Where Qualitative Researchers and Technologies Meet: Lessons From Interactive Digital Art

Abstract

Drawing from research and theory on interactive digital art (specifically) and the social shaping of technology (more generally), this investigation challenges common conceptualizations of the use of Qualitative Data Analysis Software (QDA Software). Through new frameworks for understanding qualitative research practice, the author pushes QDA Software developers, users, and critics to better understand the entangled relationships between qualitative researchers and digital tools for qualitative research. This is achieved by examining four displays of interactive digital art to disrupt the fairly simplistic binaries such as software/methods, researcher/technology, and automated/manual. After a focus on the experience of visitors to these displays, the article concludes with the analogy of the ideal qualitative researcher as a “good visitor” to emphasize the local, dynamic, engaged, and experiential aspects of respectfully and productively collecting and analyzing relevant qualitative data, regardless of whether a researcher uses digital tools to do so or not.

Keywords

qualitative data analysis software QDA software CAQDAS digital tools for qualitative research interactive digital art reflexivity qualitative research

Interactive art exhibits require that visitors engage with the displays for the art to achieve its designed purpose. Interactive digital art invites this same experimentation, relying on digital technology to create the experience (Nardelli, 2014). The gradual shift toward my current understanding of the debate between critics and advocates of Qualitative Data Analysis Software (QDA Software) began when I stepped away from my research office in 2008 (where I was preparing software training materials) to attend an exhibit of interactive digital art at the Denver Art Museum. At one of the displays, “Bubbloo”¹ (Figure 1), ceiling-mounted projectors threw images of colorful bubbles (between six inches to two feet in diameter) on a large floor (Vlemmings, 2008).

Figure 1.

Girl playing at the “Bubbloo” exhibit.

The virtual bubbles gently “floated” across the room at different speeds and in different directions, growing larger as they traversed the cement. I paused to watch three children chase bubbles and instinctively stomp! To my surprise, the virtual bubbles “popped.” Sensors in the room mapped the motion of the children and triggered a message to the projector, which responded with an obligatory, virtual burst, followed by the creation of new bubbles that would gently float into view. I stepped into my imaginary rain boots and began tentatively tapping at the images alongside the three toddlers; with contagious giggles, we were soon spinning, racing, and chasing each other toward the endless appearance of new bubbles. A video of “Bubbloo” can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNgdet5GQ9k (“Bubbloo,” n.d.) or by searching YouTube for “Bubbloo Denver Art Museum.”

This moment serves as a metaphor for the rupturing of my own, intellectual bubble, but it is also much more. It marks the start of my new understanding of the ways we qualitative researchers interact with technologies. While many of my publications and conference presentations on QDA Software include a swat at annoyingly unsubstantiated criticisms (e.g., Coffey, Holbrook, & Atkinson, 1996; Grbich, 2013) from people who never or only briefly used such software (or whose experience is limited to products that are decades old!), I have been quietly troubled that these criticisms often came from analytical positions I admire, including feminist, post-modern, post-structural, critical, and constructionist perspectives. In nearly a decade of investigating (and contributing to) the debate about problems with and benefits of using QDA Software—and sensing that something was wrong in our mutual framing of it—I am shifting away from arguing which side is correct. Instead, this article raises the possibility that many of us have been asking the wrong questions about the space where researchers and technologies meet by ironically over-emphasizing three frames that qualitative researchers often seek to disrupt: (a) binaries; (b) fairly linear, cause-and-effect arguments; and (c) simplistic explanations. “Bubbloo” helped me start erasing the illusory line between researchers and technologies so I could begin more carefully examining the spaces where they meet.

To help explain this new way of thinking about QDA Software, I will take you on a tour of other interactive art exhibits, and I will provide links that allow you to see these exhibits in action. Along the way, I will pause to draw on research and theory about this art genre that helps us understand some of the ways people and technologies interact, and I will describe implications they have for QDA Software. After framing these claims in a broader discussion of the Social Shaping of Technology (MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1999), I conclude with concrete responses to many of the well-worn criticisms while also proposing new lines of inquiry to advance our conceptualizations about QDA Software.

