What Am I Doing? IRBs, Protocols and Methods

It is common sense to take a method and try it.
If it fails, admit it frankly and try another.
But above all, try something.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

What am I doing? 

Why am I doing this? 

How am I doing this? 

Where am I doing this? 

When am I doing this? 

Who am I doing this with? 

These are more or less the basic questions in research. They are also pretty good philosophical questions too, but the point of answering these questions in research is to narrow your gaze, not widen it. I am a fan of big sweeping ideas, gestures and interests generally. Having many interests is good, but not so much when trying to figure out a good research question. The goal of a research plan is to be as clear and concise as  possible. Each of the how, when, why questions should be answered. It might be basic, but it is tough. 

Yesterday I cut and pasted a brief excerpt from my Institutional Review Board Protocol in my introduction post. I promised to explain what I was doing more thoroughly. I spent the last several months struggling to put together a good IRB in order to come to Truth or Consequences and talk to people about place. I will start with a little on the IRB, talk a little bit about my method, which I will take from my IRB application, and end with some brief answers to the questions above. There are always "special" words that anyone who learns something new eventually gets to use to sound smart! I will try to define them when they come up. If I fail to be clear please send me a comment. A protocol, for example, is a detailed plan of your study.

What is an IRB?

 Members of the Tuskegee Study

The following is lifted from the New Hanover Regional Medical Center Website: www.nhhn.org

 

An Institutional Review Board (IRB) is charged with protecting the rights and welfare of people involved in research.  The IRB reviews plans for research involving human subjects.  Institutions that accept research funding from the federal government must have an IRB to review all research involving human subjects (even if a given research project does not involve federal funds).  The Food and Drug Administration and the Office of Protection from Research Risks (part of the National Institutes of Health) set the guidelines and regulations governing human subjects research and IRBs.

The definition of research involving human subjects is broad.  The IRB must review research that involves the following areas, among others:

    Medical and administrative record data.

    Research that uses leftover tissues.

    Health services research.

    Survey research.

    Behavioral research.

    Biomedical and other clinical research.

Why Does an IRB Review and Approve Research?

Review of research involving human subjects is required by federal law.  Federal laws and regulations regarding research on human subjects have specific requirements for IRB and study administration.

Questions of human experimentation and ethics in scientific research came to the foreground after WWII. Human experimentation and torture of prisoners in concentration camps emerged during the Nuremberg Trials. The Nuremberg Trials were military tribunals held after the war to prosecute German military and political leaders. One result was the ban of human experimentation under International Law. The atomic bomb also influenced the perception that science and technology would move the modern world into a brighter future. This is a sweeping and broad history, but it impacts my own preparation for this small place study. In the United States, federal requirement for review of research by human subjects committee stems directly from experiences in the Tuskegee Study.  The Tuskegee Study was a federally funded study.  In it, a large number of poor African-American men with syphilis were studied for several decades to determine the natural history of untreated syphilis.  The diagnosis of syphilis was made before treatments for syphilis were available.  But the men were not offered treatment with penicillin even after it became available.  Worse, the men were not told they were subjects in a research study.  Many men in the study died of the complications of syphilis.

When this breach of ethics became publicly known in the middle of the 1970s, the federal government decided to put in place legal requirements for an external process for review and approval of research done using federal funds.  The federal government also decided to require that all institutions accepting federal research funds review all research done in that institution by the same procedures.

Federal regulations define “research” as:

A systematic investigation, including research development, testing and evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge.

SUMMARY: Institutional Review Boards are in place to make provide research oversight. There have been a whole lot of evil scientists (and others) that have done atrocious things in the name of "knowledge." Its a complex history that is long and gruesome. In order to do research involving "human subjects" (I prefer participants myself)  means going through the University IRB. I wanted to talk to people and ask them what they thought about places. This is certainly not scientific research based on experimentation, but there are still live human beings involved. Information on the UNM IRB can be found at http://hsc.unm.edu/som/research/hrrc/index.shtml.

