Walking to work: me and my treadmill desk

Posted by Helen Kara

me at treadmill desk pic I guess by now pretty much everyone knows that it’s not a great idea to spend the majority of your time sitting down. But when you’re a researcher and a writer, that’s exactly what you do, at your desk, often all day every day. Now and again you get to go out and sit down in your car, or on a train, till you get to a meeting where you sit down and talk to people. Not a great improvement, as I’m sure you’ll agree.

A couple of years I heard about standing desks, and was interested, though unsure I’d be able to stand for hours at a time. I asked around on Twitter and found some people who liked them and said I’d get used to it. But I still wasn’t sure. Then I found out about sit-stand desks, which let you swap between sitting and standing. That sounded more manageable, but I still wasn’t entirely convinced, and the price was prohibitive with (at the time) nothing available for under £1,000.

Also, the received wisdom is that we should all walk ten thousand steps a day. I don’t have a gadget to count my steps for me, so I did some old-fashioned counting and sums a while back and worked out that I rarely hit 10K, most days landing somewhere between 2K and 5K. I couldn’t see how a desk that simply enabled me to stand would help much with my overall fitness.

Then I heard about treadmill desks. And I really, really wanted one. But the prices were even more eye-watering than for the sit-stand desks. Also, I was worried about how many electrical components could go wrong – which, in a worst-case scenario, could mean shelling out for a whole new ensemble.

Social media came to my rescue, specifically the lovely Nicola Morgan (@nicolamorgan), eminent writer, speaker, haver of bright ideas, and all-round Good Egg. She in turn had been alerted by her friend Vee Frier to the possibility of using a standing desk with an office treadmill. Nicola implemented this ensemble and found that it worked really well for her.

And now I have one too. Specifically: a Stand Steady desk, which sits on top of my old desk (I don’t usually shop at Amazon but they’re the only UK stockist), and an Office Fitness walking treadmill. The treadmill goes up to more than 4 miles per hour; Nicola is happily working at 2.5 mph and I’ve accelerated from 1.5 to 2 mph over the last few weeks. At that speed, I do 76 steps a minute, or 4,560 in an hour. Which means that, in just two hours a day, I do 9,120 steps – and suddenly my 10k target is very achievable indeed. And I have no trouble typing while walking slowly and steadily, as this video demonstrates:

I have no idea whether I’ve lost weight, as I don’t use scales, but I feel a little more toned in places. And fitter. Also, like Nicola, I don’t need to use the heating so much, as moving keeps me warm. The sound of the treadmill doesn’t worry me at all, in fact it’s quite soothing. The only thing I don’t like is that the treadmill stops, after 30 minutes, very suddenly with no warning. I think some beeping and a gradual slow-down would be safer and more pleasant. But I do like the textured footplates on either side of the treadmill, which make it easy and safe to move to a standing position, so I can e.g. reach down to my old desktop for my headphones when the phone rings, and then step back onto the moving treadmill while I chat with whoever has called me.

I can’t walk all the time I’m working – I tried that to begin with, and wore myself out – so I’ve had to create another workstation for sitting (I have arthritis which affects my hands and they don’t work well enough for me to shift everything around when I want to change position). Luckily I have another desk, which already had a computer screen and most of a docking station so, a few accessories later, I was sorted. I can’t imagine going back to sitting all day. I love my treadmill desk!

There are two other things I love this week. One is the first review of my new book on Creative Research Methods, which I was glad and relieved to see is a positive review. And the other is the conference on Creative Research Methods at the British Library conference centre, this Friday, where the book will be officially launched. I can’t wait!

The Importance Of Networking

Posted by Helen Kara

networking I began work as an indie researcher in 1999. Over the next seven years I completed dozens of research contracts, an MSc, and a PhD. I also built up a good professional network, mostly in the English Midlands where I live. The people in my network ran local government departments and charities. They liked me and I liked them: we would meet for coffee, or lunch, and talk shop. After I was awarded my PhD in 2006, I rarely had to apply for work; mostly I was simply offered small contracts that I could complete alone, or slightly larger ones where I might sub-contract some of the work to a colleague. And on the rare occasions when I did write a tender for a local organisation, sometimes I was the only applicant, or the commissioner would have two or three to choose from.

