk.  We focused on identifying:

a research question => this question needed to make a point about what the data shows or how it works for some purpose or with respect to a larger context.  For example, while you might analyze your data in terms of how often and in what contexts speakers use hedges (like, I guess, maybe, should. . .) => your research question needs to ask what it means when speakers use hedges in terms of comfort (for example) and why it is important that the speakers were comfortable or uncomfortable at a particular point.

the language features you will analyze (these are your categories) = they might be any of the features on the language handout posted to the right, or they might be some other language move you named/noticed in the data

patterns in the features you analyze

what those patterns show about your research question

For Tuesday:
If you want written comments => post your draft paper by Sunday night - and send a request for comments to the course email.   Otherwise the paper will be due posted on the blog on Thursday, March 28 before class.

Read: Oral Histories => In class we will be starting on creating, conducting + analyzing interviews.

If you want to schedule another conference - anytime before next Thursday - you are also welcome to do so.
So far I have:
Monday: 1:00 =Derrick,
Tuesday: 12:45 Rikki; 3:30 Mike

In class we will be getting started on planning interviews.  We will check in on your projects - and hopefully everyone can get started collecting data on or before April 2.

Great class today!

3.19 Workshop for Short Analysis Project

In class today we reviewed the criteria for the Short analysis project and created a rubric (pasted in below) for evaluating drafts for this project. We then used the rubric to evaluatea sample draft (posted to the right) and to come up with some clear specific statements of what the writers needed to work on in order to produce a stronger essay.

Short analysis evaluation rubric:
Focus - 40 points: should be set up in the beginning and pulled together in the end.  Focus credit also counts statements within the data presentation and analysis that "refer back to" or explain the relevance of a discussion to the focus.  The introductory focus may include a statement of the research questions + explanation of language features (categories/codes) relevant to the focus, identification of the data that will be analyzed, any relevant definitions, an overview of important categories/findings, etc. The introductory statement of focus, including set up, may take more than one paragraph.

In short: the focus helps the reader to know what the analysis is 'about'. 

Development - 30 points: should provide evidence (detailed examples) of the categories + relationships that connect to the focus; it should also provide evidence of the patterns that "prove" the relationships relevant to the focus.   Development should also include detailed discussion where the writer identifies multiple patterns and explains how they work together - or what they show - with respect to the focus of the paper.

Examples should be used to identify categories and patterns and to explain/discuss the connection of the patterns to the research question. Use of examples is evaluated based on whether the writer has chosen an appropriate example, whether it fully illustrates the point s/he is making, and whether it fits within the focus of the overall papers.

Organization - 30 points:  introduces information in the order the reader needs it so s/he can follow the logic of the discussion.  For example, definitions need to come before discussion of relationships that use the terms that need to be defined; categories need to be set up before statements of patterns that refer to those categories, and so on.

For next class:
Blog 14  post a complete draft suitable for workshopping in class

Attend your conference if you have one. 

The final paper is tentatively schedule as due on Tuesday, March 26.

3.7 Short analysis project

We spent today's class tying up loose ends so you are ready to work on your short analysis project.

1.We talked through the list of language features you might want to look at as you work on the language in your data set.

2. We looked at the assignment sheet for the short analysis project

3. And we talked about how you might want to choose a data set for "practice" on your short anlysis project => the idea is to choose a data set that is similar to the data you will be analyzing for your research project. One purpose of this project is for you to PRACTICE analysis language data (and get some feedback on how to do it better), so you will have that part down for your research project.

NOTE: If you are doing the interview transcripts,  unless you are going to make a point that is VERY different from what we already discussed with respect to the Chat room transcript, I strongly suggest that you choose a different transcript.

For next class:

Blog 13 (I fixued this - it was 14 but should be 13): develop writing for your short analysis project. This should include:

1. your research question
2. your analysis of your data
3. what every writing you have developed to discuss that patterns you see in your data that provide an "answer" or ideas about your research question.

If you want written feedback on your "draft" => send me an email by Saturday, March 16 telling my your work is posted on your blog.

On Tuesday, March 19 we will workshop what you have written so far, and you will schedule conferences (if you want to) on what to do next.

Have a great break!

Short Analysis Assignment & Features of talk

Short analysis Assignment sheet

Tips for analyzing features of talk in stories