A Review of My Progress in Human Geography Research Skills
Introduction:
Throughout this course, we have reviewed and learned many of the ins and outs of human geographical research. For this final blog post, I am going to be reflecting on the course, and human geography overall through 4 sections; Thing’s I know for certain, things I am confused by still, things I know about myself as a researcher, and areas of the research process that I need to spend more time on to feel confident.
These three things I know for certain about human geography research:
There are many, many aspects of this course that I have locked down and understand well, but these three examples are ones that resonated with me the greatest, and I believe can be utilized beyond my scholastic life.
One of the topics I understand thoroughly is critical reflectivity. This concept is crucial in creating ethical work and should be implemented into more aspects of society if you ask me! It is acknowledging one’s social position and determines how this could alter the results of your work (Hay, 2005, Chapter 2).
Another related concept to critical reflectivity was that of one’s invisible backpack. The concept was coined by activist Peggy McIntosh (Hooykaas, Week 3, 2021). The term goes beyond critical reflectivity and applies the concept to a broader horizon. Your invisible backpack involves every aspect of your identity. One's ethnicity, culture, fitness, education level, affluence, sexuality, and more all combine to create the invisible backpack everyone carries. These aspects influence how one interacts with the world, and what privilege is based on.
Finally, the concept of free consent when conducting interviews stuck with me too. Free and informed consent is essential to mitigate risks when conversing with anyone on a scholastic level or personal. The free part means that there is to be no undue influence on the individual, which is essential for collecting truthful data. Furthermore, informed consent is important too as without it the participant cannot be fully aware of what they are doing, and thus they cannot honestly consent (Hay, 2005, Chapter 2). This concept is applied beyond research and is an important part of myself growing as an educated individual, as an example thinks of land dispute claims between the Dominion of Canada and Indigenous, one of the reasons these disputes are happening is because the consent the Indigenous gave was not free nor informed!
These three things I am still confused by:
I am still confused about a couple of things that were taught throughout this course, but I do believe I will be able to retain the concepts after a bit more experience in scholastics.
One of these things is coding. I believe I have a decent grasp on coding, I just wish I knew more. Coding is a system that is utilized to retrieve and store data (Hay, 2005, Chapter 8). The thing I am confused by in this still is which technical software would be used to do this in the most efficient way. I am just curious about the use of databases, programs for auto-coding, and the workflow of this in a professional environment.
I am furthermore still confused about how to evaluate the strength of my source’s information, beyond the basic is it peer-reviewed, or not.
Lastly, I would like to understand more about strategies for overcoming potentially exploitative power relations between researchers and those of lower socioeconomic status (Hooykaas, Week 2, 2021). As stated earlier I understand the power dynamics of invisible backpacks and critical reflectivity, but I fail to see how simply understanding these things can help remove them from skewing our research.
These three things I know for certain about me as a human geographic researcher:
I know for certain that as a human geographic researcher that I enjoy working with quantitative data more than qualitative data. The reason for this is more personal preference than anything else. I enjoyed my statistics course (GEOG 2460) last semester that dove into both types of physical and human geographic research, but specifically quantitative data for both. As a human geographer, I would rather work with datasets and statistical analysis than coding and interviewing. This is just because I enjoy numbers and their (barely) relative simplicity.
Furthermore. I know that coding is a skill that is incredibly useful and has rounded out my human geography research skills. More experience with this is necessary for sure, but I know that this method is the most logical and efficient way of combing through data, so I am excited to utilize it.
Lastly, I know for sure that historical qualitative research is my favourite type. Using past occurrences to predict future trends is very fascinating, and I believe an essential tool in impacting change in society today (Hay, 2005, Chapter 11).
These three areas I need to spend time developing/learning in order to feel more confident in my skills:
I strive to become more informed about the ethics review process for research at the University of Guelph. In the future, if I choose to go into research, I should definitely be literate in my own school’s ethics review board. The notes we have on it are good, but I would like to see an example of the entire process going through in real-time.
Furthermore, I would like to understand grounded theory analysis more. It is an inductive, comparative, and interactive approach to inquiry that offers several open-ended strategies for conducting emergent inquiry (Hay, 2005, Chapter 7). I just would like to practice performing a research assignment using this method of data analysis, because it seems very effective and I am interested in how results would differ if compared to other types of data analysis.
Lastly, I am confused about when to choose which type of question for interviews. I know the type of data that is derived from each type of question (opinion, contrasting, storytelling, etc.) but I believe practice creating an actual interview scheme would advance my comfort level assigning questions leaps and bounds (Hay, 2005, Chapter 7).
Conclusion:
In conclusion, this course has taught me loads about conducting research, but beyond that it has also taught me about being ethical throughout my entire life. There are still many aspects of research that I do not quite fully grasp, but I honestly believe I am making great progress towards being a competent human geography scholar.
Bibliography:
Hay, I. (2005). Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography(4th ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9780199010912/cfi/0!/4/[email protected]:0.242
Hooykaas. (2021) Course Notes for GEOG 2260- Applied Human Geography
Hello Adam,
I have very much enjoyed reading your final blog post, you mention plenty of relevant topics and give an explanation for each topic mentioned. With this being said, there are a few specific things about your final blog post that I would like to discuss. First, you mentioned that you have a great grasp on free consent. This is a term that I have struggled with. After reading your blog, I was able to form a better understanding of what this term meant, thank you for the explanation. Now, I would like to mention one of the things that you are still confused by; critical reflexivity and the invisible backpack. You said that you have trouble understanding how simply understanding these things can help remove them from skewing our research. This is because once we fully understand our personal influence on the research project or how we could affect it, we can take active steps to not letting these specific things get in the way of research. For example, once I was able to understand that I have privilege just because I have a safe warm home to return to, I am able to appreciate any of my future research projects more. Finally, you mentioned that you would like to understand the ethical considerations at the University of Guelph specifically. I agree with this because I ran into some problems during the digital storytelling projects. I conducted an interview but did not get it approved properly for the ethics consideration and when I tried to use a direct quote, it was invalid because I did not get an ethics approval for the interview. Luckily, my group was able to correct this but in the future we may not be so lucky! So, it is very important to develop an understanding for this.
Good Luck with your future endeavors! -Maddison





