Then in 2010 we had a change of government, the cuts began, and my network imploded. Every single person either took redundancy, or early retirement, or accepted a demotion to a non-managerial post. I was left as high and dry as a spine on a cactus in the desert. Lots of people who had lost or given up their jobs declared themselves to be available for independent work, while a number of my peers who had been indie researchers for some time found, like me, that the work dried up. At one point I did a tender for one piece of work, for an existing client, a national organisation, and I didn’t win. When I asked for feedback, I learned that they had had 26 applications. That is nothing compared to some of the employment recruitment numbers I’ve heard of in the last few years, but it’s a lot more than the half-dozen tenders they might have received in the noughties.

The silver lining was that I had time, which I used to write my first book and to start building new networks. In particular, I began to network with academics, and to network more actively online. In 2011 I applied to the Third Sector Research Centre at the University of Birmingham for an Associate Research Fellowship, and in 2012 they took me on. Twitter is an environment I enjoy and it’s a great place to network with academics, worldwide, who also enjoy the exchanges there. I also like offering help with research methods to people who are struggling; it’s amazing how much pertinent advice you can fit into 140 characters (or 280, or 420, or…!) And I also kept my personal friends informed about my work – at least, until they started to glaze over – because, well, you never know.

Remember those three gigs I landed in one day, two weeks ago? They all came through networking, even the one where we wrote a tender. For that one, I was recommended to the lead organisation by my mentor at the Third Sector Research Centre. The gig in Calgary came through a woman I met online, a fellow fiction writer. I met her in real life once, in England, shortly before she emigrated to Canada. We’ve kept in touch via Facebook, and at times I’ve been able to give her advice and support with her postgraduate studies. She wrote a very kind review of my first research methods book, and has been delightfully encouraging about my second. But I was gobsmacked when she announced that she wanted to pay me to go and do some work with her in Calgary.

And the Swansea gig came through an even more modern route. A woman in Canada, who I have only ever spoken to on Twitter, recommended me to an American woman in Swansea, who had never heard of me nor I of her. But she evidently trusted the woman in Canada, because she emailed an enquiry, then we spoke on the phone, and I taught a very enjoyable session there last week, helping her postgraduate students to formulate their research questions.

So, if you want to be an indie researcher, you need to be comfortable with networking, both in person and online. And you need to carry on doing it even when you don’t know where it may lead. I had no idea, when I started building new networks in 2010, that they would lead to Swansea or Calgary. And I have no idea where else they may lead. But that’s the indie researcher’s life: exciting, unpredictable, and forever uncertain.

The Indie Researcher Rollercoaster

Posted by Helen Kara

rollercoaster When I’m teaching research methods to postgraduate students, I encourage them to be comfortable with uncertainty. After all, research is a quest to discover the unknown, so if you’re already certain about everything you’re probably not doing it right. But if you want to be an indie researcher, you need to be comfortable with a higher level of uncertainty than most.

Of course there is also much less certainty, these days, in conventional jobs. Short-term contracts, lack of tenure, funding cuts etc all serve to destabilise employment. But if you have a job with a contract, at least you know you’ll get a salary payment at the end of each month for as long as the contract lasts, and you know how much the payment will be. No indie researcher has that level of security, and many of us earn much less than our salaried counterparts.

In my culture we don’t discuss financial specifics very often. I think that’s unhelpful, so let’s subvert that taboo. Last year was a good year for me: I took home £22,000. That is enough for me. I can live, enjoy myself, and save on that level of income. This is partly because of my life choices: I don’t have children, I do have a partner who earns around the same as me, and we have paid off our mortgage. Also, my greatest luxury is time. I’m not interested in spending money on make-up, beauty treatments, jewellery, household goods, etc; shopping is low down my list of desirable leisure activities; I don’t have expensive hobbies, and I happily drive an old unfashionable car. But I love to buy myself time: time to write, time to see my family and my friends, time just to be me, living my life my way, free and in peace. That seems to me the greatest possible luxury.

