Research Encounters Research Articles

The experiences and views of autistic children participating in multimodal view-seeking research

ABSTRACT Autistic children face significant barriers to having their views listened to in research. Inaccessible research encounters and inflexible communication strategies on the part of a research team can prevent opportunities for children to engage meaningfully in the research. Researchers must strive to offer opportunities for meaningful self-expression, and improve the way they seek autistic children’s points of view. This article explores ways to engage with, and listen to, the views of autistic children in school-based research contexts. Twelve autistic children took part in view-seeking research about their school and playground environment, and reflected on their experience of taking part in the research. The children contributed their ideas through walking tours, photography, LEGO® models, and interviews with the researcher and their peers. The multimodal qualitative data were analysed iteratively and thematically, with findings highlighting issues of perceptions of audience, creativity, control and enjoyment. The different research activities stimulated diverse modes of expression and generated different kinds of insights. Implications are considered for how researchers can seek to creatively co-develop engagement and opportunities for self-expression with children who participate in research. This research emphasizes the importance of creating accessible and meaningful opportunities to engage with and foreground autistic children’s perspectives.

Circling towards intimacy: Trees, tactile reading and ecosexual non-human companionship

Adopting a fresh approach to autoethnographic writing, this article unfurls tactile encounters with the more-than-human through an active exercise in readership. Situating this within ecosexual and psycho-somatic framings, the text queers kinaesthetic encounter, presenting it as holding the potential for deeper connection, understanding and amity across species. Drawing on Konik and Konik’s notion of a ‘barefoot epistemology’ (: 80), and an overlay of sensorial, critical and reflective writing, the structure of the essay enacts a mimesis of the author’s own kinaesthetic encounter, exploring the provision of research writing to offer the reader their own embodied experience. Questions of research materiality support an enlivened research encounter.

Casein Protein Block to Optimize Immunohistochemistry Detection of Surface Immunoglobulin Heavy Chain Expression in Lymphoid Cells.

We describe our recent experience of studying expression of immunoglobulin (Ig) heavy chain (IgG, IgM, and IgA) in lymphoid cells comprising a research set of formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded human diffuse large B-cell lymphoma samples. We found that using typical clinical automated immunohistochemistry protocols and usual buffers as blocking agents, the extent of undesirable staining was extreme and impaired our ability to interpret heavy chain Ig expression by individual lymphoid cells. We were not able to optimize this with serial dilutions in antibody concentration or time of primary antibody exposure. We therefore developed an added step of casein protein block, which solved the problem. We are not aware of other such reports in clinical or human research tissue sets and believe this solution may be useful when clinical pathologists or researchers encounter similar technical issues.

Using HCI in Cross-Disciplinary Teams: A Case Study of Academic Collaboration in HCI-Health Teams in the US Using a Team Science Perspective

Human-centered computing research has been increasingly applied to address important challenges in the health domain. Conducting research in cross-disciplinary teams can come with a lot of challenges in integrating knowledge across fields. Yet, we do not know what challenges HCI researchers encounter in building collaborations with health researchers, and how these researchers negotiate challenges while balancing their professional goals. We interviewed 17 early- and mid-career HCI faculty working in the United States who conducted research in collaboration with health researchers. Drawing from a Team Science framework, we share participants' lived experiences and identify major challenges that HCI researchers encounter when finding, collaborating with, and negotiating with health collaborators when building technologies. We propose ways to better support research collaboration aimed at designing technologies using human-centered computing approaches. This includes strategies to support HCI researchers at individual, institutional, research community, and funding agencies levels through tools to translate disciplinary approaches. We suggest institutional policies to support HCI researchers through training, networking, and promotion.

