Innovation and Emerging Methods
By Janet Salmons
Dr. Salmons is the Research Community Manager for Methodspace, and will serve as Mentor in Residence for June. Her most recent book from SAGE Publishing is Doing Qualitative Research Online. If ordering from SAGE, use MSPACEQ222 for a 20% discount, valid through the end of June 2022.
Innovating new methods takes time, and it is beneficial to share progress along the way so others can add their insights.
Journals are an important conduit for introducing emerging ideas and practices. Did you know that SAGE has an entire journal dedicated to new developments in research methods… and it is open access? Yes! The journal Methodological Innovations is open, including access to the archives. Aims of the journal are described here:
Rarely has there been such a period of methodological innovation in the social sciences. The possibilities of new technologies, including powerful computing and the evolution of the internet, combined with a growing interdisciplinary enthusiasm from researchers have been key factors driving this innovation. Additionally, advances in statistical techniques, survey interfaces and sophisticated qualitative data analyses have been facilitated by technological advance, but other imaginative non-traditional methods, such as auto-ethnography, visual methods and neural networks have opened up new ways of accessing the social world. Methodological Innovations is the forum for methodological advances and debates in social research method and methodology.
Methodological Innovations’ mission highlights three important themes: interdisciplinarity, and the use of new technologies for collecting and analyzing data, and what they call “imaginative non-traditional methods.” Methodspace recently focused on interdisciplinary research, and we regularly feature research using new technologies and creative approaches. This month we are taking a next step by asking: what new methods do we need to study problems that don’t fit neatly into a specific discipline, and how do we put them into practice? In other words, we are building from the what questions to the how-to questions.
Finding a focus helps us frame a methods-oriented inquiry .
We are viewing this month’s focus through a working definition:
Theories, methodologies, methods and/or protocols being developed to study problems that cannot be adequately understood with existing approaches, or to take advantage of new information, tools, and/or technologies.
We are working with three premises, briefly:
To update, revise, change, or reject a traditional theoretical or methodological framework, we must first know it.
New information that illuminates the need for change will likely come from varied sources, including societal trends and shifts, so we need to be curious and attentive.
Technological advances often play a role in the method(s) used as well as the problems studied.
How do researchers develop new methods? Let’s explore a few Methodological Innovations articles through the lens of the stated definition and premises. Articles from journals such as Methodological Innovations help us learn the processes and steps researchers use to think about and develop new methods.
Four examples from Methodological Innovations demonstrate ways researchers move forward with new approaches.
Finnane, M., Kaladelfos, A., & Piper, A. (2018). Sharing the archive: Using web technologies for accessing, storing and re-using historical data. Methodological Innovations, 11(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2059799118787749
Historical data pose a variety of problems to those who seek statistically based understandings of the past. Quantitative historical analysis has been limited by researcher’s reliance on rigid statistics collected by individuals or agencies, or else by researcher access to small samples of raw data. Even digital technologies by themselves have not been enough to overcome the challenges of working with manuscript sources and aligning dis-aggregated data. However, by coupling the facilities enabled by the web with the enthusiasm of the public for explorations of the past, history has started to make the same strides towards big data evident in other fields. While the use of citizens to crowdsource research data was first pioneered within the sciences, a number of projects have similarly begun to draw on the help of citizen historians. This article explores the particular example of the Prosecution Project, which since 2014 has been using crowdsourced volunteers on a research collaboration to build a large-scale relational database of criminal prosecutions throughout Australia from the early 1800s to 1960s. The article outlines the opportunities and challenges faced by projects seeking to use web technologies to access, store and re-use historical data in an environment that increasingly enables creative collaborations between researchers and other users of social and historical data.
How does this article fit with the definition and premises of emerging research?
Acknowledging existing methods and their limitations for studying new problems. Finnane et al described the history of studying history as “data intense” and explained various methods traditionally used for qualitative and quantitative studies.
Finding evidence that supports using a new research approach. The potential scale of data available or a given topic has increased exponentially given the ability to digitize past records and generate new records electronically. To study assemble and study datasets with conventional methods would be so costly and labor intensive as to be impossible.
Integrating new tools into the research process in a way that changes the method. Finnane et al used a collaborative approach by engaging volunteers as citizen historians. They were able to construct a 550,000 record database with linkages to related sources. “In the past, datasets of this scale were very rare and most likely only available to the research team preparing them” but by using a scholarly crowdsourcing method, they created a “a dynamic and developing resource” for practitioners in the field (p. 9). They also described the value to the volunteers by offering insights into history as well as the sense of being part of a community. Finnane et al concluded:
there seems little reason to doubt that in the social world more generally creative design of research projects might in the future add greatly to the collation of research-usable datasets previously unimagined. As the engagement of large numbers of citizens in the cause of scientific research has shown, the social research world will benefit from the new style of inclusion made possible by online technologies.
Guthrie, K. (2022). (Re)fractional narrative inquiry: A methodological adaptation for exploring stories. Methodological Innovations, 15(1), 3–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/20597991221077902
Narrative inquiry is relational inquiry in which inquirers come alongside the living, telling, re-living, and re-telling of stories . In this article, I present how I adapted narrative inquiry to explore parent perspectives of their gifted adolescent daughters’ experiences of belonging. At the time, I was conducting this study as part of my doctoral dissertation work and as a novice researcher, I struggled with (1) gaining access by a school district to interview adolescent students, (2) believing I could relationally come alongside adolescents as an outsider, and (3) questioning their developmental ability to think reflectively about their stories of belonging. Ultimately, I had to rethink my narrative inquiry approach. Here in this article, I share how I re-conceptualized my methodological approach as (re)fractional narrative inquiry to better understand gifted girls’ experiences from the perspectives of those who have relationally lived alongside them. I also present the context and methods of the study, provide a sample of co-negotiated narratives, discuss justifications of my inquiry, and conclude with reflections and evaluations of my adaptations.
