Reflecting on Geography 2260 - Applied Human Geography
These things I know for certain about human geography research:
Firstly, I know for certain what kind of research is considered qualitative geography research. Qualitative research is diverse, has been maturing in recent years, and has strong methods to understand people and place relationships (Hay, I., 2016, p.3). Qualitative research is meant to understand human environments and human experiences (Hay, I., 2016, p.5). An example of methods used in qualitative methods versus quantitative methods is that qualitative research would include in-depth interviews, while quantitative techniques more likely would include questionnaires (Hay, I., 2016, p.5).
Secondly, something I learned from this class is what research requires an ethics clearance, and what goes into ensuring research participants are respected. Complying with ethics requirements from an institution is a way to ensure the researcher is respecting everyone involved in the project (Hay, I., 2016, p.57). Formal ethics requirements ensures that cultural and ethical contexts are being considered before the project commences (Hay, I., 2016, p.57). If your research involves you interviewing participants, you need an ethics approval. An ethics clearance also helps the researcher get funding, increase their legitimacy, and get published.
Thirdly, I know for certain that human geography research requires us to be critically reflexive throughout the research process. This is something we have talked about a lot in this course. Reflexivity requires the researcher to be self-conscious and constantly scrutinize their position in the research process to ensure the data is unbiased and that the research is ethical (Hay, I., 2016, p.34). Critical reflexivity is a difficult process because people are not used to analyzing their engagement in their work and I also know that not many researcher’s write about their research process in their work (Hay, I., 2016, p.34). This being said, asking ourselves self-critical questions during research, and keeping a journal to log this process, is key to providing ethical, justifiable research.
These things I am still confused by:
I am still confused by how to write-up research findings. I find it difficult to determine categories that need to be discussed and figuring out what is salient information. We learned how to write up research findings in chapter 19 (Hay, I., 2016, p.392-416), but I still need practice in how to identify what information is the best to use in a research paper. This is something I struggled with in the Digital Storytelling Assignment. There were so many options of things to include, it was difficult to determine what was the most solid. This is a skill I continue to develop throughout my time as an undergrad student.
Secondly, I know that ethical considerations are crucial for a justified, respectful research project, but I am sometimes confused by what is and what is not ethical. In the case study we reviewed with Agafia, when I first watched the video I thought the researchers did their duty of ensuring the research was ethical, but after more consideration, I found it difficult to justify some of their actions. So, what kind of research is and is not ethical is something I am still thinking about.
Lastly, I am still confused about how to formulate a good research question that fills a gap in research literature. In the textbook chapter, Writing a Compelling Research Proposal (Hay, I., 2016, p.95-116), we learned how to write a research proposal, but I am still wondering how to find a topic that has not yet been discovered, and how to convince people that your research topic should be investigated.
These things I know for certain about me as a human geographic researcher:
I know that my strengths are in historical research, which involves systematic collection and objective evaluation of data. This is the only type of qualitative research that I have had experience with in undergrad.
I also know that I tend to get distracted and overwhelmed when I am met with too much information. The tips to manage data we learned in Week 5 helped me to figure out how to organize some data for the digital storytelling assignment. Specifically, using highlighters and notes tools help me to stay organized. Coding was something that helped me figure out the focus for the digital storying telling assignment and what information to focus on in the literature.
Lastly, I know that I am more interested in qualitative human geography research than quantitative. I am interested in current events and I like thinking critically. Researching in-depth human relationships to different things interests me more than numerical data.
These three areas I need to spend time developing/learning in order to feel more confident in my skills:
I need to spend more time working with data in different ways, spend time analyzing data by coding more, and writing it all up. I feel as though the storytelling assignment helped me to work with data more by reviewing a lot of literature and going back to it throughout several months, which is something I have never done before for an assignment. I want to develop these skills of going back to research and thinking critically about my position as well as the validity of sources throughout a lengthy period of time.
Secondly, I would like to gain experience doing basic fieldwork to feel more confident in my research abilities. I have always done secondary research at my desk, which can be limiting. I would like to develop some skills in conducting my own research outside of historical based research methods, and try out some of my own data collection.
Lastly, I need to spend some time on developing my interviewing skills. I now know about the three main types of interviewing, structured, unstructured and semi-structured interviews (Hay, I., 2016, p.150-158). I would like to specifically learn more about how to conduct semi-structured interviews, which are interviews that have some sort of structure but also allow for some free flowing conversation (Hay, I. year p.150). This I think would come with practice as well as thinking critically about what kind of interviews are at play when listening to interviews in podcasts or other media.
Resources:
Hay, I. (2016). Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography. Toronto. Oxford University Press.
Hi, I thought your post was very well written and you supported your arguments with specific examples. For instance, when you define qualitative research you specify the different tools used and referenced page numbers in the textbook. I clearly understand what you are discussing, for instance, in your second paragraph you outline that ethics are necessary to respect persons involved in research. You demonstrate a clear understanding of the ethics process and I agree that outlining ethics considerations can lead to funding and increase the legitimacy of the project. In the second section, I can relate in that it is difficult to specify a research question and thus write a compelling research proposal. I like how you mention how to make an audience interested in your research idea because I am also confused how it is decided that a topic is worth further analysis and investigation. You also demonstrate self-awareness by discussing how overwhelmed you were while trying to organize data to apply to the digital storytelling project. I can relate because I had trouble organizing themes as I ended up with too many and therefore struggled to identify which themes had greater importance. Finally, I also mentioned that I would need to focus more on interview skills, specifically structured and semi structured interviews. I like how you mention that gaining field work and direct experience will enhance the research skills we have learned in this course. For example, by eventually conducting interviews, a researcher can result in a more confident ability and motivation to conduct research in the future. You mention a historical approach, do you have any specific areas that you want to conduct research? Overall, I can tell you worked very hard on this post and was very insightful and well written.Best of luck this semester!!
Regards
Aiden





















