COVID-19 and Research – Social and Cultural Geography Research Group

Examples of methods in prize winning dissertations

We’ve looked through the full back catalogue of SCGRG prize winning undergraduate dissertations and found useful examples of methods that can be used during lockdown.

Thomas Paulsen, University of Exeter – Runner Up 2017
- In Search of Danish Atmospheres
- Uses auto-ethnography and analysis of family photographs to explore Danish identity.

Megan O’Kane, Queens University Belfast – Runner Up 2016
- Geographies of Suicide and the Representation of Self-Sacrifice in Japanese Popular Culture and Media
- Discursive analysis of manga and anime animation, supported with secondary background data, to examine representations of suicide and self-sacrifice in Japanese popular culture.

Grace Burchell, University of Nottingham – Runner Up 2015
- Breeding Frankenstein’s Bulldog: reimagining the Pedigree in Nineteenth Century England
- Archival research (some accessed digitally), literary analysis of novels, and visual analysis, in order to understand how bulldogs have been appropriated by different social groups.

Helen Spooner, University of Oxford – Runner up 2014
- A kinaesthetic spirituality: An autophenomenographic account of running 250km of the Camino Portugués
- Uses autoethnographic methods focusing on the author’s own experiences of running to think about the embodied, sensual emergence of landscape and self through practice.

Simon Cook, University of Plymouth – Runner up 2013
- Jography: Exploring the Mobilities of Road-Running
- Uses online training diaries with runners as part of wider work with mobile methods.

Emma Bonny, University of Nottingham – Runner up 2010
- The landscape and culture of allotments: a study in Hornchurch, Essex
- Uses participant diaries/ ‘photovoice’ methods – a good way of doing primary research without having to go into the field.

Jessica Potts, Durham University – Winner 2011
- “We are not here, we are not there”: Young Refugees’ and Asylum Seeker’s Negotiations of Identity and Belonging
- Another example of ‘photovoice’ methods.

Mary McLaren, University of Exeter – Runner up 2011
- Constructing distant geographies of care: the example of Fairtrade in Horsham
- Analyses commercial Fairtrade images and their work in creating particular consumer imaginaries of the people and places they are linked to through their consumption.

Doing your dissertation during the Covid-19 pandemic

The global pandemic has created a radically changed landscape for the practice of research. As we all face these challenges and look to rethink our research projects and approaches in line with this new situation, we wanted to gather together some resources that might provide some useful guidance, information, and support. These resources are thought particularly for undergraduate social and cultural geography students, but will of course be useful more widely too. We hope that you find them helpful. This is a live resource, and we will be adding things as and when they come up in the coming months. If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to get in touch with the group’s Dissertation Officer, Dr. Sofie Narbed: sofie.narbed@rhul.ac.uk.

Online research methods

If you’re thinking of taking your methods online – whether that’s interviews, questionnaires of analysing online media – we’ve found some great resources about online research methods to help you get started.

Secondary data sources

Due to the difficulties of doing ‘fieldwork’ during a pandemic, you might find yourself working predominantly with secondary rather than primary data for your dissertation. Here’s a list of secondary data sources which are freely available online, that could be used as a basis for a social/cultural geographical dissertation study.

Secondary data analysis

So you’ve chosen to use secondary data in your dissertation – what next? We’ve put together a list of readings which provide guidance on secondary data analysis of visual materials, texts, adverts, films and more.

Webinars, conferences and podcasts

Looking for further inspiration? We’ve collated lists of webinars, conferences and podcasts, all about accessing and using secondary data sets and adapting research methods to the new situation we are in.

Methods used in SCGRG prize winning dissertations

We’ve looked through the full back catalogue of SCGRG prize winning undergraduate dissertations and found useful examples using lockdown-appropriate methods.

Secondary data analysis for research during a pandemic

Due to the pandemic and the difficulties of doing ‘fieldwork’, you might find yourself working predominantly with secondary rather than primary data for your dissertation – visual materials, texts, adverts, films, etc. The below readings provide some guidance on or examples of this kind of analysis.