Last year, though, was a very busy year. It needed to be as I’d taken home around half that for each of the previous three years. So I was glad to become involved in two contracts a year ago: the Big Lottery Fund’s research into building capabilities, and the Independent Commission on the future of third sector infrastructure. And I was zipping around the country all year: from Chelmsford to Wigan, London, Exeter, Sheffield, Bristol, and London again, Portsmouth, Tameside, and oh yes back to London, and so on and so forth. That ended with the launch of the NAVCA commission’s report at the House of Commons in January and, since then, life has been very quiet.

I do have one new contract, a local evaluation running from November of last year to spring 2016, but it doesn’t require a great deal of work. I’ve had a few enquiries, and been involved in a couple of tenders, even one interview, but nothing actually converted into real work. I’m good at using my down time and have been productive on the writing front as well as moving forward with some non-work projects like refurbishing my office. But I did start worrying about where the next contract was coming from, and preparing to make some financial cut-backs of my own.

Then last week I had one of those amazing days that come along every now and again in an indie researcher’s life. First, I heard that the interview I’d been involved in had been successful, and we’d won the contract. This was great news as it’s a sizeable piece of work, and means I’m now on break-even for the next year, so anything else that comes in is profit. It also means I can be certain of a £1,000 payment per month for the next 12 months. But it’s also a whole new world of uncertainty, as I had never worked with anyone from the lead firm, or anyone else on the research team, before we started work on the tender, so I have no idea how it will work out. Still, paid uncertainty is less uncertain than unpaid uncertainty. Then I received a commission from a university department I haven’t worked with before, who are making noises about developing an ongoing relationship, which is music to my ears. But, again, more uncertainty: it’s in Swansea, a city I don’t know, and I’ll be teaching postgraduate students of management which is not my area of expertise – though they need to learn how to do research, which is my area of expertise. And finally, I heard that I have secured my first international speaking engagement, giving a keynote at a conference in Calgary this autumn. The conference is already fully booked, with over 200 people from a range of public services including academia.

So essentially, in 24 hours, I swapped the uncertainty of wondering whether I would ever get any more work for the uncertainty of wondering whether I could actually do all the new work that had just landed in my lap. It felt very much like that top-of-the-rollercoaster moment, when your stomach begins to lurch just from looking at the drop, before you actually start the descent. But these new problems are great problems to have and, after 16 years as an indie researcher, I know how to ride this rollercoaster.

Creative Research Methods and Gender

Posted by Helen Kara

Let me begin by saying that I know gender is not binary. In fact, it is probably not reducible to any system of categorisation or classification. I am well aware that some people are physically male but mentally and emotionally female, or vice versa, and that some of these people find this problematic and would choose a hormonal and surgical remedy. Other people, sometimes known as ‘cisgender’, are emotionally and mentally in accord with their physical gender. (I’m fine with this concept, I just wish it didn’t have such an ugly word for its label.) Some are androgynous, physically, or mentally and emotionally, or both. Others are ‘genderqueer’, ‘genderfluid’, ‘third-gender’, and so on. Some societies are more accepting of these diversities than others, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to deny their existence altogether.

Nevertheless, most people, in most social situations, talk happily about men and women. And I am going to do that in this post, though with an acknowledgement that ‘men’ or ‘women’ includes those deemed by society to be ‘men’ or ‘women’, who as individuals may be more or less happy or unhappy with the definition they are given.

I am a woman, physically, mentally, emotionally, and sometimes quite crossly when I think about how women are treated as second-class citizens in many ways in many parts of the world. We’ve come a long way, for sure, but we’re not there yet. Such as in academia where, for example, only 20% of professors are women, and 70% of fellows of the UK’s Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS) are men (yes, I counted all 1005 of them, just for you). Professors and AcSS fellows are also predominantly white.

I am a feminist, always have been, probably always will be. So I was delighted to be asked, last month, to speak on Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4. This programme is an institution. It is sometimes criticised as ‘tokenistic’ (why should women only get an hour?) or ‘discriminatory’ (why isn’t there a programme called Men’s Hour?’). But it has a large audience, of whom a big percentage is male, and it deals intelligently with topics of interest to many women – and evidently to many men too.

The subject of discussion on the programme, female sterilisation, is irrelevant here. What is relevant is that, even though it was a completely unrelated subject, the debate started me thinking about my latest book from a different angle. When I got home, I checked the 109 boxed examples – and found that 80% were generated by women researchers. This felt exciting. Was there, could there be, an area of research where women were at the forefront?