2021 Condon Prize: Improvising care: A theatrical exploration of Turner syndrome subjectivities

AbstractThis article discusses an ethnographic theater project designed to explore how social performances of gender and disability shape the experiences of those with Turner syndrome, a genetic condition causing short stature and infertility. Working alongside two interlocutors with the condition, our rehearsals demonstrate subjectivity to be an ethical, relational, and generative practice of striving for good that fosters self‐care and empathy for others. Our collaboration exemplifies how anthropological approaches that engage vulnerability and improvisation encourage our interlocutors to investigate their self‐understandings with us in real time. Such communal explorations are frequently punctuated by uncertainty, contradiction, and tension, which shape interrelational processes of self‐formation and invite the ethnographer to reflect and improve upon shared expectations for the research encounter. This article, therefore, outlines a care‐oriented anthropology that prioritizes accessibility, recognizes the creative in the everyday, and embraces failure as an inextricable part of our research and the lives of our interlocutors.care, ethics and morality, performance, subjectivity, Turner syndrome

Inclusive LGBTQ+ fieldwork: Advancing spaces of belonging and safety

AbstractIncreasing everyday levels of LGBTQ+ phobia and other forms of identity‐based prejudice reveal the need for systematic attention across the versatile geographic discipline to the belonging and safety of LGBTQ+ field researchers. Through an expanded reflection on Bracken and Mawdsley's (2004) account ‘“Muddy glee”: Rounding out the picture of women and physical geography fieldwork’ (Area, 36, pp. 280–286), we consider the major issues – including forms of discrimination, exclusion and, sometimes, violence – that LGBTQ+ researchers (and more widely fieldworkers engaging LGBTQ+ communities) encounter at different stages of field research. We pursue a critical dialogue with opportunities and limitations provided by field, disciplinary as well as home institutional contexts and practices, including ethics and risk assessments, codes of conduct and support levels (or rather their deficiencies).

Reflexivity in the field encounter in qualitative research: learning from Gadamer

PurposeReflexivity involves critical reflection by the qualitative researcher as to the influence of the researcher's culture, history and belief on the conduct and outcome of the research. It is often seen as a practice exercised in the analysis of results in order to attempt to objectify the research. The purpose of this paper is to argue that the value of reflexivity is located in its practice in the field encounter as a means of recognising and embracing subjectivity. In order to widen reflexivity as hermeneutics, the paper draws on Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics as developed in “Truth and Method”.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper which distils critical themes from Gadamer's truth and method and applies them to the concept of reflexivity as applied in the field.FindingsThe paper suggests that reflexivity is an important component in the field encounter. Immersion in the language and terms of the field is critical to understanding meaning; who I am, my past, my lived experience are essential inputs to my research; the researcher's opinions, ideas and outspoken statements are part of the fabric of qualitative research; qualitative interpretation as a creative exercise; qualitative research should bring insight and understanding that can be applied to catalyse change.Practical implicationsUnderstanding and applying reflexivity in the field will provide innovative insights which can be carried through to the data analysis.Originality/valueThis study uniquely applies Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics to reflexivity and the field encounter.

Finding methods for the inclusion of all children: Advancing participatory research with children with disabilities

AbstractThis method‐focused article continues the discussion of how methodological challenges in research with children with disabilities can be overcome. By examining the difficulties in introducing walk‐and‐talk conversations in an ethnographic study with young children (3–11 years) with disabilities, it asks what doing research ‘with’ means and on whose terms research should take place. The article argues for a shift in the understanding of doing ‘with’, from a researcher‐controlled research encounter to the focusing of children's own activities. This ensures the participation of all children in research, by recognizing and listening to the many different ways in which children communicate.

A Creative Conversation for Re-imagining Creative Visual Methods with Children and Young People in Pandemic Times and Beyond

In this project we forward insights about the importance of being in ‘the room where it happens’ – creating tactility and togetherness in the research encounter – for research with children and young people in times of the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Created in response to the intense uptake of digital methods catalysed by COVID-19, in this project we productively re-imagine moments from our creative visual research with children and young people from before the COVID-19 pandemic. This re-imagining began early in 2020 and has continued to evolve, incorporating our shifting perspectives and ‘thinking with’ the scholarship of leading creative methodologists. The creative output is in the form of a ‘Prezine’ which is our concept and is a portmanteau bringing together ‘Prezi’ a presentation tool, and ‘zine’. The Prezine charts our creative conversation, moving between four connected rhizomes of thinking about creative research with children and young people: ‘the room where it happens’, being in the encounter, spaces for the unexpected, and what we are calling ‘methodological alchemy’. The Prezine documents our experiment in thinking about research futures where we openly and creatively explore the process of making this reflective resource about research ‘becomings’.