Here are a few excerpts from my IRB application: 

A. State Purpose & Research Questions/Study Goals: 

The purpose of this research is to explore how place, place identity and place making practices are constructed. This exploration will take place in the field utilizing the methods and practices of place ethnographies (see B.1. below for a description of the methodology). The research conducted in Truth or Consequences will be the foundation for my final dissertation chapter. My dissertation, entitled Welcome to Truth or Consequences, Place and Place Making in Modern New Mexico, is a historical exploration of how place narratives and place making practices were shaped by ideas of modernity, progress and science from the turn of the 19th century to the present through a case study of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico and the larger region. In additional to these historical methods, my final chapter engages in place ethnography. Goals include contributing to place studies scholarship, theory and case studies, as well as local place histories and scholarship in the southern region of New Mexico.

B. Rationale: 1. Describe relationship of proposed study to previous investigations in the field, summarize those previous studies, including previous human, laboratory, and animal studies (describe existing knowledge):

My proposed research draws on a strong tradition of place ethnography at UNM, developed within the larger field of place and space studies and cultural landscape studies. Keith Basso's, former UNM professor of Anthropology, has been formative in the development of this methodology, especially in his book Wisdom Sits in Places (1996). Basso, working with Steven Feld, edited the book Senses of Place (1996) which was the result of a conference at the Santa Fe School for Advanced Research convened to explore the complex relationships between people to places. The research in this text explores how people live in, perceive, and invest with meaning the places they call home in an era where many places are increasingly seen as imperiled by the homogenizing and flattening forces of globalization. Place ethnographies, they say, seek to "locate the intricate strengths and fragilities that connect places to social imagination and practice, to memory and desire, to dwelling and movement ” (8). Place ethnography uses a multitude of traditional methods, such as interviews and observations, coupled with approaches such as empirical observations on public space use and policy analysis, phenomenological methods from architecture that seek to capture the experience of a place, and the elements of that experience, as well as photography and other documentation techniques. I also draw on the strong tradition of cultural landscape studies, a method and theory that also has a long tradition at UNM and in the surrounding area. As a method, cultural landscape documentation is a field-based method of recording the physical landscape and documenting the cultural groups and practices in the landscape. Renown scholar JB Jackson taught at UNM and began his magazine Landscapes here. Many of the leaders in the field of space and place studies such as Yi Fu Tuan were published by Jackson. Jackson's study of ordinary landscapes shifted the field from elite landscapes to our  everyday places. Scholars at UNM such as Sylvia Rodriguez, Jose Rivera, Chris Wilson and Arnold Valdez have a large body of scholarship and research that engages place ethnography, cultural landscape study and ethnography, especially in the study of acequia communities, both traditional and iconic places landscapes in New Mexico. I seek to engage and extend this method of research to explore Truth or Consequences, its inhabitants place making practices, the multiple place identities that exist there, and finally, the practices of everyday life, borrowing from philosopher Michael de Certeau, that shape its contemporary contours.

 2. Identify specific knowledge gaps which research is intended to fill (rationale for performing the research):

I am interested in contributing to the growing body of literature in space and place studies that looks to ground theories of place, place identity and place making in place-specific ethnographic research. The knowledge gap I am most interested in contributing scholarship to is the critical assessment of place narratives and the contrast and collusion of individual place narratives and other place narratives, such as those from cultural, political or other identifiable communities and interests within the town, as well as place narrative that originate from other sites and sources, such as newspaper accounts, or state generated promotional literature . The critical theoretical assessments of narratives of place looks to historic and contemporary narratives of place, such as those in service of historic preservation projects, revitalization or tourist/promotional literature, in order to examine how place operates to further particular understandings and agendas. This can include economic or material goals, for example, but can also include explorations of how place narrative function to establish cultural dominance or political goals.

 

DEFINITIONAL ASIDE: An ethnography come from the Greek ethnos, people, and graphy, writing. It is a method used in Anthropology that is based on field word. Basically, the idea is that a researcher goes into the "field," wherever the research is taking place, and tries to figure out the culture practices and patterns. These can be anything the role of food in ritual to the role of hairstyles at punk rock shows. 

C. Research Methodology & Procedures:

Place ethnography is my overarching methodological framework. The following approaches to data collection will be employed in my place ethnography. I draw these specific methods from a rich body of critical and historical approaches employed for qualitative data collection. I begin with cultural landscape documentation. This method draws from fieldwork and course work completed while fulfilling a graduate certificate program in Historic Preservation and Architecture in the School of Architecture and Planning, where it is employed as a primary methodology of place exploration and assessment.