Aitken, S. C. (2013). Textual analysis: reading culture and context. Methods in Human Geography: A guide for students doing a research project, pp. 233.

Bartram, R. (2010) Geography and the Interpretation of Visual Imagery, In Clifford et al., Key Methods in Geography, London: Sage.

Bhattacharyya, D. P. (1997). Mediating India: An analysis of a guidebook. Annals of Tourism Research, 24(2), pp. 371-389. DOI: 10.1016/S0160-7383(97)80007-2

Bishop, L. (2007). A reflexive account of reusing qualitative data: Beyond primary/secondary dualism. Sociological Research Online, 12(3), pp. 43-56. DOI: 10.5153/sro.1553

Cosgrove, D., & Daniels, S. (Eds.). 1988. The iconography of landscape: essays on the symbolic representation, design and use of past environments (Vol. 9). Cambridge University Press.

Daniels, S. (1993). Fields of vision: landscape imagery and national identity in England and the United States (pp. 112-45). Cambridge: Polity Press.

Dittmer, J. (2005). Captain America’s empire: Reflections on identity, popular culture, and post-9/11 geopolitics. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95(3), pp. 626-643. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8306.2005.00478.x

Dittmer, J. (2011). Captain Britain and the narration of nation. Geographical Review, 101(1), pp. 71-87. DOI: 10.1111/j.1931-0846.2011.00073.x

Dodd, K. & Dodd, P. (2004) From the East End to EastEnders: representations of the working class 1890-1990, In D. Strinati & S. Wagg (Eds.) Come on down? Popular Media Culture in Post-War Britain, Routledge, pp. 125-141.

Dodds, K. (1996). The 1982 Falklands War and a critical geopolitical eye: Steve Bell and the if… cartoons. Political Geography, 15(6-7), pp. 571-592. DOI: 10.1016/0962-6298(96)00002-9

Domosh, M. (2003). Selling America: advertising, national identity and economic empire in the late nineteenth century, In Blunt et al. (Eds.) Cultural Geography in Practice, Oxford: Hodder Arnold, pp. 141-153

Dwyer, C., & Davies, G. (2010). Qualitative methods III: animating archives, artful interventions and online environments. Progress in Human Geography, 34(1), pp. 88-97. DOI: 10.1177/0309132508105005

Gallwey, A. (2013). The rewards of using archived oral histories in research: The case of the Millennium Memory Bank. Oral History, 41(1), pp. 37-50. www.jstor.org/stable/41806380

Goldman, R. (1992; 2005). Reading ads socially. Routledge.

Hones, S. (2008). Text as it happens: Literary geography. Geography Compass, 2(5), pp. 1301-1317. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2008.00143.x

Hones, S. (2010). Teaching and learning guide for: Text as it happens–literary geography. Geography Compass, 4(1), pp. 61-66. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2009.00291.x

Lyon, D., & Crow, G. (2012). The challenges and opportunities of re-studying community on Sheppey: young people’s imagined futures. The Sociological Review, 60(3), pp. 498-517. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-954X.2012.02096.x

Lyon, D., Morgan Brett, B., & Crow, G. (2012). Working with material from the Sheppey archive. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 15(4), pp. 301-309. DOI: 10.1080/13645579.2012.688314

Lutz, C. A., & Collins, J. L. (1993). Reading National Geographic (Vol. 59). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kinsman, P. (1995). Landscape, race and national identity: the photography of Ingrid Pollard. Area, pp. 300-310. www.jstor.org/stable/20003600

May, J. (2003).The view from the streets: Geographies of homelessness in the British newspaper press, In Blunt el al (Eds.) Cultural Geography in Practice, Oxford: Hodder Arnold, pp. 23-38.

Mills, S. (2012) Young ghosts: ethical and methodological issues of historical research in children’s geographies, Children’s Geographies, 10(3), pp. 357-363, DOI: 10.1080/14733285.2012.693838

Mills, S. (2013). Cultural–historical geographies of the archive: fragments, objects and ghosts. Geography Compass, 7(10), pp. 701-713. DOI: 10.1111/gec3.12071

Monaco, J. (2009). How to read a film: The art, technology, language, history, and theory of film and media. New York: Oxford University Press.

