Good evening, everybody. And for those who don't know me, I'm Jenny Hislop on the module co-ordinator on the Conflict Research Methods Course,
which is part of the Embassy in space health care at Oxford.
And I'm absolutely delighted to welcome our guest speaker tonight, Axel Scherer.
I hope I've got that sort of right, who is professor of sociology at Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
And we're very lucky in the Health Experiences Research Group here or her because Axel's doing some work with us over 12 months, is it?
I'm so glad you're doing work with us and so it's great to have him on board.
I'm really fascinated in his topic tonight, the point of qualitative research, because if there isn't any point,
then we're all taking nothing on and I'm out of a job, so I'm going to hand over to Axel and and hear all about it.
Okay. Thank you very much. If it's all about it, I'm not sure, but at least hopefully some valuable input.
And I will kind of stick more or less to a manuscript for this for this evening.
And you are welcome to have the manuscript afterwards if if it's anything of value in its will you some slides as well.
The slides are not filled with stuff. They are more like something to look at.
So the topic, the point of qualitative research and qualitative research has received great acceptance in the great prior disciplines,
including health and medicine.
Still, I think there is reason to admit that the true potential to the research or qualitative analysis seems not to have been realised,
realised in such areas and not in other areas as well, like within my own discipline of sociology and in the social sciences more broadly.
So in this lecture before the dinner, after a long day,
I will not bother you with this philosophical exploration or where the potential qualitative analysis lies,
where it supposedly get lost or got lost, and whose fault that is.
Rather, I will apply to examples from research performed by my colleagues and myself to throw
some light on what kind of questions are best answered by the qualitative studies,
and not at least how results or findings from qualitative studies may look like the title or the talk.
The point or qualitative research has a double meaning addressing the point of doing
qualitative research as well as the point of departure for qualitative research.
First, let me admit that I think those of us who specialise in quality research, who develop methods, who teach and supervise,
who research qualitatively in various ways, are those responsible for strengthening the quality, relevance and impact of a qualitative analysis.
The regularly repeated critique of quality research for generating and presenting anecdotal evidence is often quite fair.
My point of departure for responding to this critique is to work out transparent,
systematic and ambitious routes to follow for the qualitative researcher, which is also comprehensible.
I hope for the know why reader and user of qualitative research.
For this ambition, I have developed what I call a stepwise, deductive,
inductive method for qualitative research to which I will return at the end of the talk.
Because now to the two examples. The first one deals with the familiar,
everyday situation of using text messaging on mobile phones and the other deals
with health issues that may to may be more familiar to many of you professionally.
At least the first study was initiated by my curiosity of how text messaging changes,
how we communicate, and especially how communication and physical space interact.
I got the idea for the project on basis of an incident happening in a pub in my home city of Toronto in 2006,
a period of which I was single and enjoying nightlife quite regularly.
I got a text message and SMS from someone, a female whom I just a moment earlier had observed in the same pub.
And it occurred to me that the rather intimate invitation could not have been uttered face to face,
and that this very elegant use of SMS both reduced embarrassment and avoided interruption.
Of the ongoing chats in the pub.
As a sociologist interested in social interaction, I was immediately intrigued by the potential study of this phenomenon,
and let me admit I was intrigued by the SMS invitation itself in the first place.
Using SMS between people in the same spot was something new for me.
I called it a space as SMS shared physical space SMS,
especially a few days later when I checked the prevalence of such experiences with a large group of sociology introductory course students,
finding that two thirds of the students had experienced this use of SMS.
Remember, this was in 2006 with a huge popularity of SMS before wi fi and social media on 3G and 4G took off.
Early next year, I invited students who then had completed my course to participate in the study on the basis that they had experienced as PSA.
SMS 18 students between 19 and 26 years volunteered as participants.
Ideally, observe, observing this phenomenon would be fantastic.
But since part of the nature of the phenomenon in itself is its discreet ness, that was impossible.
The option was to use depth interviews, use and concentrate on the total experiences and accounts of SPS SMS.