Wooden Mirror

Our first stop is an installation art gallery in 2000 that was part of the annual conference organized by the Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH; http://www.siggraph.org/s2000/). Most of the art at the gallery was designed to maximize interactivity with the attendees, and Daniel Rozin’s piece, the “Wooden Mirror” (Figure 2), was a huge success.

Figure 2.

Woman visiting “Wooden Mirror” exhibit.

“Wooden Mirror” was a wall measuring five and a half feet wide by six and a half feet tall, comprised of 830 square wooden tiles. The back of each tile was connected to an individual motor that slightly tilted each tile independently. As visitors approached the display, a video camera surreptitiously collected visual information of their expressions and gestures and transmitted these to the relays that were connected to the back of the wooden tiles. Each tile was instantly adjusted to reflect appropriate amounts of light from the ceiling. The wall of tiles subsequently displayed a real time “reflection” of the participant. Because the image adjusted to the playful expressions of each person on a wooden surface (which is typically nonreflective and might even be contrasted with the surface of a mirror), visitors to the piece were captivated. Following the conference, Rozin replicated the piece at other exhibits with different configurations and using materials such as trash, fans, pom-poms, shiny balls, and even stuffed penguins (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZysu9QcceM).

In their book, Windows and Mirrors, Bolter and Gromala (2003) conducted interviews with artists at SIGGRAPH (2000) and observed people who interacted with the digital art. By pulling from the history of art and computing and applying theoretical frames such as rhizomes (Deleuze & Guattari, 1993), cyborgs (Haraway, 1991), enframing (Heidegger, 1977), and simulacra (Baudrillard, 1988), they proposed some reasons why Rozin’s “Wooden Mirror” was so successful. They did so by problematizing the debate in computer design between the structuralists and the designers (who began challenging the structuralists during the boom in desktop publishing). The structuralists professed a vision of the computer becoming invisible but ubiquitous (similar to the way motors in cars and vacuum cleaners became concealed inside the structure of the machine). In contrast, the designers wanted the computer interface to be readily noticed (often elegantly so) and available for scrutiny. Bolter and Gromala argued that interactive displays at SIGGRAPH (2000) served as evidence that the appropriate goal of any digital interface was to establish a rhythm between these, rather than idealizing one over the other, so the visitor could move back and forth between the following:

Interacting with the technology and enjoying the immediate experience.

Analyzing the interface to assess the way it worked.

In the former posture, the heightened sensory awareness and improvisational experimentation was of primary importance, and in the latter, an analytical understanding of the mechanics of the technology was of primary importance.

Bolter and Gromala also observed that nearly every visitor oscillated between these states, whether they possessed little knowledge or extensive expertise in technology or engineering. Important to understand, however, is Bolter and Gromala’s emphasis on the movement—the oscillation—rather than the idealized notions of interaction versus analysis. This is in line with one of the few studies that closely followed researchers as they used QDA Software (Gilbert, 2002). Gilbert interviewed researchers regarding their perceptions of how much the software helped or hurt their analysis. Some were more advanced qualitative researchers and others were fairly novice. One of the findings was that the experts who felt they made effective use of the software were able to alternate between two states:

Seeing their data through the ease of using software (i.e., the software was often “invisible” and allowed them to focus on their data).

Obtaining a meta-awareness of the software and its influence over the research (i.e., the software was also “visible”).

The experienced qualitative experts in Gilbert’s study also raised concerns that novice users might not be able to navigate between these two states, and become stuck in either one or the other, to the detriment of the analysis.

A lesson we can draw from Gilbert’s research and the analysis of “Wooden Mirror” is that engaged use of QDA Software is much more than a dual understanding of qualitative methods and the mechanics of specific software tools, although these are the two dimensions often emphasized in the detailed discussions of QDA Software (e.g., Bazeley, 2013; Bazeley & Jackson, 2013; Davidson & di Gregorio, 2011; di Gregorio & Davidson, 2008; Gilbert, Jackson, & di Gregorio, 2014; Jackson, 2003; Maietta, 2008; Silver & Lewins, 2014). Engaged use also entails tacking back and forth between improvisationally handling the data and analyzing the software interface (including the values, processes, and predispositions embedded therein). One lesson for QDA Software developers is to move beyond the simplistic, binary discussion of qualitative methods on one side and software tools on the other. New and interesting tools and interfaces might be developed by acknowledging that in practice, good qualitative researchers tack back and forth dynamically between improvisational explorations of the tools and a meta-analysis of the way the software works. Undoubtedly, there are aspects of the software that can either thwart or facilitate such tacking back and forth, and I propose ways of thinking about these later. In the meantime, to keep the tour moving, I describe two more pieces of interactive digital art with additional implications for our understanding of QDA Software.

