Proposals And A Proposal

Posted by

6

Proposals for next year’s International Creative Research Methods Conference are coming in, though more slowly than in previous years. I am trying not to have sleepless nights about this! We often get a big last-minute flurry so by the deadline – 6 December 2024 in case you were wondering – we may have enough proposals to make a conference. I hope so. If not, we will extend the deadline, and make it clear that we have done so, and why. (I’m never impressed with those social media posts that say ‘this conference has been so popular that we have extended the deadline for proposals’.)

I wonder whether the slower rate of submissions is because we said we were particularly interested in proposals for creative methods other than those for gathering data. This was in response to some of the feedback from this year’s conference, where people pointed out that most of the sessions focused on data gathering, and said they would like to know more about creative methods at other stages of the process. We usually have several sessions on writing, and some on analytic techniques – The Handbook of Creative Data Analysis demonstrates that researchers are doing a lot of creative work at the analytic stage. And I know from my own research and writing that creative work is also being done with research design, literature reviews and other kinds of context-setting, presenting findings, disseminating results, and so on.

That said, we do not expect, or want, to have a creative methods conference which includes nothing about creative data gathering. So if you have a method you’d like to share, but you’ve been holding back because you think we might not be interested – bring it on!

While I’m talking about ICRMC, I have a proposal for you, especially if you work outside the UK or have colleagues who do. I am currently in discussions with people in Australia and Canada about the possibility of holding ICRMCs in those countries – not instead of the UK, but as well. Whether those discussions will bear fruit remains to be seen. But I would love to see ICRMC spread its wings and take to the skies. So if you would like to host an ICRMC outside the UK, please get in touch, and I will give you all the help and information I can.

Musings On Language

Posted by

0

Academics love a definition. Many journal articles, book chapters, even whole books include definitions of various terms. This is sensible because words are slippery. Defining terms helps us to use language with more precision. This makes it more likely that our readers will take from our writing what we had intended it to say, rather than attributing some other meaning to our work.

People attribute meanings to our work which we did not put there because everyone is always influenced by their own past experiences and present emotions. These lead some readers to reach different conclusions from other readers about the same piece of writing. Even though they have read the same words in the same order, they have had different experiences.

Also, human memory is notoriously fallible. Think of something you read a few months ago. How much of it can you remember? Unless you are one of the rare people with a photographic or eidetic memory, I bet the answer is ‘not much’. This means that even when we define our terms, the impact of that definition will fade with time.

This has happened even to key research terms such as ‘statistical significance’. That term was originally intended to indicate how likely or unlikely a result was to have occurred by chance. However, lay people might read a newspaper article reporting that a research finding is ‘statistically significant’ and attribute the everyday meaning of ‘significance’, i.e. important or meaningful, to the findings. Indeed the journalist who wrote the article may have made the same attribution. Yet statistical significance was never intended to imply that a result was important or meaningful in everyday terms.

The statisticians who devised tests of statistical significance were careful to define their terms. Unfortunately the care they took was diluted over time, and the conflation between the use of ‘significance’ as both a technical and an everyday term caused a multitude of errors and conflicts, ultimately leading to mass calls for its retirement as a technical term.

There are examples of this from other fields too. Emergency medical dispatchers in the US used to ask callers whether the patient was alert. This caused confusion and delay, which is not what anyone wants in a crisis. Enquiries revealed that ‘alert’ has a specific clinical meaning which is not understood in the same way by members of the public. Now dispatchers ask callers whether the patient is responding normally, which is much easier for most people to answer and still tells the dispatcher what they need to know.

There is a symbiotic relationship between language and thought. Language helps us to think; many of us think in language, at least some of the time; the language we use, hear, and read influences the thoughts we have. When we need to name something, such as a new research method we have devised, it is tempting to reach for a name with pizazz, a name that will be eye-catching and memorable. Perhaps those early statisticians chose ‘statistical significance’ for that very reason. However, experience shows that it makes more sense to choose a term which offers a description that is as simple, clear, and accurate as possible. Even then there are no guarantees that everyone will understand – but at least we have given it our best shot.

I Won An Award!

Posted by

16

On Monday 29 July I got an absolutely astonishing email from the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM). I had to read it about 12 times – all of the words and sentences made sense, but I couldn’t get the meaning to sink into my brain. Particularly the part that said “We would like to award you an NCRM Lifetime Achievement Award.” I was completely gobsmacked.