Then, being an ethical and reflexive researcher, I began to wonder whether I’d introduced a bias. After all, I had selected these examples from the many more I’d read. I thought I had selected them on merit, but had I really? My thoughts turned to the 94 abstracts received by the Social Research Association for presentations at the forthcoming conference on creative research methods. How many of those were led by women researchers? I counted up, and guess what? Eighty per cent. Just like the examples in my book. And non-white researchers have a sizeable presence too, both men and women.

Women are not just doing fluffy girly qualitative research, either. Have you heard of Daina Taimina? She succeeded, where men had failed for centuries, in modelling hyperbolic geometry. In case you haven’t heard of that either, it’s the geometry of frilly things, like kale or sea kelp or oak leaf lettuce. And it’s evidently really difficult to model, or someone would have worked it out before Taimina realised crochet was the perfect vehicle. I recommend her TED talk on the subject, it’s fascinating even if you know little or nothing about geometry. And women aren’t only using arts-based methods: both the book and the conference abstracts show that they’re also using technology in research, mixing methods to good effect, and working within transformative research frameworks.

So I think, in creative research methods, we have a field of enquiry where women are leading the way. And it’s not before time!

Writing: Progress and Process

Posted by Helen Kara

I finished writing my book at the end of last October. My aim since then has been to produce one written output per month, such as a completed first draft of a writing project, or a submitted journal article or book chapter. So far, so not too bad:

writing on keyboard One sole authored book chapter submitted, reviews received and dealt with

One co-authored book chapter submitted, waiting for reviews

One sole authored journal article submitted, waiting for reviews

One first draft of a voluntary writing project sent out for feedback

One first draft of a top secret writing project sent out for feedback

I have also made progress on five other outputs: two sole authored journal articles, two co-authored journal articles, and a working paper intended for publication by the Third Sector Research Centre on their website.

The voluntary writing project is an update of the Social Research Association‘s research ethics guidelines. I am on the Board of the SRA, and lead on ethics for them, so it is my responsibility to see that the update gets done. It’s a daunting responsibility, too, as the last version has been – and still is – highly regarded by academics and practitioners alike, and so is a very hard act to follow. But the last version was published in 2003 and, therefore, in great need of an update. It seems odd to think that in 2003, not everyone had email, the BlackBerry was only just being released, and smartphones with touchscreens hadn’t even been invented. The updated guidelines will need to cover topics such as research using technology, social media, and the ethical implications of innovative methods. Though one great advantage we have now, which the authors of the 2003 guidelines didn’t have, is that we can signpost readers to existing online resources such as the invaluable wiki hosted by the Association of Internet Researchers which contains a wealth of resources for ethical decision-making in internet-related research.

This week I will mostly be writing, as the Easter holidays mean it’s quiet on the client work front. I have the first set of feedback on the SRA guidelines, so I want to work towards a second draft of those, which will then be sent out to different people for more feedback. I also want to make progress on one of the sole authored journal articles, one of the co-authored journal articles, and the working paper.

This may seem like an onerous workload, but actually I prefer having a variety of writing tasks on the go. It is quite difficult for writers to sustain productivity for several hours at a time, and I find it helps to be able to switch between projects. I use the same approach when I’m writing a book, by treating each chapter as a separate project. In terms of productivity, once you know how, you can often work more skilfully and more effectively in a concentrated half-hour than in a relaxed couple of hours. I don’t time myself, though; my method is to start with one project, work until I notice my concentration slipping, then switch to another project. That works well for me.

As for the top secret project: it’s something I’m really excited about, and it won’t be top secret for ever. As soon as I’m ready to go public, you, my dear blog readers, will be the first to know.