A-Volve

In 1994, Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau displayed “A-Volve” (a contraction of “artificial evolution”) at the Ars Electronica Festival in Austria (http://www.aec.at/about/en/). The interactive piece was typical of their pursuit of the spaces where science meets art and the physical meets the virtual. In “A-Volve,” visitors created and then interacted with virtual creatures that swam in a real, water-filled glass pool (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Visitor reaching into the “A-Volve” exhibit.

Visitors began by creating a basic shape on a touch screen that was converted by a computer into a three dimensional form. The form was projected into the pool, where several rules governed the way the virtual creatures moved and interacted. They had their own “lives” or characteristics that could not be altered by the visitors (similar to the way video games contain underlying rules); the creatures could evolve, mate, and kill each other. However, they were also open to outside influence. Visitors put a hand in the middle of any creature in the pool to freeze it (to, for instance, stop a predator), touched a creature from behind to move it forward, or swirled the water to bring two creatures together. A video describing and demonstrating “A-Volve” can be found on Sommerer and Mignonneau’s home page at http://www.interface.ufg.ac.at/christa-laurent/WORKS/FRAMES/FrameSet.html, which contains a complete portfolio of their work from 1992 to the present.

“A-Volve” provides experiential understandings of the spaces where we react to, are influenced by, and have an impact on the living and artificial forms around us. For instance, visitors demonstrated emotional attachments to the forms they created, and even preferences to protect or attack the virtual creatures developed by other visitors. Sommerer and Mignonneau (2009) claimed that these reactions were based on the dis/pleasing appearance of the creatures. I extend their observation to propose that sometimes visitors’ reactions were based on characteristics and actions of other visitors, and sometimes the reactions emanated from a dynamic, moment-by-moment interplay between the assessments of the creatures and assessments of creators of the creatures. Sommerer and Mignonneau (2009) intended “A-Volve” to push visitors to consider the similarities and differences between complex, living ecosystems, and nonliving physical and virtual structures and systems. A reflective visitor might ask, why am I attracted to or defensive about particular forms? How do I treat them as though they are alive? Through what mechanisms are these forms influencing my experience? Critical reflection of these re/actions toward forms was one of the goals in developing the display, and this critical reflection was designed to disrupt visitors’ conventional understandings of the boundaries between people and objects.

The process of critically reflecting on one’s values, choices, and interactions with real and virtual worlds was also a core aspect of my research on the way doctoral students and their committee members negotiated qualitative research transparency (Jackson, 2014). One of my key findings was that the students’ evolving, personal experiences of handling their digital, qualitative data in NVivo (one QDA Software program) entailed an exploration of the blurry boundaries between the technology and their interpretations. Furthermore, rather than making broad, sweeping statements about the positive or negative aspects of NVivo, they described a rich zone where ideas were developed by moving among three activities:

The construction of interpretations about the data (by thinking about the data).

The writing or tracking of these interpretations in NVivo as a way of creating “objects” that represented the ideas (through coding, writing, memoing, linking, and generating visual representations).

Playing with these database representations or objects over time to either develop new ideas or challenge/modify existing ones.

These processes occurred in iterative cycles. This motion could be fluid, sudden, recursive, generative, nonlinear, or hierarchical, and they advanced (eventually) the students’ understandings of their data and qualitative methods.

Like the visitors’ creation and subsequent interaction with creatures in the “A-Volve” pool, students engaged in an experiential awareness of the blurry boundaries between themselves (members of complex biological and cultural ecosystems) and the nonliving physical and virtual structures they created. This experiential (and often improvisational) handling of data in NVivo helped them ask, why am I attracted to or defensive about particular ideas? How do I treat them as though they are alive? How does my critical reflection about my ideas challenge conventional understandings of the boundaries between me and the technology I am using to explore my data? Furthermore, although students discussed the importance of the software for tracking and revisiting their ideas during the ongoing handling of the data, their written dissertation did not reflect the importance of the role of the software. Instead, most students simply provided a one-sentence statement that data were imported into NVivo, a “software package” used to “code,” “find patterns,” or “manage” the data.