The following morning at 5 am I went from being fast asleep to wide awake, my heart racing and my brain in overdrive, thinking “I’m getting a lifetime achievement award!” I couldn’t tell anyone apart from my nearest and dearest, as the news was not to be publicised for another month. NCRM eventually went public on 29 August when I was away at the Autscape conference. The reaction on social media, and from the couple of people I mentioned it to at the conference, was hearteningly positive.

One interesting thing about getting a lifetime achievement award: once the news has sunk in and a few people have responded positively, it’s really good for counteracting impostor syndrome. When the critical voices start up in my head, I tell them “shut up, I got a lifetime achievement award” – and it works!

Image of me collecting my award in Manchester

The award ceremony was in Manchester as part of NCRM’s MethodsCon conference. It was in the early evening, two days after ICRMC and the day before I was going on holiday. So I could get there which was nice. I arrived a bit early and chatted with a few people, including Jackie Carter who I was delighted to meet in person after knowing her online for years.

I wasn’t the only award recipient; there were two other awards. One was for developing new methods, which went to a team of four researchers: Susie Weller, Emma Davidson, Ros Edwards and Lynn Jamieson. The other was for positively impacting the wellbeing of older adults, which went to doctoral student Naureen Meghani and her supervisor Joanna Hudson.

I was given the opportunity to say a few words, so I talked about my work on the International Creative Research Methods Conference, the Creative Research Methods in Practice book series, and the Journal of Creative Research Methods. My main point was that, with a little support, independent researchers can do a great deal. There were funders in the room; I hope they were listening.

I have worked quite closely with NCRM in a wide variety of ways over the last 10 years. They have been incredibly supportive of my work and that has been a huge help to me. They are set to lose their funding in a year’s time, which I think is a great shame, because I think there is still a considerable need for the kind of work they do. Not least in supporting independent as well as other researchers. There is very little support available for independent researchers in the UK, and almost no access to research funding. I have argued for years that this is a waste of a national resource because independent researchers are agile and responsive, can do a lot with a small amount of funding, and have tiny overheads. I will continue to make this argument at every chance I get. As I’m now 60 years old, I doubt this will lead to real change in my own working lifetime, but I hope I can help to facilitate change for the next generation of researchers. If this award provides a stepping stone towards reaching that position, NCRM’s impact will be greater than they might currently expect.

Independent Research Ethics Committee – panel members needed!

Posted by

1

You may already be aware that I have been involved in setting up a new Independent Research Ethics Committee (aka IREC). The aim is to offer ‘nose-to-tail’ ethical review, i.e. considering all aspects of a project, with minimal bureaucracy and maximum flexibility. This is proving surprisingly popular, particularly as we have done very little promotion apart from setting up a website and a few posts on social media. Which means we need more panel members.

This is paid work, though irregular and freelance. We can’t guarantee any specific amount of work but I can tell you that right now we have as much as we can handle.

We are looking for people with ethics expertise, though our definition of that is broad. There are no specific requirements, e.g. you don’t have to be (or have been) a member of a research ethics committee, or be an academic, or have written a book on ethics. You do need to be able and willing to work within our seven principles of intersectionality, justice, dignity, respect, fairness, honesty, and care. More information about what we understand by these principles is on the website.

Middle-aged white women and qualitative researchers are over-represented in the applications we receive. We have nothing against middle-aged white women (I am one! At least, I think I still am – 60 is middle-aged these days, right?) or qualitative researchers. Being one or the other – or both – will not necessarily rule you out. But we do seek a diverse pool of people from which to draw panel members. In terms of the make-up of our current pool, we would particularly welcome applications from:

  • Men, trans and non-binary people
  • Quantitative researchers
  • People of colour
  • People with lived experience of intersectionality
  • Younger and older people

You do not need to be resident in the UK, though you do need to be available for online meetings with other panel members. At present we are all based in Europe.

Our application process is quite straightforward: we only ask for a statement of up to 500 words plus two referees who can confirm the claims you make in your statement. If you would like an informal chat with me first, please email the IREC address you will find in the link above, and someone will be in touch to arrange a brief meeting.