The interviews were kept very short and focusing on the topic for the study,
lasting only between seven and 23 minutes, and I was able to undertake all the 18 interviews during two days.
The research question I addressed was quite simply, one.
How is SMS used for communication with other people in the same physical space and to which
concepts may we as social researchers apply to make sense of this novel form of communication?
Although many of the participants were not prepared for the level of detail needed to achieve empirical depth,
they were each able to move from general viewpoints and typical episodes to personal experiences of actual situations during the short interviews.
It is well rehearsed within qualitative research textbooks that intimidate the
results from the situated interaction between the participants and the researcher.
In my case, on the basis of myself persistently encouraging detailed accounts from concrete episodes,
detailed transcripts are necessary for next stage of coding into data by what I term empirically close codes,
maintaining the content of the data as well as reducing volume in the next stage.
At CATEGORISE, these codes identified ten different uses of space as SMS, and these are flirting and dating as SMS hugging,
warning and assisting friends, coordinating discreetly, asking about other people present, commenting on and commenting on situation as it unfolds.
Maintaining strategic collaboration. Avoiding interaction, interrupting social settings, making practical jokes,
and the last one communicating during meetings while the coach unnamed as specific episodes and experiences.
These categories, as you see here, are more generic and all the categories are inductively produced in the analysis.
So we have no idea how many we will end up having. If we move to one of the categories.
The one flirting and dating. I will illustrate the code.
One of the codes behind. Behind such a category.
And it's an episode described by Emma.
Emma? She says one of the boys at the night cap party sent SMS to us four girls at the same party saying, Come over to my place afterwards.
I'll say, I'm leaving, but you can come over. And then he says, Good bye.
Bye. See you tomorrow. To the whole bunch of people in public.
The episode is coded as come over to my place afterwards and together with other codes
of similar situations grouped within the more generic term flirting and dating.
Another category is, for example, that of friendly warnings and assistance in which SPSS SMS is used discreetly.
Ask for assistance, for instance, in the situation described by Eve where a flirt is getting too intense.
And she says, Me and my friend. But to get at the nightcap party and it was only a lot of friends,
but one of the boys got a bit interested in my friend during the night, and then she sent me an SMS saying, Help me help, you know.
And I was talking to some other people, but then I suddenly looked over to her and saw that this guy was leaning over her.
And then it was easy to step in without she having to approach me.
So then we used decimals to say something that we could not say out loud.
While such categories like ten mentioned may be interesting and providing a nuanced insight into the scene of the study,
they are not satisfactory as a result, according to the SDI method that I work alone.
Moving to the next step. A more imaginative take is needed by which one or more concept should be suggested.
Then, if you look at the two examples, Emma's description of this guy getting rid of some potential rivals at this party,
and Eve explaining how her friend called discreetly for help.
What do they have in common? What is happening in a more conceptual sense?
Perhaps most importantly, that a new channel of communication is initiated on the spot.
Another distinct and additional communicative option is created.
And my initial view of these options option was the image of layers.
So several layers of communication or what I have termed common communicative transparency layers are created of the discovery of this concept.
I turn back to other categories to ask, Is this concept relevant for all the categories?
And yes, it's true for all of them, although in different ways and to varying degree.
Most importantly, the concept of communicative transparency layers draws the analysis towards a theoretical level in sociological sense.
These, perhaps the rather mundane uses of Esims provide the communicative and interactive shifts and gendered in the accounts
of these young people first that the mobile phone affords SPSS to facilitate a read definition of social interaction,
and second how using ESP SMS may blur the distinction between private and public public interaction.
In discussing the concept,
the celebrated American sociologist Erving Goffman and his dramaturgical method force backstage and front stage become relevant.
Goffman There is research mainly in the 1950s and sixties, long before the vast development of mediated communication.
But his ideas and concepts have nevertheless maintained their position within interaction in sociology.
Despite the empirical limitation of SPSS SMS study by detailed coding, categorising and concept development,
the study contributes to a timely and relevant critique of governments.
Dramaturgical metaphor. SPSS SMS interaction may represent a virtual backstage between SPSS SMS communicators,
which is physically within a more inclusive front stage setting.