Desperate Soliciting from Academic Journals

Posted by Helen Kara

begging and pleading When you’ve published an academic journal article or two, you start getting emails which, at first sight, seem very flattering. They praise your previous work, or your expertise, or both, then invite you to write an article for their journal, or to edit a special issue, or produce an e-book. But when you look more closely, these emails start to look a bit odd. Some ask me to write for journals in medicine, life sciences, or STEM disciplines, all areas in which I have little knowledge and no expertise. Others want me to take on onerous editing responsibilities, sourcing articles from prestigious scholars in return for one whole free electronic journal issue or e-book. And some are verging on the surreal. Here is an example I did not make up:

“Dear Dr. H Helen,

Tranquil greets from [name of] Journal… We would be truly fortunate if you could assist us to successfully release the issues by your active and enthusiastic submission of manuscript which will be processed & published under [name of] Journal for upcoming glorious year…. It would be grateful if you would submit your manuscript by [date in three weeks’ time]… It would be our honor to be associated with such an intent, expeditious personality like you for future endeavours.”

Maybe it’s my intent and expeditious personality that causes me to be somewhat suspicious of these emails – particularly as they always seem to want me to produce an article in three weeks or thereabouts. Now I’m a fairly swift reader, thinker, and writer, but producing a journal article in three weeks from a standing start is a request I would find virtually impossible to grant. So it’s just as well I have more sense than to try.

Interestingly, these are not predatory journals. None of them ask me to pay for publication, and they don’t appear on Beall’s List. They seem to be desperate journals. One emailed me on 17 February, giving me a most generous deadline of 15 March, and finishing, ‘If it is not feasible for you to submit paper in the month of February, then kindly let us know your feasible time of contribution. Anticipating your quick response.’ They didn’t get any response, let alone a quick one. So the cheeky blighters emailed again on 16 March, giving me a revised deadline of 31 March.

When I check out the journals online, they appear to be for real. So why are they so desperate? “I wonder if you could submit Research article, Mini review, Case reports, short commentary, letter to the editor, book review for publication in our upcoming issue, to spread the essence of your eminent efforts throughout the world.” Despite the strange language they use, many are based in the US – or at least that’s what their websites say.

And who responds to these poorly targeted requests? I write on research methods in the social sciences, and there is some overlap with health services. So, at a stretch, you could excuse journals focusing on medicine from thinking I might like to write for them, particularly as I’ve published articles in journals such as the Journal of Public Mental Health and Perspectives in Public Health. But life sciences? STEM disciplines? No chance.

I’m on the editorial board of the International Journal of Social Research Methodology which has never been short of submissions. If we weren’t getting enough submissions, I’d suggest we should stop publishing the journal – and I’m sure the publisher would be there before me. Or we could try soliciting submissions, if we thought it was a temporary blip, but I’d want to be targeting people much more carefully than these almost random emails.

I once responded to a request to submit a journal article. I was at the inaugural meeting of the Arts and Sciences Research Forum, at CRASSH, University of Cambridge. In a plenary session, for reasons I can’t remember, I was banging on about the need to do participatory research properly if you’re going to do it at all (must blog about that one of these days). At the break, a man came up and introduced himself to me as Woody Caan. He said he edited a journal, and was very interested in what I’d been saying about involving service users in research, and would I like to consider maybe writing something about this for his journal? He thought it would interest his readers, and perhaps I could think about it and we could discuss it more by email in the coming days and weeks.

When I checked out Woody Caan online, this self-effacing and charming man turned out to be an eminent Professor. We did discuss options by email and I ended up writing the article. He was completely relaxed about the fact that it took me several months.

That, in my view, is a good way to solicit an article for an academic journal. But mostly I decide what I want to write, for which journal. Then they can decide whether they want to publish it. That works for me.

Creative Research Methods

Posted by Helen Kara

I have always been interested in creative research methods: not at the expense of traditional methods, but to augment them. I have used a variety of creative methods, when appropriate, such as storytelling and photo-elicitation for gathering data, fictionalisation and photo-essays for writing research, and drama for presenting findings. I have also combined methods where necessary, used technology in research, and worked within a participatory framework where possible.

A couple of years ago, for reasons I can’t now remember, I went looking for a book on creative research methods. I searched all the usual online booksellers but couldn’t find anything that fitted the bill. So I decided to write one.