If this doesn’t sound like something that would suit you, perhaps someone you know might be a good fit. If so, I would be grateful if you could pass this on to them. Thank you.

The Handbook of Creative Data Analysis

Posted by

5

I am delighted to say that The Handbook of Creative Data Analysis was published this month. It’s a chunky tome with 29 substantive chapters, each outlining a creative method and its implications, plus introductory and concluding chapters by the editors.

Here’s how it came about. I first wanted to do this book in 2016. I knew it wasn’t a book I could write myself unless I could get some funding to research it – I applied for a grant from Leverhulme in 2017, for which independent researchers were eligible, but I was unsuccessful. I didn’t think it was a book that could be co-written, either. I thought of an edited collection, but wasn’t confident of doing that well enough on my own. And I didn’t have any good ideas about who to ask to co-edit with me.

Then in February 2021 I chaired a webinar on creativity in research for Policy Press with Dawn Mannay (Professor of Creative Research Methodologies at Cardiff) and Ali Roy (Professor of Social Research at UCLan). I already knew them both and it was a pleasure to do the webinar with them. We were surprised by the number of questions about data analysis, and after the webinar it occurred to me that they would be good co-editors for the book I had in mind. Then I considered their busy academic lives and figured they probably wouldn’t be interested. Then I thought I could just send an email to ask – nothing ventured, nothing gained… and they both said yes!

We decided Policy Press should publish the book and we put together a call for proposals. At this stage we were envisaging a standard-sized book with maybe 12 chapters. What we weren’t envisaging was around 60 proposals, most of which were really good. So we asked Policy Press if we could do a Handbook instead and they said yes. (Around this time I had also been asked to edit the Bloomsbury Handbook of Creative Research Methods. Fortunately I was able to divert a lot of the good proposals we couldn’t fit into the Policy Press Handbook to the Bloomsbury Handbook, so we didn’t have to reject too many outright.)

The process of editing this Handbook was a joy for several reasons. Dawn and Ali were great to work with – we named ourselves ‘good cop’ (me), ‘bad cop’ (Dawn), and ‘ambivalent cop’ (Ali)! I wanted to say yes to as much as possible, Dawn had a keen eye for quality standards, and Ali was great at seeing the merits of, and balancing, different arguments. And the combination of those three attributes was, in practice, greater than the sum of its parts. Then our contributors were, without exception, terrific, responsive, collegial people to work with. And Policy Press were thoroughly supportive throughout.

The part I liked best, though, was the learning. Each individual chapter held fascinating lessons and made me want to have a go at doing analysis with emojis, or reflective stitching, or word clouds. But there were some overall learning points, each made by several authors, that I found particularly interesting. The first is that any data can be analysed creatively: quant or qual, conventionally collected or creatively generated. The second is that analysis is not a discrete phase of research which falls between acquiring data and reporting results. Analytic work begins at the design stage of research and continues through dissemination and beyond. The third overall learning point is that doing analysis differently helps us to find new insights, learning, and understanding. The fourth is that analysing data often requires creativity, whether or not this is explicit.

Researchers use tacit as well as acknowledged creative practices to support their analytic work, and this is highlighted in several chapters. These tacit creative practices have always fascinated me. When I get stuck in the analytic mire, I write poems or create diagrams to help me move forward. Sometimes only half a poem or diagram, and my analytic poems never see the light of day though occasionally my diagrams do. But these techniques help my analytic thought processes. I was interested to discover other tacit creative practices, such as visual arts (doodling, drawing, collage etc), making (models, installations etc), music (to accompany and promote thought), and embodied practices such as walking, running and swimming. No doubt there are others too.

The fifth overall learning point is that analytic processes do not need to be fixed or rigid. This book demonstrates, in many ways, that analytic work can be experimental, playful, and fun.

At present the book is only available in hardback and digital versions. The digital version is much cheaper than the hardback, and you can get a 25% discount on either version by signing up to the publisher’s e-newsletter. If you are at college or university you should be able to get hold of a copy from the library. And there will be a paperback in due course. I am so happy that this book is out in the world because I think it will help a lot of people.