Imputation of missing values within WHODAS 2.0 data collected from low back pain patients using the response function approach

Purpose To investigate the impact of missing data and imputation with the response function (RF) approach on bias and precision of disability estimates as well as reliability of scale of WHO Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0. Material and methods Data were collected by face-to-face interviews and self-report surveys from 284 respondents with low back pain. Hypothetical datasets were created by using person and item parameters of real data. A simulation study was devised to assess the ability parameters and reliability measures on incomplete and imputed datasets. Rasch model was used to evaluate latent trait levels. Imputation was carried out using the response function method. Results Almost the same level of bias and MSE was reached. While the missing rate increases, the Person separation index slightly reduced, still exceeded 0.94 and Cronbach alpha values have similar mean values of 0.99 with larger variations. After deletion of four items of "work or school activities" in domain 5, reliability measures reduced the lowest. Conclusion Construct validity is preserved. Problems regarding the compliance of the items with the target group still persist. When researchers encounter missingness in data collected with WHODAS 2.0, the response function can be usefully implemented to impute missing values to improve the reliability of disability level estimates. Implications for rehabilitation The Turkish version of the 36-item WHODAS is reliable and valid for assessing health and disability status in patients with low back pain. A critical issue is a systematic nonresponse was highly observed in items related to “work/school life activities” which are allowed to be skipped and excluded from the scoring according to WHODAS 2.0 training manual. Imputation of missing values within four items of "work or school activities" in domain 5 using the response function approach showed satisfactory reliability for the estimation of disability in adults with low back pain. This study showed missing data imputations with response function can be implemented by a statistician as contribute to a missing data management process better tailored to clinicians' interpretations.

Ethics review and conversation analysis

In this case study, I address the procedural ethics of conversation analysis (CA) and the collection of naturally occurring mundane interactions. I draw from the challenges that emerged from the institutional ethics review of the HIV, health and interaction study (the H2I Study), a CA project that sought to identify the practices through which normative assumptions of HIV and other health conditions are produced in conversations. Consistent with CA’s preference for naturally occurring interactions, the H2I Study collected and analysed everyday telephone calls involving people living with HIV. This article offers practical strategies CA researchers might use to navigate two ethical concerns raised about the collection of naturally occurring mundane interactions. The first questions the merits of collecting naturally occurring mundane interactions. For those unfamiliar with CA, the specific advantages of analysing naturally occurring mundane interactions may not be self-evident. This places an evidentiary burden on CA researchers to warrant the collection of this type of data. To address this concern, I suggest demonstrating in ethics applications the analytic value of CA using publicly available interactions. The second concern questions the use of verbal consent necessary for the collection of naturally occurring mundane interactions. Like most CA research, the H2I Study required flexible informed consent protocols appropriate for spontaneous and unpredictable interactions. Drawing from within and outside the CA literature, I offer three rationales for the use of verbal consent. This article is written as a practical resource for conversation analysts seeking approval from their research ethics board (REB) and for REBs who might be unfamiliar with CA research. This article contributes to a small but growing body of literature that documents not only the kinds of challenges CA researchers encounter from institutional ethics review, but the specific procedural ethics they may employ to secure ethics approval.

Advantages and Challenges of Queer Scholars Doing Qualitative Queer Criminology and Criminal Justice Research

Qualitative researchers encounter obstacles related to publishing, acceptability, research self-disclosure, rapport development, feelings of guilt or vulnerability, and opportunity that quantitative scholars often do not. Here we discuss our experiences with these obstacles related to one queer qualitative study in hopes that it will provide knowledge to the next generation of queer qualitative scholars. We begin by discussing the state of the field in terms of qualitative scholarship and queer criminology, then we discuss our own experiences doing qualitative queer criminology. Our goal is to show why qualitative queer criminology matters, that it can be done despite its challenges, and to encourage the field of criminology and criminal justice to become more inclusive of qualitative methodologies.