In the process of writing this book, I read hundreds of journal articles, book chapters, sometimes whole books. I didn’t read everything there is to read – that wouldn’t be possible – but I learned a lot. And it slowly dawned on me that the field of creative research methods could be conceptualised as having four broad categories:

Arts-based research – e.g. visual arts, performance arts, textile arts
Research using technology – e.g. social media, apps, computer/video games
Mixed methods research – traditionally qual+quant, but also quant+quant and qual+qual
Transformative research frameworks – e.g. participatory research, feminist research, decolonising methodologies, activist research

Clearly I am not suggesting that these categories are mutually exclusive. In fact I did find some examples of research employing tools from all four categories. But they do provide a useful way of thinking about the subject for now (I say ‘for now’ as the field is developing fast, so may need a new conceptualisation in time).

I found many fabulous, inspiring, examples of research across all of these categories and from all over the world. There are over 100 boxed examples in my book, with others scattered throughout the text, and I still didn’t have room to include everything I would have liked to cover. I also realised that ‘creative methods’ doesn’t always mean ‘innovative methods’ (though it often does). It may mean being creative with traditional methods, such as by combining those methods in an unusual way or taking a new look at an existing method. For example, in recent years researchers using focus groups realised that they could get more out of the data by analysing the interactions between people in each group, as well as the content of the text yielded by the transcripts.

I’m delighted to say that even though the book isn’t out yet, it has received a good reception from academics around the world. It has been described, among other things, as an ‘inspiration’, a ‘treasure trove’, and ‘ground-breaking’. And most wonderful of all, especially as my first degree was in psychology, my creative research heroes Kenneth Gergen and Mary Gergen have very kindly written a foreword.

So publication day is 10 April in the UK, May 15 in the US. Here’s a very short book trailer I made for you.

If you would like a copy, you can buy direct from the publisher, Policy Press, at a 35% discount, by signing up to their monthly e-newsletter. This applies wherever you are in the world, and the discount is on all their books, not just mine. They publish some excellent work so I’d recommend checking this out.

If you want to know more about creative research methods, I hosted a twitterchat on 26 March, on the #ecrchat hashtag, and the storify is here.

The book will be formally launched at a one-day conference at the British Library Conference Centre on 8 May. The conference has four workshop streams and I’ll bet you can guess what they’re on… yep: arts-based research, research using technology, mixed methods research, and transformative research frameworks. There seems to be a real appetite for this topic, as we had an unprecedented number of abstracts – four for each presentation – so we have a terrific selection of workshops. Over half of the places are already booked. So if you’d like to come to the conference, please don’t leave it till the last minute, as it is likely to sell out. I hope to see you there!

Teaching Writing to Doctoral Students

Posted by Helen Kara

just me teaching I spent last weekend teaching writing to doctoral students at Staffordshire University, and enjoyed it enormously. It was an experiential course that I had devised with input from Dr Katy Vigurs, who hosted the course. We included creative exercises on drafting and redrafting, getting unstuck, the relationship between writing and thinking, and how to find your voice. There was also a short talk from me and several discussion/Q&A sessions. In between these were a dozen half-hour ‘shut up and write’ sessions for students to work on their own writing.

This course demonstrated to the students, very thoroughly, that they can achieve a meaningful amount of writing in just half an hour. And we taught them how to do that, through discussion, example, practice, and review. They had seen the course programme beforehand and planned what they would work on. The half-hour discipline was difficult for them at first; they found it hard to ‘get in’ and ‘get out’, but by the Sunday they were switching between ‘work’ and ‘break’ modes like doctoral ninjas. Several students commented on their evaluation forms that they had achieved more than they had planned.

Before the course, I asked students to complete a form telling me which aspects of academic writing they were good at, and which they wanted to work on. I also asked for a 500-word sample of academic writing from each student. This was partly so I could give individual feedback, and partly so I could get a sense of the individual and overall standard. Generally, the standard was good, particularly as I was seeing excerpts from work in draft. But the students evidently thought they were not good at writing.

This made for a very satisfying moment for me. It went like this:

Me: “I’d like to know who, in this room, thinks they struggle with academic writing because they’re not very good at it. Put your hands up please.”

[Most hands went up, most faces looked miserable]

Me: “I’ve seen examples of your writing, so I can tell you, with some authority, that you’re wrong. You are good at it. The reason you struggle with academic writing is because it’s hard.”

Then I stood in front of the class for a quiet moment, enjoying the war of expressions on people’s faces, as the message began to sink in. It was such a delight to see incredulous smiles break through.