Feedback from #ICRMC23

Posted by

0

I am astonished and delighted that feedback from last year’s International Creative Research Methods Conference is still coming in. Recently I found out that Lucy Robinson from Oxford University, who attended last year’s conference, published a review of the event in the most recent issue of the British Psychological Society’s Qualitative Methods in Psychology (QMiP) Bulletin. Unfortunately, it is paywalled but I was able to get hold of a copy. Lucy said ‘the hardest part was deciding what to attend’ (which chimed with feedback I was given at the event) and that it was ‘difficult to choose a highlight’. She also said: 

Ultimately, Helen’s goal for the conference was to ‘bring together the global CRM community to share knowledge, promote understanding, enable networking and have fun!’ (Kara, 2023, taken from the conference programme). From my perspective, something she achieved wholeheartedly.

I’m not just picking out the good bits to share with you, because Lucy’s review was entirely positive, as was almost all of the feedback we have received. There was a little helpful constructive criticism, most of which we have been able to implement this year, and other than that it was compliments all the way. But don’t take my word for it, check out these tweets: 

None of those are from people in my own networks, they are all from people I hadn’t met in person or online before the conference. And there were lots more – search #ICRMC on the socials to find them. 

Then, even more recently, I heard from Heather Bullen that #ICRMC23 was featured in the Actual News! Not the national news, but the Liverpool Echo, which reported on a project that was conceived at last year’s conference. The project involved women refugees and asylum-seekers, and used trauma-informed zine-making to explore ways to build resilience and move beyond trauma. The report is very favourable, with women commenting that the project helped them to ‘learn to live again’, ‘find peace’, and ‘get hope’. It is lovely to know that a presentation and connection at #ICRMC23 led to such a positive impact. 

Perhaps this is part of the reason we have already sold over half of the in-person tickets for this year’s conference. So, if you haven’t booked yet and you want to come in person, it would be worth doing so soon, to ensure you don’t miss out. There is also an online conference with two streams this year – we only had one stream online in 2023, having two streams this year is partly due to feedback received last year. The programmes and all the information you need to book your place are here. See you in September!

On Editing Book Series 

Posted by

2

Since 2017 I have been working with Pat Thomson on the Insider Guides to Success in Academia. We now have 15 published titles and more in the pipeline. Then a couple of years ago I started to work with Policy Press on the Creative Research Methods in Practice series; the first book, Photovoice Reimagined by Nicole Brown, was published in April, there are three more scheduled for this year, and – again – more in the pipeline. 

A book series needs a clear purpose and a significant investment of time from its editor(s). That said, I have heard about series editors who do very little beyond adding their name to a series. I am not that kind of editor – I don’t want to micromanage authors, but I do offer help and advice. Some authors don’t need any assistance, particularly if they are experienced, while others need quite a bit of input, particularly if they are inexperienced. People helped me when I was a novice writer so I’m glad to be able to pay that forward. 

Rather than simply acting as a conduit between authors and publisher, I read and comment on every proposal and every manuscript. I consider reviewers’ comments carefully and discuss them with Pat for the Insider series, and with our publishers for both series, before passing them on to authors. And I am always available for any queries or concerns that series authors may have.  

Another part of the work is commissioning books, which lies somewhere between offering people a publishing opportunity and persuading people to write for your series. I try to stay closer to the ‘offering’ than the ‘persuading’ end of that spectrum, though sometimes it’s hard. Pat and I wanted to commission a book on project management for researchers from a very early stage in our series, and we tried one pair of authors who agreed but then were unable to follow through, and another single author who also agreed but was unable to follow through, all for perfectly understandable and very good reasons. So now we’re writing it ourselves with two colleagues. I co-authored the first book in the series on Publishing For Your Doctoral Research with Janet Salmons, and more recently Pat has written one on Refining Your Academic Writing. 

Since the launch of the creative methods series, I have had several enquiries from would-be authors. Together with the books I had already begun commissioning, I have been promised around a dozen books. Apparently a 50% conversion rate, from promised to proposal, is good going. So, I need to keep on promoting the series, and talking to people about the series, to try to secure more promises – and then ideally proposals. 

I get some royalties as series editor. Not a lot, but then, although it’s a job for sure, it’s much less work than writing the books. However, it does take time for them to come through. The first book in the Insider series was published in December 2019, so my first royalties were in March 2021, and my editor royalties for that series over the last four years have been just over £1,000 in total. On the plus side, most of that was this year, so it’s ramping up now – but series editing is definitely a long game, not a quick win. 