But then in fact, the dramaturgical metaphor breaks down and may be replaced, or at least supplemented by the metaphor of layers.
Although SPSS Sims must be regarded as an extraordinary case of communication, the phenomenon may be interest within.
Interaction is sociology, because first, it challenges the notion that participation in conversation can be based on time and space alone.
And second, it opens up for considering new levels of collaboration in presentation of cells.
So what was the result of the study? First, the most important finding was the identification of the concept of layers of communicative transparency.
It represents the what we will call conceptual generalisation of the study and.
May be scrutinised by further studies of mediated communication, social media and so on by the concept.
The contribution is not limited to a nerdy interest in the narrow phenomenon or ESP SMS,
but provides an alternative sociological framework for studying social interaction.
So that is actually the result of the finding of the study.
The other example is quite differently motivated,
as it was part of a Ph.D. research project around the Tillotson of the Arctic University in Tromso in Norway,
dealing with the exploration of an online self-help group for adolescents aged 15 to 18 with a mentally ill parent.
The study was action driven and set out to study the impact of such a self-help group,
both by setting up and recruiting participants to the Web based forum,
by observing interaction in the group as well as depth interviewing participants.
Children and adolescents with whom parents with a mental illness are more likely to experience social isolation,
additional caregiving responsibilities, financial hardship and disruptions because of unpredictable illness related parental behaviour.
The part of the project that I will refer to in this talk draws on in the interviews with the group
participants in which the meaning of the online self-help group in adolescents actual lives is explored.
That is, we were interested in how the online participation patient had impact on the everyday offline life similar to the first example into
use were also in this project analysed by detailed coding and categorisation through an inductive approach in which specific issues,
events or processes are identified across the participants.
Our aim was to identify the roles of the online self-help group in supporting adolescents, in managing everyday life with the mentally ill parent.
During our categorisation of the coded into data,
we identified three types of social processes that evolved through communication within the online
self-help group Recognisability that is recognising each other similar experiences to openness,
discussing issues that have been kept secret and three agency retaining independent, active steps towards plans and ambitions.
In the first example, the SMS article,
we identified ten different uses of space SMS and the three different social processes identified here is at the same analytical
level as those ten uses that give some insight into the experiences of the adolescents which led us to these three categories.
Participants told us that before joining the group, they had a sense of being the only one in the world with a mentally ill parent,
and most had never met others in the similar family situation.
Being part of the forum, facilitating sharing stories with online peers in contrast to other friends,
because participants in the forum generally could understand the other's experiences.
As one of them told us, there were some people who understood it, who read it.
You don't get that with the friends who have grown up with healthy parents.
They can't really put themselves in your situation the way someone who has been there can.
Another participant talked about her friends easily chatting and laughing lightly about boys clothes,
music and movies while she was paralysed by heavy worries about her mentally ill mother and incapable of engaging in the conversations.
Reading in the forum about other similar experiences allowed her to be calmer and to stop worrying so much about not being normal.
Accounts such as the above gave us the idea of the category.
Recognisability. Further, they were talking about experiencing silence and lack of information about the illness and its consequences from parents,
relatives, other adults or health professionals who knew about the parents illness.
Moreover, the participants kept the parent's illness secret from friends,
or at least very seldom told anyone about the experiences and emotions in detail.
As one of the participants said during an interview,
often it really feels wonderful because there are some things you have actually want to say for a long time,
but there has never been anyone you feel can tell or the right moment to say it.
It's just a relief to get it off your shoulders. Feeling anger towards ill parents made everything just worse.
As another participant, participant noted. I had a guilty conscience because I was feeling sad and angry about all the stuff with Mum.
The read that I had the same feelings as me anger, sadness and so on was good because when I felt as angry as [INAUDIBLE],
I felt at the same time that I wasn't allowed to be angry.
And we have to identify such accounts as dealing with the issue of openness.
One participant explained that knowledge obtained from self-help group self-help
group motivated her to manage the consequences of her mother's mental illness.