Pinder, D. (2003). Mapping Worlds: cartography and the politics of representation, in Blunt et al. (Eds) Cultural Geography in Practice, Oxford: Hodder Arnold, pp. 172-190.

Rose, G. (1996). Teaching visualised geographies: towards a methodology for the interpretation of visual materials. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 20(3), pp. 281-294. DOI: 10.1080/03098269608709373

Rose, G. (2000). Practising photography: an archive, a study, some photographs and a researcher. Journal of historical geography, 26(4), pp. 555-571. DOI: 10.1006/jhge.2000.0247

Rose, G. (2001; 2016). Visual methodologies: An introduction to researching with visual materials. London: Sage.

Sharp, J. P. (2000). Towards a critical analysis of fictive geographies. Area, 32(3), pp. 327-334. DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4762.2000.tb00145.x

Watters, E. C., Cumming, S., & Caragata, L. (2018). The Lone Mother Resilience Project: A Qualitative Secondary Analysis. In Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 19(2). DOI: 10.17169/fqs-19.2.2863

Secondary data sources for research during a pandemic

There are a wide variety of secondary data sources freely available online that could be used as the basis for a social/cultural geographical dissertation study. Check out the sources listed below for ideas.

National archives are searchable in a variety of ways. For example the UK Data Service is the UK’s largest collection of social, economic and population research data:
https://www.ukdataservice.ac.uk/ can be reviewed by theme: https://www.ukdataservice.ac.uk/get-data/themes.aspx. You can also browse by type of data such as: quantitative and qualitative data collections.

IPUMs provides census and survey data from around the world. It’s possible to study change, conduct comparative research, and analyse individuals within family and community contexts.

A wide range of data sources and documents are available from government departments, for example, care, disability, citizenship and living in the UK, housing and local services, parenting, education, environment and the countryside.

Other sources to explore:

UK Data Archive
Text Encoding Initiative
The Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA)
QualiBank
Horizon 2020
Qualitative Data Repository
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)
Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS)
Irish Qualitative Data Archive
Pew Research Center: Religion and Public Life
Big Qual Analysis Resource Hub
Qualitative Data Repository (QDR)
Understanding Society: The UK Household Longitudinal Study
Census and Administrative Data Longitudinal Studies Hub
Centre for Longitudinal Studies
Closer
British Social Attitudes Survey
Inventing Adulthoods – A qualitative longitudinal dataset on young people growing up in England and Northern Ireland

Webinars, conferences and podcasts on doing research during a pandemic

The below webinars from the UK Data Service offer guidance on the different kinds of data available for investigating particular geographical issues in the UK (political behaviour, mental health, religion, etc), and how to access and approach these data sets. There are also many live events online discussing how research methods and approaches might adapt to the new situation we find ourselves in – such as the NVivo conference below – that might be of interest. It’s also worth checking out the National Centre for Research Methods mini-podcasts series, in which they share methodological developments, research findings and ideas, and discuss their potential and actual impact.

NVivo virtual conference, 23rd September 2020

Hear from experts and doctoral students on how they are adapting their research (or not) due to the changed research landscape during Covid-19. Registration opens July 2020. https://www.qsrinternational.com/nvivo-qualitative-data-analysis-software/nvivo-virtual-conference

UK Data Service

Dissertation projects: Introduction to secondary analysis for qualitative and quantitative data

Slides available here

Key issues in Reusing Data

https://ukdataservice.ac.uk/media/622714/web_reusingdata21may2020.pdf

Finding Data in the UK Data Service

Slides available here

Using UK Data Service in dissertations

Webinars

The following webinars discuss a variety of geographic issues that have used different data sets:

Investigating political behaviour in the UK – what data can I use https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjeEK8LrZNg&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=12&t=0s

Investigating Religion in the UK – what data can I use? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBZkRm6yFwU&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=15&t=72s

Investigating mental health in the UK – what data can I use? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhSu0-IqwuE&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=24&t=0s