There are two parts of series editing I like best of all. One is when an unsolicited submission arrives which really fits the series, and the other is when a box of published books arrives in my office. As series editor, I get a few free paperback copies which I use for promotion, and it’s always a joy to see the finished product. Seeing the sales figures is nice too! 

The worst part is when we have to say ‘no’ to an author. This doesn’t happen often, and I think I have got better at managing it, but I haven’t always dealt with it well. It is hard to tell someone that their cherished vision doesn’t match yours.  

Most of the time, though, I really enjoy editing book series. I love seeing the series grow, watching authors flourish, and hearing readers’ comments. However, I don’t enjoy it enough to take on any more series – two is plenty! 

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood

NCIS Guide for Independent Scholars 

Posted by

8

NCIS stands for the National Coalition for Independent Scholars which is in fact a global institution that includes independent researchers as well as independent scholars. I have been a member for some years and was very grateful when they supported the inaugural International Creative Research Methods Conference with sponsorship plus a conference chairperson and someone to manage the online chat.  

I am grateful to them again because they have produced an open-access Guide for Independent Scholars which is free to download. It is a full-length book with 17 chapters in five sections (full disclosure: two of the chapters are by me). The Guide was edited by Amanda Haste and Linda Baines, former and current Presidents of NCIS, and they did a fine job. 

The main reason I am grateful is because I think now people will stop asking me to write a book about and for indies. Or at least, if anyone does ask me, I can say no because it’s already been done – and done very well. I think it is a much better book than I could have written, because independent research and scholarship is an incredibly wide and varied profession, and multiple voices of people from around the world give a much clearer view of this breadth and variety than I could have done alone. I think this is part of the reason why I didn’t want to write a book for indies. I have a strong instinct for which books I can write by myself, and which need a pair or team of authors or to be an edited collection. I guess maybe I could have edited a collection of chapters, but Amanda and Linda are far better placed to do that, with their extensive NCIS networks, than I would have been. 

Also, I have been glad to be able to read this book! It contains a lot of valuable stories and nuggets of information, useful even for someone like me who has been independent for 25 years, and invaluable for someone starting out or early in their independent career. I recommend this book if you are independent yourself, or you work with indies, or you know an independent researcher or scholar, or you are considering moving into independent work. I am pleased to be able to tell you that it is a good read – at least, the chapters not by me are; you will have to judge mine for yourself. 

Asynchronous Online Focus Groups

Posted by

4

I recently had the opportunity to take part in an asynchronous online focus group. So, I did; not least because I was curious to know what it would be like. I found it a rather odd experience. I had a few problems with the tech to start with, which was a bit annoying but is not unusual. I managed to get it sorted in the end – my pop-up blockers were to blame – but I did come close to abandoning the whole exercise through frustration at having to email support people rather than doing what I needed to do in the group. I’m not a techie, but I understand that it can be difficult to create a platform which works seamlessly on any type of hardware – laptop, tablet, mobile etc – and in any browser. So, tolerance may be required for participating in research online.

Once I got into the online environment, I found a series of intriguing questions to work through. Others had already responded to some of the questions so I could take their responses into account. (I don’t think I was supposed to be able to see them until I had answered each question myself, but I could see them, so I read them before formulating my own answers.) Even so, it didn’t feel at all like a group. I have facilitated many in-person focus groups and the interactions between group members are definitely a big part of the process; so much so that some researchers have chosen to analyse these as well as the transcript. Maybe if there had been more responses and exchanges it might have felt more like a group discussion, but I think it would still have felt like quite a solitary, albeit interesting, endeavour.

I think part of why it didn’t feel much like a group was the amount of reading and viewing required. The focus group didn’t only have questions to answer, but also text, videos, and diagrams to digest in between each question. Also, there were points where to give a full answer, I would have needed to stop and read a couple of journal articles and/or book chapters, and/or take a walk to think about the issue. But I didn’t because of time. 