Similar to what Woods, Paulus, Atkins, and Macklin (2015) found in their investigation of published articles reporting the use of QDA Software, there was very little discussion in the dissertations of the role of the technology. This could be a form of “compositional triage” (Jackson, 2014, p. 73) wherein the decisions about how the software was leveraged during the analysis were omitted, despite the importance that students attributed to NVivo during their interviews. I argued that this was potentially because of the few examples available in the literature regarding how to discuss QDA Software, combined with the students’ fear of opening themselves to critiques by their committee members. While the reasons for this compositional triage were not a primary focus of the study and warrant further research, the findings point to an important lesson: QDA Software might help researchers attend to (and explore) the blurry boundaries between researchers, technologies, and the handling of data as part of the reflexive process.

As the visitors to “A-Volve” demonstrated, people sometimes interact with technology in a manner that alters their experiential understandings of themselves at the same time that it modifies the technological content. This emphasizes a form of reflexivity—about the handling of data—that goes beyond conventional understandings of qualitative research reflexivity (which tend to focus on personal aspects of the researcher in the context of the research setting such as identity, ethnicity, gender, privilege, and insider/outsider status). One of the significant potential contributions of QDA Software is to help qualitative researchers better understand this area of reflexivity in the practice of handling qualitative data, regardless of whether a researcher uses this genre of software or not. Before moving to larger theoretical frames for understanding the role of technology in society, the next section explores one more example of interactive digital art. This next piece might be of particular interest to the critics of QDA Software.

Excretia

In 2004, Diane Gromala displayed her BioMorphic Typography at the TypO Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, Sweden (http://www.modernamuseet.se/stockholm/en/exhibitions/the-1st-at-moderna-typo-writing-with-style/; “BioMorphic Typography,” Selected exhibitions and performances, 2004). BioMorphic Typography is Gromala’s term for a genre of digital fonts that dynamically responds to a person’s physical reactions while interacting with the text (Figure 4).

Figure 4.

Simulated snapshot of “Excretia” font.

In one of her early iterations of this font, “Excretia” (Bolter & Gromala, 2003), a biofeedback machine measured galvanic skin response (temperature) and breath rate of the reader. As an amalgam of fonts that changed according to changing biology of the person, the words might take on the appearance of melting, drooping, blurring, growing, looping, or developing sharper edges. In a similar effort, Gromala developed biofeedback for writers, so they might become more reflective of their physical state while they composed. A sample of “Excretia” can be found on Gromala’s website (http://gromala.iat.sfu.ca/artdesign.html).

One goal of BioMorphic font was to engage readers in an experience wherein they actively influenced the form of the font as part of their reading of the material. For authors, one goal was to attend to personal, physical reactions that were part of the reality of composition, instead of focusing exclusively on the externalized, written page. From the vantage point of either author or reader, a dynamic interplay occurred where the font reflected a physical and emotional state, and then these ongoing changes in font triggered additional reactions. These were fed back once again through the biofeedback to iteratively influence the font. This biofeedback was confined to a limited range of physiological measurements, as is biofeedback therapy (where various physiological states—such as muscle tension—are translated into sensory feedback such as a sound or an image, so an individual can become more aware of and subsequently improve his or her health). While focused on the limited range of physiological responses, the goal was for authors and readers to become more self-aware and reflexive about the way their physical, emotional, embodied realities influenced and were influenced by their understanding of the narrative they were producing or reading. The potential for authors and readers, alike, was to shift to a more dynamic understanding of the experience, because “how it looks and what it says can never really be separated” (Bolter & Gromala, 2003, p. 165).

“Excretia” was part of a larger initiative, Design for the Senses, which promoted the development of “new approaches to experiential design that focus on the senses and the phenomenological history of the body” (http://gromala.iat.sfu.ca/New/biomorphic.html). Through this project and BioMorphic Typography, Gromala was exploring reflexivity, particularly in the zone where people and technologies meet. She was also challenging the dichotomous separation between the virtual world and the physical world. In her subsequent work (Castellanos & Gromala, 2010), she called for a sensory awakening as an important aspect of reflexivity that could better understand and assess the human-machine co-evolution.