Art-based reflections from 12 years of adolescent health and development-related research in South Africa.

SummaryThis paper presents empirical and methodological findings from an art-based, participatory process with a group (n = 16) of adolescent and young advisors in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. In a weekend workshop, participants reflected on their participation in 12 years of health and development-related research through theatre, song, visual methodologies and semi-structured interviews. Empirical findings suggest that participants interpreted the group research encounter as a site of empowerment, social support and as a socio-political endeavour. Through song, theatre and a mural illustration, they demonstrated that they value ‘unity’ in research, with the aim of ameliorating the conditions of adolescents and young people in other parts of South Africa and the continent. Methodological findings document how participants deployed art-based approaches from South Africa’s powerful history of activism, including the struggle against apartheid, the fight for anti-retroviral therapy and more recent social movements towards decolonization.

The Factors Affecting Broiler Chicken Demand in Kendari City During the Covid-19 Pandemic

This study intends to raise the demand for broiler chickens in Kendari City during the Covid-19 epidemic. Factors influencing the demand for broiler chickens in Kendari City during the Covid-19 epidemic. This time, the decision of the place was made consciously. Held in Baruga Market, Anduonohu Market, Lapulu Market, Korem Side Market, and Bonggoeya Traditional Market from August to September 2021. The Accidental sampling method based on chance was used to choose the sampling strategy for this investigation. If it is determined that the individual the researcher encounters by chance is appropriate as a data source, then they may be employed as a sample. 100 people who regularly eat broiler chicken made up the study's sample. Analysis using multiple linear regressions. The variables observed in this research are the cost of broiler chicken, consumer income, age, the expenditure on fish, the price of chicken eggs, and the family size. According to the study, broiler chicken is naturally needed 5,95 times a month in Kendari City. The main elements influencing this requirement are the stock price, income, and tours (t 0,05). The demand for broiler chicken during the pandemic cord 19 in Kendari City is highly influenced by the price of fish, chicken eggs, and the household size (t > 0,05).

"Queer Insights": Considerations and Challenges for Assessing Sex, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation in Oncofertility Research.

This article addresses issues related to clinical and research approaches to oncofertility for adolescent and young adult (AYA) sexual and gender minority (SGM) cancer patients. Limited attention has been dedicated to understanding the extent to which oncofertility services are appropriately and equitably delivered to AYAs with diverse orientations toward sexual orientation, gender identity, and future family. Unresolved challenges to conducting research with this vulnerable population perpetuate a lack of adequate knowledge about SGM AYA oncofertility needs. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to inform considerations of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation for investigations that include SGM AYAs. In order to improve the knowledge base and clinical services for this population, we discuss (1) challenges to sampling this population; (2) categorization and survey logic (e.g., skip patterns) in light of fluid sexual orientation and gender identities; and (3) clinical implications of accurately assessing sex and gender for oncofertility research and practice. We also recommend strategies for producing inclusive and accurate assessments of sexual and gender identity categories in both research and clinical encounters with SGM AYAs. Incorporating "queer insights" into empirical research - that is, positioning queer theory at the center of oncofertility study design - is suggested as a future direction for oncofertility research and practice.

The “Conceptual Framework” as a Threshold Concept for Investigating Processes in Leadership Research

A process perspective in research has been largely neglected, including in studies of leadership. This neglect is partly because of the dominant quantitative variance approaches to research that have been adopted in many disciplines. However, it is also because of the difficulties that researchers encounter in conceptualising and investigating their research from a process perspective. This process of conceptualisation is particularly challenging for post-graduate students. Threshold concepts are critical to student learning, providing gateways to understanding particular fields or disciplines. This paper adopts this idea of threshold concepts and relevant teaching practices to illustrate its use in post-graduate students' teaching and learning activities to develop a conceptual framework that can investigate a process. Several key topics are addressed: How conceptual frameworks are introduced and taught; Differentiating quantitative variance conceptual frameworks from qualitative process conceptual frameworks; and Explaining and illustrating how to conduct process theory in qualitative research using the case study method, grounded theory method, and critical incident technique.