How does this article fit with the definition and premises of emerging research?
Acknowledging existing methods and their limitations for studying new problems. By acknowledging the earlier work by Clandinin and referencing five additional books and articles by this respected earlier methodologist, Guthrie credibly positions her work in this methodological field. Guthrie states: “I believe my creative adaptations, which I call (re)fractional narrative inquiry, tease traditional boundaries of how we explore the storied lives of others. Yet, my adaptations created significant tensions as I attempted to locate myself in the landscape of narrative inquiry” (p. 3).
Finding evidence that supports using a new research approach. In this article Guthrie explains that while in Clandinin’s narrative inquiry the researcher “lives alongside” participants, sometimes learning from someone closer to the participant can yield richer stories. She called this (re)fractional narrative inquiry: “(Re)fractional thus represents my exploration of stories through others’ interpretations, knowing that others’ knowing, telling, and retelling of stories will be (at best) only a piece of an individual’s storied experience” (p. 4)
Integrating new tools into the research process in a way that changes the method. This article did not describe the use of new tools, and technology was not discussed as a factor in Guthrie’s decision to update the narrative inquiry method.
Kozinets, R. V. (2012). Marketing Netnography: Prom/ot(Ulgat)ing a New Research Method. Methodological Innovations Online, 7(1), 37–45. https://doi.org/10.4256/mio.2012.004
This paper builds upon a core metaphor of scientific methodological diffusion as a specialized form of the marketing of ideas. Using as an illustrative the development and spread of netnography, online ethnography of social media data, this paper explores the nature of the creation, legitimation, adoption, and spread of a new scientific method. Viewing method diffusion as a type of marketing suggests a range of implications. Ideas about the method can be viewed, treated, and managed as a type of ‘brand’. The method is not created in a vacuum but, like a marketed new product, is engineered to satisfy a particular scientific or investigative need, and its success depends on how well it satisfies that need. A particular ‘research-oriented segment’ can be investigated, reached, and deliberately targeted. In this article, I explore how institutional waves of academic, geographic, and pragmatic target research audiences helped to reinforce the adoption of a new scientific approach. The method can be positioned intentionally in a particular methodological category, and as superior to other methods. Once the strategy for marketing the method is intact, the tactics for its spread can be introduced. The ideas for the method and methodology can be brought to their audience in a particular form, with particular attributes, through certain distribution or publication channels, promoted through various means, and offered through for a ‘price’ that encapsulates the difficulty of adopting it. The article explores these ideas about the promulgation of a new method using the development of netnography as an extended case study example.
(Note: This article was part of a special issue: “The Processes of Methodological Innovation Narrative Accounts and Reflections.”
How does this article fit with the definition and premises of emerging research?
Acknowledging existing methods and their limitations for studying new problems.
Finding evidence that supports using a new research approach.
Integrating new tools into the research process in a way that changes the method.
Kozinets spoke to all three of these premises:
To distinguish netnography from embodied face-to-face ethnography, Kozinets (2010b) identifies four critical differences between online and face-to-face cultural and social interactions. First the nature of the social and cultural interaction is altered – both constrained and liberated – by the specific nature and rules of the technological medium in which it is carried. Netnographies must work with technocultural artifacts in a way that ethnographies do not. Next, the interaction can be optimally anonymous or pseudonymous and even ‗real‘ identities can be suspect. This has implications for the conduct of ethical and effective research, as well as for data collection and analysis. Third is the wide accessibility of many of the relevant forums of social interaction. This accessibility also alters the research approach and often radically transforms the data collection process from one of relative scarcity and difficulty to one of abundance. Finally, nothing in the physical world compares to the automatic archiving of conversations and data that we see in online social worlds, and this facet also transforms data collection and analysis.
Given that the article was on the topic of the diffusion of new methods, Kozinets digs into points about innovation not discussed in the other articles selected for this post. He describes waves of branding for the new method, from building scholarly credibility to communicating his approach to others outside of academic, in particular, marketing researchers. As such, the article will be relevant to methodologists who are ready to share the methods they've developed.
Robert Kozinets moved forward after this 2012 article, and his book, Netnography: The Essential Guide to Qualitative Social Media Research, is in its third edition. If ordering from SAGE, use MSPACEQ222 for a 20% discount, valid through the end of June 2022.
Find four original Methodspace blog posts and a video interview from June 2021 here.
Parsons, L. T., & Pinkerton, L. (2022). Poetry and prose as methodology: A synergy of knowing. Methodological Innovations. https://doi.org/10.1177/20597991221087150
Abstract. In this study, situated in the borderland between traditional and artistic methodologies, we innovatively represent our research findings in both prose and poetry. This is an act of exploration and resistance to hegemonic assumptions about legitimate research writing. A content analysis of young adult literature featuring trafficked child soldiers is the vehicle through which we advocate for the simultaneous use of prose and poetry. Several overarching insights emerged from this work as our prose and poetic representations, taken together, did more than either could have done on its own. We noted significant differences in scope, impact, and use of words when representing findings in the two forms. Additionally, independently selecting many of the same quotes as we created our separate representations contributed to the validity of the analysis. We saw very concretely that what one knows in one form one might know differently in another, generating a synergy of knowing.
How does this article fit with the definition and premises of emerging research?
It is your turn! Read the article and try to identify whether and how Parsons and Pinkerton’s study fits some or all of the premises for emerging research.
Acknowledging existing methods and their limitations for studying new problems.
Finding new information that supports using a new research approach.
Integrating new tools into the research process in a way that changes the method.
More from SAGE Methodspace about Emerging Methods
How can you study digital culture and activism? Watch this interview with Dr. Lyndon Wray.