The inevitable limitations to our common approaches to qualitative research reflexivity were well-documented by Weiner-Levy and Popper-Giveon (2011), who detailed many ways personal accounts fell short due to what they call “voids” in researcher reflexivity. As the often overlooked “dark matter” of reflexivity, these omissions were an amalgam of the ongoing decisions in research that amounted to the privileging of some types of reflexivity over others. As omissions that were usually invisible to the reader (and sometimes to the researcher), these voids could occur when researchers intentionally concealed or omitted information (sometimes related to restrictions in publication length, self-serving goals, or the commitment to protect participants). But, these voids could also be related to an unintentional suppression of information or repression of personal circumstances that were invisible to the researcher despite his or her best intentions to be forthcoming. “Excretia” points to one way of tapping into this hidden information by bringing into view a researcher’s physiological (and emotional) reactions to handling data and/or communicating results.

One of the lessons for qualitative researchers is that although our pursuits of reflexivity might be genuine, purposeful, and diligent, they are also sometimes limited by our cerebral focus on data and an accompanying disassociation with physical experiences of and reactions to handling data. If 3D body-mapping has proved to be a useful way for understanding dancers’ embodied experience of pain and injury (Tarr & Thomas, 2011), it is reasonable to investigate whether qualitative researchers’ attentions to their physiological states help them understand their embodied experience of handling data. While performance ethnography, arts-based research, and other approaches to qualitative analysis more purposefully address the embodied researcher (Leavy, 2015) as part of analysis, these approaches represent a small portion of the research enterprise and they sometimes go unrecognized by researchers who use other approaches.

My early discussions with Lyn and Tom Richards (the retired founders of QSR, the company that produces NVivo) pointed to a similar problem of omission and an attempt to handle it as far back as 2002. They incorporated a tool in NVivo in response to the critique that the software could only discover patterns in ideas or characteristics that the researcher already identified as relevant aspects of the data (e.g., codes such as “trust,” “family,” and “catalyst” or demographic characteristics such as “age” and “ethnicity”). With enthusiasm, Lyn asserted that one of the hardest but perhaps most important aspects of future software development was to build tools that helped challenge what researchers saw, rather than contribute to potentially myopic views they already believed.

The Richards took one approach to this challenge (although they knew it fell short in some ways) by developing the Scope tool.² With this tool, after running a search to look at, for instance, the intersection of “trust” and “family,” the researcher could enlist the software to look for other, unanticipated patterns in the intersecting data. For instance, the researcher might discover that all of this content was also coded at “catalyst” or that the data were only from female participants, even though this was not part of the researcher’s initial inquiry. While the introduction of this tool could dislodge some assumptions or thwart premature conclusions about the data, it was only a first step (and one that has seen little practical advancement since 2002). While a biofeedback tool as part of QDA Software (or an add-on that works in conjunction with such software) might sound invasive to some researchers, and although a Foucauldian (Foucault, 1991) caution against such technology is warranted, the implementation and reaction to it would depend on a host of factors. It is important to note Gromala’s intent was to liberate rather than control the individual through BioMorphic Typography, and she has conducted a significant amount of research on the use of innovative, biofeedback technologies for the purpose of understanding, relieving, and managing pain (Gromala & Shaw, 2004).

Furthermore, as a first step, there are alternative developments that do not rely on biofeedback that could help a researcher become more physiologically and emotionally self-aware; tools could be developed regarding researcher activities in a database to reveal values, inclinations, and choices that might otherwise go unnoticed. For instance, the duration of time spent in a tool—as well as activities that precede or follow this use—might reveal previously unknown patterns of practice that could be examined and either nurtured or disrupted. In addition, this information alongside other patterns such as rapid, prolonged, or interrupted engagement might provide a map of researcher movement in the database, which would be especially helpful if it could be linked to the specific journals/memos or adjustments in database structure. These are a few of the ways that QDA Software could develop new kinds of analytics that go beyond the current limitations of project logs (that track individual actions rather than patterns) or memos (that rely on researcher self-awareness). As Weiner-Levy and Popper-Giveon (2011) have made abundantly clear, to be reflexive about what we do know is one thing (and difficult to achieve in practice); to reflect on aspects of our values, emotions, identities, and choices while handling data that we are not even aware of is quite another. Attending to our physical, emotional, and embodied experiences while handling data is one way of making headway toward this type of reflexivity.