How Does Customer Personality Shape Customer-Employee and Customer-Firm Interactions?

In recent decades, the banking industry has undergone several changes implying the need for banks to differentiate themselves This research examines the effect of the Big Five on relationship quality and customer loyalty on both employee and firm levels in retail banks. A total of 210 online surveys were collected via the convenient sampling method. The findings showed that openness to experience, extroversion and neuroticism influence relationship quality on both levels. Conscientiousness affects relationship quality at the bank level while agreeableness affects relationship quality at the customer contact employee level. Relationship quality displayed significant influence on customer loyalty on both levels. Several implications are derived for service research and service encounter management. The findings provide valuable insight for matching retail bank customers and customer-contact employees based on their personality profiles to ensure long-term relationship quality and customer loyalty. Insights into the relationship quality-customer loyalty link can act as a starting point for academics who are interested in understanding the role of frontline employees in services management.

Ethical research landscapes in fragile and conflict-affected contexts: understanding the challenges

As the prevalence of conflict and fragility continue to rise around the world, research is increasingly heralded as a solution. However, current ethical guidelines for working in areas suffering from institutional and social fragility, insecurity or violent conflict have been heavily critiqued as highly abstract; focussed only on data collection; detached from the realities of academia in the Global South; and potentially extractive. This article seeks to respond to that assessment by spotlighting some of the most prevalent challenges researchers face in the pursuit of ethical working practices. It explores the material and epistemic injustices that often shape and underpin research structures and relationships in these contexts. The paper draws on the authors’ experiences of research in conflict-affected and fragile contexts over the last fifteen years and on workshop discussions with researchers based in fragile and conflict-affected contexts conducted in Amman, Bogotá and Dhaka in 2019-2020. The paper works from the premise that achieving ethical research in fragile spaces is not dependent solely on activity at the site of research, but also on decisions made across the entire ecosystem of a research project. It therefore interrogates the full research landscape, from funding models, to research design (including research topics, partnerships, methods, participant selection, and researcher positionality), to dissemination plans and ethical gatekeeping. The paper critically reflects on inequities in the processes of knowledge production about conflict and fragility and the key ethical challenges that researchers encounter. It highlights the need for further guidance, support and accountability to ensure ethical research practices.

Everyday power dynamics and hierarchies in qualitative research: The role of humour in the field

Negotiating the relationships influenced by a combination of identity markers during fieldwork is an important aspect of qualitative data co-creation. Based on ethnographic research with the canal boating and enthusiast communities in the UK, this paper focuses on the mundane power dynamics and hierarchies in research situations. The paper discusses the role of humour in negotiating the interpersonal dynamics and argues for the consideration of power (im)balances in the field beyond assumptions of the researcher as definitely the advantaged side. Joking plays an important role and is used by both research participants and researchers to level the researcher–participant hierarchies as well as to reproduce and reaffirm them. This takes place on a conceptual continuum: first, in terms of their relative rigidity, whereby certain norms, opinions or value systems are reinforced; and secondly, flexibility, whereby the notions about norms and preconceived ideas might shift during the research encounter.

Preparing to research LGBTQI+ lives with children: an imaginary conversation with Kathleen Quinlivan about failure, art and hope

ABSTRACT At this juncture, I find myself orientating towards the unruliness of doing arts-based praxis-oriented research with primary school-aged children (aged 5–12) on the topic of LGBTQI+ lives. As I prepare for what feel like disruptive research directions that will chart what many still consider to be forbidden territory with children, I attempt to connect with, remember and think with Kathleen Quinlivan. In a sense, this article is an imaginary conversation as I embark on the at once exciting and da3unting messiness of doing arts-based research with children. Working with Kathleen’s concept of ‘affective failure’, I reflect on the inevitability of failure in this kind of research, and how dominant discourses of mastery and success weigh heavily on the teacher/researcher disposition. Thinking also with her reflections on ‘affective practice’, I consider how to maintain an orientation towards being ‘undone’ in research encounters with children, and about the generative potential of art and arts-based research methods for coming at controversial topics ‘slantwise’.