Qualitative Research in a Changing world

Statworks Group is the official partner of NVIVO and we are pleased to announce that our partner will be having a virtual conference on September 23, 2020. Registration to attend the conference will open in July 2020.

COVID-19 has turned our world upside down, despite the fact that medical scientists have been warning for years that a pandemic was an inevitable consequence of our shrinking world due to the increase in international travel and trade. While the medical profession and politicians are focusing on ways to manage this crisis and medical scientists are trying to develop an effective vaccine, social scientists have the tools to look at the impact of the pandemic on the way we live.

We are social animals, yet most of us have been required to ‘stay at home’ and maintain physical distance in any interaction. Most qualitative research methods rely on in-person interaction, whether in interviews, focus groups, or observation studies. Many researchers will have to adapt their methods or even change their research design or topic to accommodate these changed circumstances. Other researchers will focus on the new research topics that the pandemic has precipitated.

This conference embraces both strands of how researchers have responded to the crisis. We welcome papers that focus on the use of online and virtual methods to reaching research participants and their strengths and weaknesses. We also welcome any papers that are looking at the social impact of the pandemic.

Senior Principal Researcher

Nancy Baym

Nancy Baym, Ph.D. is formerly a Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Kansas and currently a Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research. She was a member of the founding board and former president of the Association of Internet Researchers, and serves on the board of several academic journals covering new media and communication. She has published research and provided media commentary on the topics of social communication, new media, and fandom.

Topic: TBD but to address the conference theme

Professor Of Media & Communication

Annette Markham

Annette Markham is Professor of Media and Communication and part of the Digital Ethnography Research Centre at RMIT in Melbourne, Australia, recent professor MSO at Aarhus University in Denmark, and affiliate professor of digital ethics at Loyola University in Chicago. She is former chair of the ethics committee of the Association of Internet Researchers 2012-2016 and primary author of the AoIR 2012 Ethical Decision Making in Internet Research Guidelines. She has published research in the area of Internet studies, digital identity, social interaction, innovative qualitative methods for social research, and Internet research ethics.

Topic: Ethics of Internet Research

Associate Professor

Sara Shaw

Sara Shaw has a background in medical sociology and policy studies, and is a qualitative researcher with many years’ experience of developing and applying qualitative methods. Sara’s research focuses on the organisation and development of health care policy and practice. She has particular interests in the design, development, adoption (also non-adoption) and use of technology in health care. Recently Sara and team have been using a range of methods – including organisational case study, documentary analysis, conversation analysis – to study video consulting in primary and secondary care. She is currently working on a new study, funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, to look at the use of remote-by-default care in the COVID-19 pandemic. Sara works remotely from a small village close to Oxford, where she lives with her twin daughters and an elusive cat.

Topic: Remote Consultations in Health Care: what can qualitative analysis tell us about development and use before, during and after COVID-19?