She said, I understood more about what an illness like that involves and if so, how the others handled things.
I understood then that it is possible to cope with matters instead of just suppressing them.
Another participant put it like this. It's not as though everyone who is having a terrible time will go and kill themselves.
They manage well in spite of it, and it's a burden they have.
But they live normal lives all the same, and they are strong and resourceful people.
That really does motivate you.
One of the participants told us that the indications of normality she could find in the other stories were valuable sources for our own sense of hope,
of living an ordinary life in the future. For instance, she mentioned that because one of the other participants had the boyfriend,
she felt that she would have the chance to get a boyfriend, friends and live a completely normal life.
Another participant told us that she, through the forum,
understood that her problems didn't have anything to do with herself and that it became a very important part of making
it possible for her to dare to talk to her ill mother and get it cleared up and have a better relationship with her.
We agree with the latter accounts and the analytical category of agency that is returning independent, active steps towards plans and ambitions.
Still, we have only identified categories of social processes related to applying the internal self forum once again.
We need to search for a more generic concept that covers essential features of the
development that these adolescents experience through participating in the Web forum.
The participant experience out of the ordinary lives related to stigmatising situations,
which leaves them alone with the difficulties participating in the forum.
However, help in redefining what is experienced and perceived as not as abnormal as being normal for members in this specific community,
observing this transfer from abnormal to normal,
and that this transformation is related to the communication community that is being established in the forum hints towards
the concept of communal normalisation by which a sense of normality is developed communally through the act of communication.
By providing a space for participants explicit to be explicit about difficult emotions and out of the ordinary
experiences to recognise them based on the participants own experiences and to accept frustration and anger.
The forum provided an arena of openness in the emotions and reactions that the participants with in other social situations.
The participants created an arena for communal normalisation in which they extended agency based on peer support and recognition,
resulting in the lower threshold to talk to family, friends and professionals about their situations.
The adolescents also took a more active role in managing the everyday lives with a mentally ill parent based on recognition and openness.
The participants agency is shaped, reshaped and extended to enabling novel strategies to manage everyday life.
Although surrounded by challenges of mental illness,
our findings support previous studies of people's use of the Internet as contingent on particular needs and conditions in their everyday lives.
But a main contribution is detailing social processes between the online and the offline
and identifying a way of addressing such processes by potentially new concepts.
If necessary, there is nothing in our study that points to computers normalisation as something that will occur in all support forums.
However, our study has a more general application demonstrating that the potential of web based interaction to assist
people risking stigma in experience in the everyday life is less out of the ordinary and more normal.
Communal normalisation is the participants sense of normalisation that is normalisation for self,
self situation and self-identity rather than about any change in the broader community.
Therefore, although such a health self-help forum does not challenge the fundamental structure of health services,
it provides great potential or agency for certain individuals experience of everyday lives on the margins of normality.
Communal normalisation as a concept developed through the study of adolescents with mentally ill parents,
may characterise generic process in which communication provides potential for increased
recognisability openness and agency across a group of individuals who may expect similar processes,
both in physical and online groups, and may also extend the concept of other processes than the three identified in our study.
So moving back to where we started,
what do these two examples tell us about the point of qualitative research and about the points of departure for qualitative research?
The two illustrated projects started from very different motivating motivating forces.
The first an independent, non funded curiosity with novel use of mobile phones,
and the second a Ph.D. research project externally funded to study the potential
of web based self-help groups for adolescents with mentally ill parents.
But they share important points of departure, a strong interest in exploring the details or experiences as interview data.
The projects are both inductively oriented.
They start with dig into the messy individual and social experiences and continue with detailed coding and categorisation.
They also share the analytical aimed at end points, reaching at the generic or conceptual level of knowledge.
The concepts developed layers of communicative transparency and communal normalisation do
make sense also without an interest for smmes or adolescents with mental ill parents.
The concepts contribute to a wider understanding of mediated communication as layers and how some
networks networks of communication may may strengthen individuals ability to cope with different,
difficult life situations. As noted by one of the Fathers of Grounded Theory by Nick Glazer,
the concepts need to have an what he calls an enduring grab once established, then never fade.
