Who's Minding Your Institutional Memory?

ABSTRACT

This article introduces the reader to the resources that an official repository -specifically the Archives of the Mennonite Church -offers to institutions and researchers. Most institutions are equipped to generate paperwork, and to maintain active files, but few are willing to provide the resources to maintain archival records. A well-organized archives facility collects, preserves and manages such collections. It also offers the researcher or anniversary planning committee access to documents, such as correspondence, legal documents, reports and diaries. Photographs, films, videotapes, audio tapes and artifacts are also catalogued and available to the researcher.     

Lessons learned from using shadowing as a qualitative research technique in Education

While shadowing is known in disciplines such as Organizational Studies, there is little reference to shadowing as a qualitative research technique in Education or other social science fields. This paper explores shadowing in the research literature and my experience collecting data using shadowing. Using my researcher journal and reflections, I present five lessons learned as a qualitative shadowing researcher in Education: shadowing is difficult, tiring and time consuming; shadowing is high stakes emotionally for the participants; participants have control during data collection, researchers have control with the results; shadowing researchers must manage relationships with the participants; and ethics in shadowing can be murky and researchers must make continuous ethical judgements while in the field.     

THEORY TESTING: COMBINING PSYCHOMETRIC META-ANALYSIS AND STRUCTURAL EQUATIONS MODELING

This paper presents an overview of a useful approach for theory testing in the social sciences that combines the principles of psychometric meta-analysis and structural equations modeling. In this approach to theory testing, the estimated true score correlations between the constructs of interest are established through the application of meta-analysis (Hunter & Schmidt, 1990), and structural equations modeling is then applied to the matrix of estimated true score correlations. The potential advantages and limitations of this approach are presented. The approach enables researchers to test complex theories involving several constructs that cannot all be measured in a single study. Decision points are identified, the options available to a researcher are enumerated, and the potential problems as well as the prospects of each are discussed.     

The researcher goes to school

Educational research in the naturalistic setting is challenging and rewarding for the researcher, but it places new demands upon teachers and administrators. School personnel may view the researcher as an intruder, a fact which researchers must understand from the school's point of view. Research needs and goals must be understood by school personnel prior to the onset of data collection. Research can be successfully implemented in the naturalistic setting if emphathetic researchers work closely with school personnel to facilitate mutual understanding.     

Assessing the remedy: the case for contracts in clinical trials

Current orthodoxy in research ethics assumes that subjects of clinical trials reserve rights to withdraw at any time and without giving any reason. This view sees the right to withdraw as a simple extension of the right to refuse to participate all together. In this paper, however, I suggest that subjects should assume some responsibilities for the internal validity of the trial at consent and that these responsibilities should be captured by contract. This would allow the researcher to impose a penalty on the subject if he were to withdraw without good reason and on a whim. This proposal still leaves open the possibility of withdrawing without penalty when it is in the subject's best interests to do so. Giving researchers recourse to legal remedy may now be necessary to protect the science, as existing methods used to increase retention are inadequate for one reason or another.     

If you are vulnerable and you know it raise your hand: Experiences from working in post-tsunami Thailand

Scientific validity has historically been measured against notions of objectivity. However, try as we might, we cannot divorce ourselves from our own personal interests and perceptions that shape the questions we ask, the theoretical filters and methods we choose, and the conclusions we make. We are all human and it is this humanness that is tested and shaped by disasters. Embracing this humanness, this paper reflects upon the experiences and challenges of undertaking longitudinal research in Thailand following the 2004 Tsunami from the perspective of a research student. These include: common logistical and planning challenges in undertaking disaster research in a cross-cultural setting and how positionality, reflexivity, reciprocity and the differing needs of the researcher and participants influence research outcomes. Particular focus is placed on the emotional toll working in unique trauma landscapes has on researchers and the associated threat of secondary trauma stress and vicarious trauma, how this influences a researcher's relationship to place and the ramifications this exchange has on the researcher as a person and their findings. I conclude by offering recommendations on how early career researchers can better prepare for and navigate the disaster landscape and adjustments their mentors and institutions can make to support them.     