1. Cultural landscape documentation. As a method of documenting the physical and cultural landscape, cultural landscape documentation shares many of the methods of place ethnography, and is considered here to be a part of the methodological framework of place ethnography. Focused initially on the physical landscape and cultural use patterns, data collection is focused on field work and site sketching, and photo documentation of the physical and built environment, including visual analysis and interpretation of artifacts in the landscape, the setting and relationship of buildings, the movement of people and other things, such as animals and cars, through the landscape, and archival research on these elements. It also includes oral histories with a focus on use patterns both individually and community uses as recollected and in the present moment. Cultural landscape documentation seeks to capture the patterns of human shaping of the physical environment, and the ways in which the physical environment shapes cultural norms and patterns. There is an expectation in cultural landscape documentation of formal oral interviews with community residents, but also of residents and others encountered in the field. Field data is kept in a field book, including sketched and observations. A separate field book is maintained for oral interviews. Documentary photography is a central component.

2. Reflective Observation. Methods with which researchers watch, engage and contemplate in a research setting. As the foundation for qualitative research, skilled observation reveals a great deal of rich information. This is what ethnographer Clifford Geertz calls "thick description." Observation and participant observation, where a researcher engages in community and cultural place processes will be the foundation for my place ethnography.

3. Interviews: Individual/Group informal public place interviews, with options for anonymity. I plan on conducting a total of no more than 200 informal public place interviews of various community members. I am asking the same basic questions to individuals/groups (see attached informal and informal group interview questions) and concluding with the option of open-ended reflection on place, place identity and place making. All interviewees will be approached in the field. Although small group interviews may trigger performance, my populations will be primarily targeted at teens and others who congregate together. There are several reasons for this approach, especially for teens. Teens tend to be more talkative in groups, as per the performance issue mentioned. In addition, as a vulnerable population, I believe that group interviews will provide a safe space for sharing. I will ask for a signed permission consent form from parents. These interviews will be conducted in several locations. They are Ralph Edwards Park/Skate park, Sonic, The Youth Center, The Movie Theater, and other sites as yet to be discovered/determined. Youth will be identified through first name only. In addition to teens in public places, I will also seek to identify and engage other public place groups, from tourists to mothers to groups, like old guys, hanging out in front of the coffee shop. All interviews will follow the informal interview questions. Written consent forms will be required. I am asking similar place, place identity and place making questions, although more numerous, and concluding with the option of open-ended reflection on place, place identity and place making(see attached formal interview questions). I will also seek formal interviews from elected officials and community leaders, business members, artists, recently relocated retirees, tourists, elder and others can be identified as having something to say or do about the town or its development. All data will be kept in interview field books. Participants will be asked to sign the attached consent form. No recorded data could be used to identify individuals who wish to remain anonymous. Documentary and individual or group photograph will be taken if a consent form is signed.

4. Social Mapping. A final component of my data collection will be social mapping, the  documentation of relationships between groups, institutions, organizations and social structures, to help determine the relationship between people, things and places.

AND BACK TO OUR ORIGINAL QUESTIONS!

For those of you whose eyes have not glazed over, and are still with me, here are the answers to the questions I posed above!

What am I doing? 

I am doing a place study on Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico.  It is both a historical account from the turn of the 19th century to today, and a ethnographic study. My 'place ethnography' will be a field-based study of the town and its people. I want to know what people think about place, say about place, and what kinds of things they do to make places. 

Why am I doing this? 

I am interested in place: what we say about it, how we think about it, and what we do with it.

How am I doing this? 

I will be talking to people, and watching what they do.

Where am I doing this? 

Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

When am I doing this? 

I will be in the field in the summer of 2012 through the summer of 2013. 

 

Who am I doing this with? 

Anyone who will talk to me, and everyone who I observe, unless they tell me to look away. 

What I want to do is write a good solid dissertation that says something interesting about a particular place in the world and the people who live, work, play and visit there. I will end this lengthy post with a naked baby picture of my daughter Emagen (and the top of my mom's head) taken last year on her first visit to Elephant Butte Lake. Just a nod to one of the reasons people keep trying to figure out the world in order, some of us hope. to to make it a little better.