In fact, it means that they are not depending on cases or samples on which they have been developed.
But trig is some kind of analytic case that could be relevant for further studies.
As mentioned in the beginning of this talk, I want to return to the issue of a framework titled Stepwise Deductive Induction
by which by which a mainly inductive method aims at concepts or theories,
and with these concepts represent generalisation.
It is as a conceptual generalisation necessary.
Yeah. Um, for instance, in the two studies mentioned, generalisation is developed through the concepts.
This is very different from statistical generalisation where a sample is supposed to represent a population.
Rather, this is a generalisation at a more theoretical level where concepts are supposed to capture generic
processes or experiences identified through detailed qualitative exploration and analysis.
While quantitative studies aims at identifying relations between independent and dependable variables, qualitative studies aims at identifying,
identifying ways to understand processes and experiences for such understanding to have value in addition to specific case knowledge.
It needs to be generic. So here,
the SDI model with strong concern in generating very detailed empirical data and treating
data in the way that maintains detailed content throughout coding and categorisation.
The model is basically inductive. However, as illustrated here on the right side, each step has a feedback loop,
which is mainly a quality control to strengthen the model's reliability.
For instance, as mentioned, testing preliminary concepts against those category.
We use them against against those categories that did not directly generate conceptual.
The conceptual idea is supposed to nuance and validate the concept.
On the one hand, are they precise enough? On the other, are they too general?
Both concepts generated through the two studies illustrated in this presentation
are rather general and hence covering essential aspects of all the categories.
They are obviously precise enough to survive through the review process towards publication, which is often the ultimate test.
Precision may in other cases be strengthened by only using a subset of categories when moving towards conceptualisation stage.
Looking closely at the SDI model, the coding and coding tests and so on with demand, the next read at least a double lecture.
So we leave that model for now. And I know that you are going to work quite a lot with analysts tomorrow.
I think it is um,
because most importantly and way to develop the potential from qualitative studies and ambition towards concepts and theories should be maintained.
You find this in significant degree within the social science disciplines, but as qualitative research methods creep up on,
for instance, health and medical sciences as well as a vast range of interdisciplinary programs,
we often find that ambition for analysis is more on the descriptive level,
but sorting empirical extracts at worst or categories at best can never avoid being an anecdotal of those systematically presented.
The Why.
The popularity of quality research is therefore not only a blessing for those of us concerned with the development and quality of such methods,
but also an increasing challenge challenge.
I repeatedly rejected PhD thesis within Medicine and Information Sciences, applying qualitative research designs but with only a descriptive ambition.
So to return to the suitable research question for research, the science, what are they?
They often start with how or why and aim at understanding, not describing nor comparing.
And as argued in this talk, the way this understanding is developed and presented should aim at a generic analytic level.
Qualitative analysis is a is a most challenging task from an intellectual point of view and a no cross cuts.
Having said this, the systematic approach presented in the SDI method is supposed to help the research of keeping
track of an inductive development and reduce complexity by moving through separate steps.
Now I'm coming to an end.
What I tried to do in this talk is to expound on how qualitative research should aim at a generic and some generic insight through concepts and.
Conceptual dramatisation, you may see the talk as a warning against jumping into qualitative research,
or you may see it as an inspiration for performing qualitative research that is more ambitious and less anecdotal.
I guess it is meant to be both. And I finish this talk by showing you this nice evening impression of my sociology clinic in my hometown, Trondheim.
This is where we do sociology in downtown Toronto. Thank you.
And I think there are there is some time for questions and comments.
If you do have I mean, there is I think the at least the start answer is it's probably there is a clash of disciplines.
There is a crash of, let's say,
health medicine disciplines in which you do have a standard strategy of presenting a systematic overview of findings or empirical insight.
If you look at the way, let's say, quantitative studies are presented,
it's usually a large presentation of results and then perhaps short speculative and discussion.
Um, and I mean, because these hypothetical detective strategies doesn't actually produce any theory.
It could test theories or test concept, but not the other way around.