Seeing ‘the dark passenger’ – Reflections on the emotional trauma of conducting post-disaster research

This paper acknowledges ‘the [my] dark passenger’ of emotional vicarious trauma associated with conducting post-disaster research. Post-disaster research is tightly bounded by ethics and professional codes of conduct requiring us to be vigilant about the impact of our work on our participants. However, as a disaster researcher, I have been affected by vicarious trauma. ‘Direct personal’ vicarious trauma is where I experienced trauma associated with witnessing devastation making a professional separation from my objective subjects impossible. ‘Indirect professional’ vicarious trauma occurred when PhD students and others under my supervision that I sent to disaster affected places, experienced significant negative emotional responses and trauma as they interviewed their participants. In these situations, I became traumatised by my lack of training and reflected on how the emphasis on the participants came at the expense of the researcher in my care. Limited literature exists that focuses on the vicarious trauma experienced by researchers, and their supervisors working in post-disaster places and this paper is a contribution to that body of scholarship. In acknowledging and exploring the emotions and vicarious trauma of researchers embedded in landscapes of disaster, it becomes possible for future researchers to pre-empt this phenomenon and to consider ways that they might manage this.     

Likelihood ratios: A simple and flexible statistic for empirical psychologists

Empirical studies in psychology typically employ null hypothesis significance testing to draw statistical inferences. We propose that likelihood ratios are a more straightforward alternative to this approach. Likelihood ratios provide a measure of the fit of two competing models; the statistic represents a direct comparison of the relative likelihood of the data, given the best fit of the two models. Likelihood ratios offer an intuitive, easily interpretable statistic that allows the researcher great flexibility in framing empirical arguments. In support of this position, we report the results of a survey of empirical articles in psychology, in which the common uses of statistics by empirical psychologists is examined. From the results of this survey, we show that likelihood ratios are able to serve all the important statistical needs of researchers in empirical psychology in a format that is more straightforward and easier to interpret than traditional inferential statistics.     

Using Mixed Methods Approach in Cross-Cultural Studies: Lessons of a Research Experience

The primary purpose of this paper is to share the lessons the first author learnt as a novice researcher while carrying out a comparative culture study focused on exploring differences in organizational culture in units located in two societies in two distinct culture zones, using mixed methods approach, as a part of his doctoral research program. The authors have shared “why” and “how” the first author chose and applied mixed methods approach to conduct the above study, which might be of help to budding researchers, given that mixed methods approach is rarely used by doctoral students in India. The authors have presented three kinds of lessons in this paper, learnt by the first author. The first kind of lessons deals with the methodology, the second one is about the research approach and the last one is related to the qualities of an effective researcher. The authors have also presented “do’s and don’ts” in researching for the benefit of budding researchers. The insights shared in this paper, the authors hope, would be useful and relevant for the researchers employing mixed methods approach. Besides, it might also definitely help budding research scholars make an informed choice of research method to effectively deal with research problems under investigation.     

Secondary Data Analysis: An Important Tool for Addressing Developmental Questions

Existing data sets can be an efficient, powerful, and readily available resource for addressing questions about developmental science. Many of the available databases contain hundreds of variables of interest to developmental psychologists, track participants longitudinally, and have representative samples. In this article, the authors discuss the benefits and limitations of secondary data analysis so that researchers can make informed decisions about when it makes sense to use existing data and when it does not. They then provide an overview of best practices for handling the most common conceptual, methodological, and practical issues that arise when adopting this approach.     

A Latent Variable Framework for Power Estimation Within Intervention Contexts

This paper presents a latent growth SEM approach for the estimation of treatment effects, and power to detect such effects, within a true experimental design setting in which subjects are randomly assigned to treatment and control conditions. Power estimation is a critical component of intervention experiment design and the testing of their results. Although researchers have become increasingly sophisticated in applying tests for statistical significance in intervention contexts, few are aware of the power of these tests. The issues raised in this paper are not new; however, reminding researchers to consider these points is important. Exactly how the researcher handles these issues will depend on the questions asked and the resources available, as well as other considerations. Discussion underscores the relationship between the reliability of a study's measures and concomitant increases in power obtained within the SEM framework.     

ISLAMIC VERDICTS IN HEALTH POLICY DISCOURSE: PORCINE‐BASED VACCINES AS A CASE STUDY

In this article, I apply a policy‐oriented applied Islamic bioethics lens to two verdicts on the permissibility of using vaccines with porcine components. I begin by reviewing the decrees and then proceed to describe how they were used by health policy stakeholders. Subsequently, My analysis will highlight aspects of the verdict's ethico‐legal arguments in order to illustrate salient legal concepts that must be accounted for when using Islamic verdicts as the basis for health policy. I will conclude with several suggestions for facilitating a more judicious use of verdicts in policy‐relevant discourse. My analysis is meant to contribute to the dialogue between science and religion, and aims to further efforts at developing health policies that value health while accommodating religious values. In the encounter between the Islamic tradition and global public health, a multidisciplinary dialogue, where Islamic legists become aware of the health policy implications of their ethico‐legal pronouncements, and where health policy actors gain a literate understanding of Islamic ethico‐legal theory, will lead to verdicts that better meet the needs of patients, health workers, and religious leaders.     

