How Community
Renaissance and its area of focus, The Partnership for Equity and Civic
Engagement (PĒCE) does Interviews for potential Community Conversations and/or
Public Dialogue Projects, 1/13.
The underlying social research method of our work is ethnography.
In contrast to the research perspective, or paradigm, commonly known as
positivism which emphasizes quantitative methods of data collection and
analysis, ethnographic methods are the tools used by the naturalism research
paradigm. Naturalism suggests that, as
much as possible, the researcher should be trying to understand the issues of
research in its undisturbed state. With
this perspective, human actions and interactions are influenced by social
meanings, intentions, motives, attitudes and beliefs. While positivism emphasizes
hypothesis-testing and the neutrality of the researcher, naturalism sees
research as a process of exploration and the researcher(s) is part of the world
s/he is studying. The tool of reflective analysis is an important method
the ethnographer utilizes in order to include his/her responses to and
interpretations of the world s/he is trying to better understand.
Within this preferred method of naturalism, the approach Community Renaissance has used
since 2003, the interview methodology
is defined as structured conversation.
These conversations are elicited in order to better understand the world of the
research participants. The conversations
are shaped by the context of the participants’ world. The essential components of ethnographic
interviewing/structured conversations are the following:
- researchers do not predesign the questions; instead they frame the issues or topics to be discussed;
- questions are generated from the conversation;
- researchers do not limit themselves to one mode of questioning; both directive and nondirective (open-ended) questions may be used;
- interviews are not the only source of data; multiple sources are necessary—for examples, newspaper or magazine articles, observations, surveys and other data resources.
Once the data has been collected, it is important to use
multiple modes of qualitative data analysis. Conversation-analysis is the study of talk-in-interaction. Narrative
analysis takes as its focus of research the story (heard or written)
itself. Community Renaissance uses both
these modes as necessary, in addition to using limited, supportive quantitative
analysis, particularly the tool of benchmarking
which identifies reference point (s) in the research world of a particular
research project.
Composed by Anita C. Fonte, PhD.
Principal Consultant, Community Renaissance with significant resource
contribution from (listed in order of contribution emphasis):
Ethnography Principles in
Practice. Martyn
Hammersley and Paul Atkinson. 1983.
Public Stories in Public Dialogue. Anita C. Fonte, UA dissertation. 1996.
Narrative Analysis. Catherine Kohler Riessman. 1993.
Conversation Analysis: The Study of Talk-in-Action. George Psathas. 1995.
