Tag: Research

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: 

Webinar: Dissertation projects – Introduction to secondary analysis for qualitative and quantitative

The UK Data Service are offering a free webinar for undergraduates and postgraduates who are using secondary data analysis in their research projects.

The free webinar takes place on 26th May 2020, but if you can’t attend then, it will be recorded and uploaded to YouTube afterwards.

Organised by the UK Data Service, the webinar will take you through the research process of a secondary analysis project, which includes an overview of the methodological, ethical, and procedural issues.

If you are a postgraduate looking for a project to do this summer that doesn’t involve face-to-face contact, or an undergraduate student trying to evaluate options for next year’s dissertation, this webinar will give you options to ensure you get valuable research experience during your degree.

This is an introductory webinar which assumes no prior experience of using archived data.

Presenter: Maureen Haaker

For more info and to sign up, click here.

Engaging in Qualitative Methods Postgraduate Workshop: Friday 22nd April at the RGS in London

The Social and Cultural Geography research group, GFGRG and GLTRG research groups are sponsoring a session at the Royal Geographical Society on Friday 22nd April 10am – 4.30pm. The session is titled ‘Engaging in Qualitative Methods Postgraduate Workshop’ which will be held at the RGS building in Central London, SW7 2AR.

Need some help working out your methodology? Want to learn more about the Royal Geographical Society and it’s research groups? Or just want to meet some other doctoral students and chat through your ideas? This workshop is designed to help those students at the beginning of their PhD or MA journeys to think critically about their methods and methodology and offer a space to meet and chat with other students in an informal atmosphere in the beautiful RGS building in central London.

Sessions:

  • Introduction to methodology & methods
  • Key Note Speaker – Dr Erin Sanders-McDonagh, Middlesex University. Erin is committed to research that has an impact and she has experience using a multitude of methods in extremely diverse contexts.
  • Innovative research methods & methodologies; visual, participatory, feminist approaches. This will be run as an active participatory session, encouraging students in thinking about the methods that they might use, but also to innovate and make them effective for the often unique situations encountered in ‘real life’ research.
  • Be Critical!- Round table exercise designed to get participants to be critical of the research methods that they use and the implications they have on themselves and their participants. When Methods Go Wrong – a session to explore flexibility, lone research safety and to pull from the organisers own experiences to share “lessons learnt”.

Travel Grants Available. Contact Eve at ab7996@coventry.ac.uk for more information.

You can find out more information about tickets by clicking here.