And then when you when you move that way to think about presenting research and publishing and doing research into quality studies,
you end up with with these purely descriptive quality studies.
And we do see those publish in a lot of journals in, for instance,
in different health sciences and medicine, but also in a lot of in the discipline in the journals as well.
The the challenge, as I see it is that if you're a social researcher, a sociologist,
uh, uh, some kind of social anthropologist working together with, let's say,
people in the medical sciences, and you end up having or the chance only to publish these descriptive analysis,
you are challenged within your own discipline, so to speak.
So that's and I've been working quite a lot with, with people in the medical, medical sciences especially.
And um, it becomes,
at least my experience was coming to a point where I got really frustrated because
actually we ended up with publishing things that I thought lacked a chapter in a way,
and that that was, for me,
the most important chapter or the most important section that this discussion section where more or less everything theoretical happens.
Um, and so how to solve that problem with my way to solve it was to, um,
kind of looked after myself that I actually had some time to write my own articles or
to bring in some of the social science people and actually not let all the group,
uh, write all the articles in a way. So that way.
So now when we work in these, into this main group, we try to make a few purely sociological article, for example,
in the project to maintain this concept development as part of the project, although that's only one of four articles at least.
But we have, we have produced, uh, sociology and not only descriptive analysis.
I'm not sure if that was all the of the question, but, but I think it's, it's, it's our responsibility then to,
uh, to, to kind of go back to the team and say, well, now we wrote this small conceptual article.
Take a look at it, please, and let, let us discuss.
Isn't it something that we could perhaps also include towards, let's say, the interdisciplinary group?
I think because that was the idea of the told the point, the quality of all the point is perhaps this conceptual development.
And if we are able to kind of challenge also people from the medical sciences, health sciences, the interdisciplinary programs and so on,
that what is we need to take a step further than, than only the script of putting of the categories or the themes.
Uh, it's hard work. I know I've given up many times.
Uh, but, but it's kind of ideal if you, if you work for, uh, let's say a few, a few years with the same group.
So taking the responsible to educating people, uh, how we could make use of qualitative analysis in a, let's make it a bit more advanced level.
That's a very good question. We did, uh, two years back, uh, we found out that we would like to apply sociology very practically in,
into municipal planning, uh, uh, evaluation projects and so on.
And we also, uh. Saw that kind of thing within the university, this ivory tower kind of thing.
It's not ivory not not not exactly a tower like in Oxford, but, um, which you do have to cover.
Um, but. But very protected in a way.
So what we did was to, I got a group of students and see the candidates and some of my colleagues down in the city.
And we established this kind of sociology shop. It used to be a hairdressers, and we kind of rebuilt it.
Uh, and, uh, what is happening that people actually come to us because they think they need some sociological treatment?
Um, so the name social work is Polyclinic, which is on the top of the, it means actually sociological outpatient clinic.
Uh, and the so, and it work really well.
So we do a lot of, uh, work together with the municipality, with a lot of architects, city planners.
Uh, we have had an evaluation project which is more kind of standard contract research, really.
But what we do is that we, we have events, book launches and, and so on.
So. So actually it's bringing sociology to the people.
And it's, uh, it's, it's a kind of a voluntary work, but it's also, it's kind of a separate enterprise, but,
but more and now in, in we're moving towards the festival season now we do have also these, uh, a camper van that we use.
So, uh, also with the name, uh, the sociology clinic.
And we use that in different, different, um, festivals to study the community that is developing the festivals.
And this summer we also have a collaboration with the, uh, with a health institute in Norway, uh, to study the way, uh,
different alcohol and other, uh, to what we call it like uh smoking hashish and things like that are used in festival.
So we do have a both health aspect and I, we do have a common community aspect of it.
So that that's what we do. We, we, we bring sociology into, into social situations like the festival, like the streets and so on.
So that, that's more as part of this.
Um, they should set something that, well, I first started funding it from my own pocket, um, because I had so, so,
so strong beliefs in it that I had was of course said that we will be able to, to pay that back with projects.