Investigating obesity in the UK – what data can I use? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Znr5r153R54&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=44&t=0s

Research using Youth and Young Adult Data in Understanding Society https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r66TKL5sbzg&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=52&t=0s

Geography and Longitudinal Data https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw_6QA_KfCs&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=54&t=0s

Introduction to the British Social Attitudes Survey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZLd1uBON8I&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=72&t=0s

Introduction to data on ethnicity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-TA0AIJh1U&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=88

Introduction to data on ageing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5N12075QNM&list=PLG87Imnep1Sln3F69_kBROUrIbT5iderf&index=94

Podcasts

The following National Centre for Research Methods podcasts provide useful resources on online methods:

Making space for Big Qual: New ideas in research methods and teaching. https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/?id_specific=59&title=Making

Teaching Big Qual: Benefits and challenges for students and teachers. https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/?id_specific=60&title=Teaching

Mind the gap: Why skills are key to data reuse. https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/?id_specific=54&title=Mind

Using Social Media in Research. https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/?id_specific=24&title=Using

Online research methods in a pandemic

There are some great resources available for thinking about taking your methods online, whether that’s about doing interviews and questionnaires or analysing online media. Below are some websites and academic readings that might help you get started.

Lupton, D. (editor) (2020) Doing Fieldwork in a Pandemic: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1clGjGABB2h2qbduTgfqribHmog9B6P0NvMgVuiHZCl8/edit?ts=5e88ae0a#

This highly recommended crowd-sourced document provides a list of resources for and about online research covering a wide range of methods.

Website resources

National Centre of Research Methods: www.ncrm.ac.uk

TRI-ORM:Exploring Online Research Methods: http://www.restore.ac.uk/orm/site/home.htm. Includes modules for self-study on topics such as online questionnaires, online interviews, and online research ethics

Methods for the Analysis of Media Contents: http://www.restore.ac.uk/lboro/. Includes resources for understanding methodologies (e.g. content analysis, discourse analysis, frame analysis), data collection, data preparation and data analysis

Books and journal articles

DeLyser, D., Sheehan, R., & Curtis, A. (2004). eBay and research in historical geography. Journal of Historical Geography, 30(4), pp. 764-782. DOI: 10.1016/j.jhg.2005.01.001

Dodds, K. (2006). Popular geopolitics and audience dispositions: James Bond and the internet movie database (IMDb). Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 31(2), pp. 116-130. DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-5661.2006.00199.x

Hine, C. (2000). Virtual ethnography. Sage.

James, N. (2016). Using email interviews in qualitative educational research: Creating space to think and time to talk. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 29(2), pp. 150-163. DOI: 10.1080/09518398.2015.1017848

Madge, C. (2007). Developing a geographers’ agenda for online research ethics. Progress in Human Geography, 31(5), pp. 654-674. DOI: 10.1177/0309132507081496

Madge, C., & O’Connor, H. (2002). On‐line with e‐mums: Exploring the internet as a medium for research. Area, 34(1), pp. 92-102. DOI: 10.1111/1475-4762.00060

Madge, C., & O’connor, H. (2004). Online methods in geography educational research. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 28(1), pp. 143-152. DOI: 10.1080/0309826042000198710

O’Connor, H., & Madge, C. (2003). “Focus groups in cyberspace”: Using the Internet for qualitative research. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal. DOI: 10.1108/13522750310470190/

O’Connor, H., Madge, C., Shaw, R., & Wellens, J. (2008). Internet-based interviewing. The Sage handbook of online research methods, pp. 271-289.

Ridanpää, J. (2014). ‘Humour is Serious’ as a Geopolitical Speech Act: IMDb Film Reviews of Sacha Baron Cohen’s The Dictator. Geopolitics, 19(1), pp. 140-160. DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2013.829819

Social media forums

It is also worth looking out for groups on social media (from reputable sources) that can be great resources for information and discussion.

Innovative social research methods: https://www.facebook.com/groups/333716010504710

National Centre for Research Methods: https://www.facebook.com/ncrmuk