This focus group had 10 discussion topics, most of which included at least a dozen questions. In theory, we could choose a topic to focus on, but in practice, I found I had no option but to work through all of the questions from the start (though it is entirely possible that this was due to my technological incompetence). As a result, I spent more time feeling a sense of urgency to get through all the many questions than happily engaging with the interesting material presented. It took me almost three hours to work through the questions at speed. I skip-read some of the text and skipped almost all the videos. I started to watch one in an area I was particularly interested in but then saw that it was 17 minutes long and decided I couldn’t allocate that much time. I tried to start another but the software asked for access to my camera and microphone so I said no because of the security risks. If I had engaged with everything as thoroughly as the researcher no doubt wanted me to – and as I would have liked to myself, if my time was unlimited – I think it would have taken me at least a full day to work through all the materials and answer all the questions. And when I did eventually get to the end, it was just the end. After all that work I would have liked a ‘thank you’ message at the very least, and ideally a big burst of fireworks on the screen! Though I expect the researcher didn’t do that because they were only expecting participants to focus on one or two topics.

The group was online for a couple of months and the researcher included various messages encouraging members to come back and respond to others’ input. I can see why this would be useful for the research, but I couldn’t see much – if any – evidence of people doing that, even though my own contributions were made closer to the end than the start of the operational period. Also, I didn’t go back and add further responses myself. I felt as if I should, but I didn’t get around to it. There was no option to receive email alerts when a new answer was posted, which might have helped, though everyone’s inboxes are overstuffed so if that option had been available I might well not have taken it up, or taken it up and then deleted the emails without reading them. 

I could see that the researcher had worked hard to try to provide a good online environment in which their expert participants could engage with specialised material. Alternative methods could include: reducing the number of questions, or separating the sections into different “focus groups” in different online spaces and asking people to participate in one or more of those groups in accordance with their interests, preferences, and capacities. Also, I think for participation which is so complex and time-consuming, there should really be an incentive, though I know not everyone has a budget for such things.

Although I found it quite onerous, participation was useful because it provided some insight into the potential impacts of this method on a participant. That gave me some ideas about what to do and not do if I ever want to use asynchronous online focus groups myself, or if I am mentoring someone who wants to use this method. It was also useful because the researcher who set it up was doing their best to research a complex and important piece of work which is likely to end up helping a lot of people. Although aspects of the experience were frustrating at times, my interest in methods renders those aspects also interesting to me in retrospect. So overall I think it was time well spent.

The Importance of Checking

Posted by

2

Recently I was talking to a friend about the exercise routine another friend is using to recover from a serious illness, which involves a lot of walking. My friend said, “He should try bricking.” 

I asked what bricking was, and my friend said, “You put a brick in a rucksack and wear it while you’re walking. After a while, you add another brick. It’s really good for strengthening your legs and core.” 

I was intrigued so I did a quick search online. 

“You mean rucking,” I said. 

“Rucking?” he said. “Sounds a bit rude. What’s rucking?” 

“What you’re talking about – putting weights in a backpack and wearing it while walking. It comes from military training.”

“It’s called bricking! I invented it, 30 years ago!” my friend said, in mock indignation.

This conversation reminded me of a Guardian column by Julie Burchill which made an impression on me when I first read it almost 25 years ago. Julie was pleased with herself for inventing the phrase “They married in Hastings and repented in Leicester”. While I can’t find that column, I have found a follow-up article from 2000 in which she acknowledges the readers who wrote to tell her that “her” phrase was not original.

The Bible tells us that “there is nothing new under the sun”. Although there are debates about the origin and authorship of the Bible, nobody contests the fact that it was written a very long time ago. So, this concept is evidently not a recent phenomenon. But why is it relevant for research and scholarship? Because when one of us has an idea, which feels like a good idea, it also feels as if we are the first person ever to think of that idea. But clearly, we may not be.

I see this in the creative research methods literature where there are examples of people in separate parts of the world devising the same method as each other and each claiming its invention. Which is fair enough because they have both – or all – invented it. But in Euro-Western cultures, people regard these kinds of ideas as the property of the person who had the ideas, and this leads to all sorts of problems.

So, if you have a good idea, it is important to check whether you really are the first person to have that idea. Look online, use all the search terms you can think of, and try your hardest to make sure nobody else has had the same brainwave. This is not a fool-proof process. I only can read the English language so I can’t search for work in other languages. Also, people use different terms for the same thing which makes searching difficult. I see this often where people in separate locations who have coincidentally devised the same method, each call it something different. But if you check as best you can, then you have done all anyone could ask of you.

Photo by Alexander Suhorucov