So when we, when we do and that that happens, so when we do a project with the municipality,
we do actually one project with one of the large property owners as well to develop in an area in the city then.
So, so we do have this contract that actually make us able to pay the rent and that kind of stuff.
So it's paid with all these projects. And also it brings, uh, students and these PHC candidates in the midst of society in the city in,
in kind of different situations, problems and, and so on.
Uh, so it becomes a very practical sociology in a way.
Uh, but it just started a bit less than two years ago and uh, but it's starting to work quite well.
And I think it for us it's been quite important that actually people discover that this place exist and by discovering it,
they also start to discover what sociology is. So that that's I think that's important as well because no one have an idea what it is.
Some believe it's this kind of social work and uh, but that's more or less the closest that, that people come, I think.
Uh, so it's kind of promoting what, what, what it is and what we could do and giving the idea to the students as well,
what they could and in what ways they could apply sociology, starting to work and so on different every time.
And it's a really good question because that's that's the most, I guess, most challenging part of it,
because then you have to rely on creativity, ideas, visualisation, but then again you don't have to work alone.
So I quite often work together with, uh, with other people who've been my colleagues,
with my students on what is this, what, what, what does this look like in your head?
What if you imagine what it is? What is it? Um, so it's, um, and also it's playing with terms and birds and so on.
So it's, uh, and, and it's, it's probably the most demanding part of the project.
It's a good question, but, and I'm trying to get to point to.
To be able to say what it is, how to do it, but it's quite hard to do it except from music examples.
But I agree with you the examples. It doesn't give you the standardised answer how to do it, but I think to play with words and and so on.
Irving Goffman that I mention was really good at using metaphors, and that that's that's another way to do it.
I mean, that would be perfect if it fits with the concept already existing because then it
means that you would kind of rely it's related to the research already being published.
And also because I think that's the way research needs to be done.
Also these, uh, um, I'm keen on having my students, my and my colleagues testing these concepts as well because that needs to be done to,
to validate or perhaps trust, transform ideas and so on.
So that would be just perfect. I mean, it means that you are kind of.
And it also if, um, if you find yourself, uh, let's say, um,
identifying a phenomenon being published or front of someone in an article context, those people, because you could, I mean,
you could read articles, but don't, don't hesitate to contact people but present something that,
that, that kind of, um, uh, kind of responds in some way to your, your own analysis.
People are usually very happy to have that kind of questions.
It could transparent. So. Uh, so that's why we also when we, when we use coding, we usually work with hyper research,
some work with and we will, there's a lot of different software to do that kind of thing.
The good thing with working with software is it's quite easy to show afterwards exactly the stages.
Uh, what kind of code did you develop? Uh, how do the codes feed into categories?
Exactly what codes that feed into some categories. Making some examples, for instance.
And then it's much easier for, for a reader to understand what's going on.
And then to back the other question when they come to the concept.
Well, that that's more like, like, like a playful thing that's not that necessary to, uh, to have a specific system for.
But, but anyway, uh, to show the way you organise towards some more generic, uh,
concepts, you need to do that and invite people into understanding what is happening.
It's not a magic thing, it's actually systematic work.
So, and we need to show that all the time. Also I, I work with working group and that's, that's what, what we do in, in the clinic quite much.
We work in groups and for instance when we do coding we or we often start with coding on the lot on the kind of a large,
uh, having a screen, uh, projector.
And then we start coding in a group of five, six, seven, seven people and then we start coding into use, for instance, uh,
code coding one or two, three into use before we split the work or leave that responsibility to one or two so that we kind of,
uh, we try to maintain this learning process all the time, every project that we,
that we work together and that that's another thing with working with software,
it's easier to work together if we sit in front of a computer or using a projector.
That's, I mean, I and my students, um, that's quite of the fun part of the project.
And if you sit alone all the time, it's not a fun part of the project. Oh, it's really, really important to have fun in these difficult parts.
So I find good colleagues, students and other people that when we work in teams and project, that's kind of self-evident.
But quite often you are asked to do that job individually, which is it's not the most effective all the time.