The Social Shaping of Technology

The claims I have made thus far, though they carry theoretical and conceptual implications, focus primarily on local, particular, dynamic, and experiential aspects of handling data. To connect these understandings with the macro processes of societies, cultures, and institutions—to which the experiences of handling data are connected—I want to briefly raise a relevant theoretical framework for understanding the relationships between technologies and societies. In the 1980s, during the early phases of QDA Software development, a shift was underway in social theory. The common emphasis on the impact of technology on society, a largely one-directional view, was slowly giving way to a nondeterministic and less cause-and-effect understanding: The bonds between technologies and people were both mutually influential and complex (MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1999).

Early scholarship in this arena was met with some skepticism—particularly in terms of the feasibility of conducting research on the relationships between people and technologies—but experts in this field, primarily sociologists, observed that after nearly two decades, this mutually influential paradigm became the dominant view. The Social Shaping of Technology (MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1999) is a nice example of the way this shift was articulated by a range of scholars. For example, as Winner (1980) observed, engineers understood for a long time that their designs were sometimes less technically bound and technically driven than they were shaped by broader opportunities and constraints. Political, economic, cultural, educational, and bureaucratic forces had much to do with the shaping of blueprints; Rome was neither built in a day nor in a cultural vacuum. Following this long-standing insider awareness among engineers (and interactive digital artists), the theorizing among sociologists came later.

I summarize this mutually influential, macro understanding of society and technology to connect it with my earlier emphasis on local experiences, because they are inextricably bound and mutually influential (Bourdieu, 1977). Larger patterns within economies, industries, and businesses impact a researcher’s abilities, inclinations, and commitments to:

Oscillate between improvisationally interacting with QDA Software and analyzing the interface to assess the way it works (as in “Wooden Mirror”).

Explore the murky waters where researchers and technologies are entangled in mutual influence (as in “A-Volve”).

Push the boundaries of researcher reflexivity (as in “Excretia”).

QDA Software company owners, text book publishers, and institutions of higher education (to name a few) all influence these abilities, inclinations, and commitments among qualitative researchers, because individual researchers always operate within these spheres of influence, informed by their communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991).

I chose examples from interactive digital art (“A-Volve,” 1994; “Bubbloo,” 2008; “Excretia,” 2004; “Wooden Mirror,” 2000) and conceptual and theoretical understandings of the relationship between people and technology (Bolter & Gromala, 2003; MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1999; Winner, 1980) that are nearly (or more than) a decade old. I have done so to point to our collective dawdling and to foster a sense of urgency around improving our inquiry about QDA Software. By thinking in simplistic binaries such as software/methods, researcher/technology, and automated/manual, we have overlooked blurry boundaries, complex combinations, and messy entanglements.

This binary framework has contributed to another problem, a pattern of idealized linearity between qualitative researchers and QDA Software that has subsequently resulted in excessive attention to cause-and-effect relationships. These cause-and-effect frameworks contribute to (for example) the overly simplistic “methods first” mantra that continues to emanate from users and nonusers alike. This arguably should be changed to a “methods with” mantra. Regarding researchers who have preferred to think of the software instrumentally and with simplified, reductionist strategies, a closer look at their practice would also be helpful, not just their renditions of how they used it, but a serious research study that follows them over time to better understand their interaction with it.

Conclusions and Implications

Dislodging the Simplistic Assertions

From a practice theory (Bourdieu, 1977) and social constructionist perspective (Schwandt, 2007), we exist in complex webs of mutually constituting, locally enacted, and socially shaped activities as we handle qualitative data. This position allows me to easily brush away many of the old, monochromatic, simplistic claims about the benefits and disadvantages of QDA Software (some of which, I confess, I have contributed to). From a practice theory perspective—along with the implications drawn from interactive digital art—we should responsibly respond to all of the claims in Table 1 with a resounding, “It depends!”