Beyond grounded theory: The use of a heuristic approach to qualitative research

The grounded theory approach has become established as the qualitative methodology of choice for many counselling and psychotherapy researchers. It is now becoming apparent to many researchers that there are significant difficulties associated with defining what the grounded theory method actually is, and how is should be implemented. In addition, its popularity has tended to keep other qualitative approaches under‐explored and under‐utilised. This paper explores some of the methodological issues raised by the grounded theory approach, before presenting and then contrasting heuristic inquiry as a very different but equally useful form of qualitative methodology. Finally, the notion of researcher as bricoleur will be considered in the light of the need to develop pluralistic approaches to qualitative research in counselling and psychotherapy.     

Insider / Outsider: Epistemological Privilege and Mothering Work

As researchers, we cannot be outside society and thus activities such as "science," or "objectivity" are striated with procedures for minimizing or celebrating the presence of the researcher in the research product. Our recognition of the situated character of scientific knowledge is the context in which questions about the researchers relation to the group she studies have arisen. The paper begins with a review of the Insider/Outsider debate which circles around the researcher's relation to those she studies. Where the researcher enters the research site as an Insider - someone whose biography (gender, race, class, sexual orientation and so on) gives her a lived familiarity with the group being researched - that tacit knowledge informs her research producing a different knowledge than that available to the Outsider - a researcher who does not have an intimate knowledge of the group being researched prior to their entry into the group. This paper describes the research issues that arise and the various strategies researchers have used to manage them. The argument then shifts to query the social boundaries implicit in the construction of research Insiders and Outsiders. Reflecting on research that explored mothering for schooling, the article shows that researchers are rarely Insiders or Outsiders. Rather, research is constructed in a relationship with many Others. The interaction of individual biography and social location shape the research relation in complex ways which undercut the common-sense translation of historical familiarity into epistemological privilege.     

A comparison of the LISREL and EQS programs for obtaining parameter estimates in confirmatory factor analysis studies

Recently, researchers in psychology have been provided with the techniques for confirming factor analytic structures. Many software packages are now available that provide the researcher with the ability to test factor structures and measurement models with some precision. However, the literature fails to provide the researcher with any comparison of the available software. This paper reviews the basic premise of confirmatory factor analysis and describes the use of two of the more popular software packages (e.g., LISREL and EQS) for obtaining parameter estimates. The two programs are then compared for similarity in estimates and ease of use.     

Techniques for Simultaneous Inference

When more than one significance test is carried out on data from a single experiment, researchers are often concerned with the probability of one or more Type I errors over the entire set of tests. This article considers several methods of exercising control over that probability (the so-called family-wise Type I error rate), provides a schematic that can be used by a researcher to choose among the methods, and discusses applications to contingency tables.     

On Public Aid to Christian Schools in the United States: A Reformed Christian Perspective

This paper seeks to provide a conceptual framework for understanding the topic of public aid to Christian schools in a Reformed Christian perspective. To do so, I need to clarify a Reformed Christian approach in regard to this topic and then review the studies of the issue in legal and educational aspects in the light of the Reformed perspective. Through reviewing legal and educational discussions, I argue that Christian schools are necessary for people to exercise their religious freedom and make a society more moral and spiritual and thus deserve receiving public aid. Nevertheless, public aid to religious schools needs to be carried out in a careful, restricted way.     

Comments to ‘logics of public communications’

Take your average publication on the dynamics of knowledge. In one of its first paragraphs you will probably encounter a phrase like “a logic of public announcements was first proposed by Plaza in 1989 (Plaza 1989).” Tracking down this publication seems easy, because googling its title ‘Logics of Public Communications’ takes you straight to Jan Plaza’s website where it is online available in the author’s own version, including, on that page, very helpful and full bibliographic references to the proceedings in which it originally appeared. Those proceedings are then somewhat harder to find. In fact, I have never seen them. Unfortunately, for the research community, Plaza’s work has never been followed up by a journal version. I am very grateful to the editor Wiebe van der Hoek of the journal ‘Knowledge, Rationality, and Action’ to correct this omission. Plaza’s work is reprinted as such, without an update encompassing more than fifteen additional years of research in this area. This commentary aims to provide some background to bridge that gap. This is a commentary on Jan Plaza’s ‘Logics of Public Communications’, reprinted in this same issue.