It was also a delight, as always when teaching, to witness students having ‘light bulb’ moments. One woman said to me, with an expression of pure joy, ‘I’ve got it! I just have to write! That’s all I have to do! And if I keep writing, I’ll get my thesis done!’ It’s the kind of statement that can seem obvious after the fact, but it was a huge learning point for her, and I was thrilled to see her happiness.

Of course the true test will come when the students are back in their everyday lives. I think and hope we did enough to embed the practice and motivate the students, and the evaluation forms certainly suggest that we did. But I’ve been involved in training and teaching for far too long to take that for granted. We encouraged the students to form peer networks for support, and suggested that they might set up their own ‘shut up and write’ sessions, whether virtually or in real life. Early signs are that mutual support is growing within the group, and that can only help.

Talking of the virtual dimension, some students from Staffordshire University who couldn’t make the whole weekend, and some from other universities, joined in with our ‘shut up and write’ sessions via the #StaffsAcWri hashtag on Twitter. There are regular ‘shut up and write’ sessions on Twitter (check the #stuw hashtag) which you could join if this interests you – or you could even start your own. It’s amazing how much you can get done in half an hour: one student wrote over 800 words in just one of the half-hours, and most produced several thousand words in the course of the weekend.

My favourite comment from the evaluation forms was: ‘I never drifted off! I have only 2 relevant doodles and have produced work I will be proud to share with my supervisors!’ Further to last week’s post, this is why I think writing can be taught. Not everything about writing, and not to everyone – but those who are engaging with the process, and willing to learn, can certainly be taught the skills and the craft of writing.

On Teaching Writing

Posted by Helen Kara

quill pen writing woman I love to teach writing. I have taught writing for research in various contexts: to voluntary sector practitioners, statutory sector managers, and postgraduate students. Next weekend, for the first time, I will be running a writing course for doctoral students with Katy Vigurs at Staffordshire University. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to this – I’ve had so much fun already, just doing the preparation.

There is a school of thought that considers writing can’t be taught. I’m afraid I think that’s utter rubbish. For sure, there’s an element of ‘you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink’, as the saying goes. Ultimately, however much teaching someone has, there comes a point where they have to get on with the writing for themselves – and there are people who continually struggle at that point. Writing is particularly hard, I think, for people who don’t like writing but have to do it anyway. I’m lucky that I like writing, and I’m confident I can pass on some ways to make it less onerous and more fun – or at least more productive.

Writing isn’t easy to teach, and it’s difficult to learn, but there are lots of tricks of the trade which the more experienced writer can pass on. Some people can learn from written advice, whether on blogs like that of the estimable Pat Thomson, or in books by people like Pat or Rowena Murray. But for many, there is no substitute for time in a classroom with a group of other learners and a skilful tutor or two.

I learned a lot, years ago, from attending courses myself. I went on three Arvon courses, and a doctoral writing workshop at the University of the West of England (UWE). Two of the Arvon courses focused on novel writing and were useful for my fiction work. The other Arvon course, and the workshop at UWE, both focused on the permeability of the boundary between fiction and non-fiction, and the way some writing techniques can be used for both.

I attended these two courses during my doctoral studies and they were inspirational. I’d already been grappling with ideas around truth versus authenticity, the function of creativity in research, and the role of storytelling in human communication. I had read Sol Stein’s book Solutions for Writers: Practical Craft Techniques for Fiction and Non-Fiction which also suggests that fiction writing techniques can benefit non-fiction writing, and vice versa. This concept has been a huge influence on my work ever since. I have written about it in academic journals and books, and now I’m going to teach it, properly, for the first time.

Among the learning outcomes I’ve set for my students are: writing non-fiction is a creative process, writing is hard even when you’re skilled and experienced, and thinking and writing are inextricably linked. I have also promised them that they will come away from the weekend with between 1,000 and 5,000 new words of their thesis, depending on how far advanced they are in the process. The group includes students at every stage, from those who have only recently begun to those in their final months. I would expect students to write more slowly at first, more quickly in the later stages.