The focus on specific practices is likely to be much more helpful to our examination of the spaces where researchers interact with digital tools for qualitative research (broadly) and QDA Software (specifically).

Posing New Foci

The implications from interactive digital art present a good starting point for redirecting our attention beyond the simplistic claims in Table 1:

From “Wooden Mirror”:

Identify the strategies that help researchers tack back and forth between improvisationally playing with their data in QDA Software and analyzing the mechanics of the technology (including the embedded values and predispositions in the software).

Explore the potential for mashups or combinations of software and examine the way these are related to larger patterns in the software industry and/or local patterns of practice.

From “A-Volve”:

Conceptualize, observe, and assess the mutually constituting and sometimes entangling spaces where researchers and technologies meet.

Explore the ways that different kinds of data visualizations take researchers closer to or farther from particular explanations.

Examine the ways qualitative researchers consciously “step away” from the data and most productively “re-engage” after some time away.

Take a close look at the way analytical strategies are connected to personal identities.

From “Excretia”:

Push our understandings of reflexivity by looking carefully at the way QDA Software and other digital tools for qualitative research help us redefine and understand reflexivity during analysis.

Identify the strategies we can use to see ourselves in our research via the use of QDA Software.

Create tools through which qualitative researchers can best capture and explore their distress when the material is “too close for comfort.”

Observe the way researchers are able to identify and protect against the influence of their privileged core concepts (i.e., their “researcher’s pets,” to which they are often emotionally attached).

Table 1.

Simplistic Claims About the Benefits and Disadvantages of QDA Software.

Critics of QDA software	Advocates of QDA software
It quantifies qualitative data	It is used to develop theories not just codes or descriptives
It influences researcher choices	It opens up researcher opportunities
It compromises qualitative methodology	It adds to research rigor
It is biased toward grounded theory	It will adapt to a wide range of methodologies
It over-emphasizes coding	It looks at relationships between codes in ways that would be difficult by hand
It takes more time and money than it is worth to learn	It provides a return in time and money saved
It will pump out meaningless “results”	It provides new ways of seeing data that are invaluable
You need to learn methods before you learn software	Software tools can be used to explore and learn methods
It distances you from the data	It brings you closer to the data

Note. QDA = Qualitative Data Analysis.

The first set of foci, pulled from an examination of “Wooden Mirror,” is particularly well-suited for QDA Software developers and points to some of the challenges on their horizon. The second set of foci, pulled from “A-Volve,” is primarily directed toward the qualitative researchers with expertise in QDA software and methods. The third set of foci, based on “Excretia,” might help critics of QDA Software appreciate the role of technology in the qualitative research enterprise. However, in the absence of promoting such appreciation, this discussion of reflexivity might at least move them beyond the simplistic frames that have long perpetuated stale, cause-and-effect critiques. Although I have directed these three sets of foci at three “camps,” they are also relevant as a collective series of issues for all of us, regardless of our familiarity with software tools or whether we are part of the industry that develops such tools or not.

Qualitative Researchers as Visitors

When I visited “Bubbloo” nearly a decade ago, the experience started nurturing ideas that are still in development. While most of these ideas pertain to my understandings of QDA Software and digital tools for qualitative research, they have also slowly reframed my identity as a qualitative researcher more broadly. Through my experiences with interactive art—limited almost exclusively to trips to various museums—an often-used label eventually shifted my understanding of my work; whenever I went to a museum, I was called a “visitor.” Now I see myself and many of my colleagues as visitors rather than researchers. Despite the diversity in how we approach the qualitative research enterprise, there are certain, broadly accepted understandings of the good visitor, and when we practice the habits of the good visitor, we find experiences much like the one I had in “Bubbloo”—full of curiosity, mischief, improvisation, joy, analytical investigation, self-reflection, and surprise—sometimes, as I have argued here, with the assistance of innovative technologies.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Kristi Jackson founded Queri (), a qualitative research and consulting company, in 2002. She is co-author of SAGE’s best-selling Qualitative Data Analysis With NVivo, a longtime user of Qualitative Data Analysis Software (QDA Software), and Chair of the Special Interest Group on Digital Tools for Qualitative Research at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. Her research interests include competing conceptualizations of qualitative research transparency and the constantly changing spaces where qualitative researchers and technologies meet.

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