They will be doing creative writing exercises. Not just for fun, though I hope there will be some of that too. The exercises are designed to teach students about overcoming resistance to writing, the purpose of rewriting, how writing helps thinking, and voice. There will also be a number of ‘shut up and write’ sessions where we will all write together, as well as plenty of time for questions and discussion, not to mention cake. And in the evenings we will, as writers often do, patronise a nearby hostelry.

It may be a working one – but I am so looking forward to the weekend!

Putting Research Ethics Into Practice

Posted by Helen Kara

ethics Doing research ethically is not about finding a set of rules to follow or ticking boxes on a form. It’s about learning to think and act in an ethical way. How ethical an action is, or is not, usually depends on its context. Therefore, everything must be thought through as far as possible, because even standard ‘ethical’ actions may not always be right. For example, many researchers regard anonymity as a basic right for participants. However, if your participants have lived under a repressive regime where their voices were silenced, they may feel very upset at the thought of being anonymised, and want any information they provide to be attributed to them using their real names. In such a context, claiming that they must be anonymised because of research ethics would in fact be unethical, because it would cause unnecessary stress to your participants.

In my role as ethics lead for the UK’s Social Research Association, I’ve been helping a group of people from the Academy of Social Sciences who have been developing some common ethical principles for social science. This has involved a long and multi-faceted consultation process, during which a number of people spoke in favour of ‘virtue ethics’, or the idea that a good person will be an ethical person.

I fundamentally disagree with this position. As demonstrated in my last post, we are all subject to cultural conditioning which is bound to influence us as researchers. We are also all vulnerable to cognitive biases such as confirmation bias (giving more weight to views or phenomena that support what we already believe) and hindsight bias (seeing events as having been predictable when they happened). Given this, it doesn’t matter how virtuous we are, we’re not going to be as ethical as we could be if we put some simple steps in place.

The first step is to acknowledge, and try to identify, your own cultural conditioning, and to learn about the cognitive biases that may affect you. Although we’re notoriously bad at identifying our own cognitive biases, we are better at spotting other people’s, so if you’re working with others it can be helpful to look out for each other’s biases.

Then articulate the value base for your research. If you’re working alone, you need to devise this for yourself; if in a team, produce it collectively. And don’t just write a list of words; think through the meanings of the values you choose. For example, if you want your research to be ‘honest’, what does that mean in practice? We all tell lies all the time, even to ourselves, and research is no different. For example, researchers think it’s perfectly OK to lie in the interests of maintaining participant confidentiality. So if you want your research to be honest, you need to consider how honest you think it can actually be.

Try to identify your own assumptions. While it’s important to try not to make assumptions about other people, research is usually based on some assumptions, and it helps to act ethically if you know what these are. For example, are you assuming that your research is not intrusive? Or that it will be as high a priority for others as it is for you? Are you assuming that your sample is representative? Or that your data is accurate? Why are you making each assumption? What are the implications of your assumptions for your research?

Grounded theorists Strauss and Corbin suggested watching out for absolutes as a useful way to guard against biases and unhelpful assumptions. So if you find yourself, or a participant, using words like ‘never’ or ‘always’, or phrases like ‘couldn’t possibly’ or ‘everyone knows’, take time to work out what is behind the statement. You may well discover an obstructive bias or assumption, and then you can begin to search for a way to counteract that bias or assumption.

As social scientists, we try to include a wide range of people as research participants, but we can forget to take the same approach to literature. So another step is, when you’re reading, try to find relevant work by people with different backgrounds and perspectives from yours. This could include people from different nationalities, disciplines, genders, professions, and so on. Then, when you’re writing, try to draw on the work of a wide range of people too – though only if that work is relevant and worth citing, otherwise you are being tokenistic which is not ethical.

It is of course impossible to write a full set of ethical guidelines in a blog post. However, following these suggestions will lead you to a wider, more fully ethical approach to your research. If you want to delve further into the whys and wherefores of ethical research, there is plenty of material online. Here are some useful links:

Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Framework for Research Ethics – the ESRC is one of the UK’s biggest research funders, and this Framework was updated in January 2015.

The Research Ethics Guidebook – actually a website with a wealth of information, linked to the ESRC principles.

Association of Internet Researchers Ethics Guide – a wiki containing useful pointers for doing ethical research online.