sbrownkentedu Monograph, Uncategorized

Q Bibliography: Wijngaarden on ethnography in tourism research

Wijngaarden, Vanessa (2016, April 12). Q method and ethnography in tourism research: Enhancing insights, comparability and reflexivity. Current Issues in Tourism (online).

(doi: 10.1080/13683500.2016.1170771)

Abstract: Whereas other writers have recently presented Q method as an option for use in combination with traditional surveys, I employed the mind-mapping technique within a deeply qualitative approach. Showing how the Q method adds value to reflexive ethnography, I highlight the extended possibilities for its application in tourism studies. The method allows qualitative researchers’ novel entries into the perspectives and lived experiences of hosts as well as guests, providing enough rigidness to enhance their systematic handling and comparability, while being flexible enough to do justice to their complexities and nuances. The Q method can successfully be embedded in ethnographic fieldwork practices and used even with illiterate people. By adding themselves as a research participant, researchers can reflect intensely on their own subjective understandings and positions, as well as on their methodological approaches. This is of special value in tourism studies where extended reflexivity is especially urgent, because researchers are often placed in the same category as tourists by their research participants. (The first 50 people can access this article for free through http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/rx6YWRyw5Kf8bpyuZds4/full)

Vanessa Wijngaarden <vanessa.wijngaarden@gmail.com> is affiliated with the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS), University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany.

sbrownkentedu Monograph, Publication

Q Bibliography: Godor on the deep/surface dichotomy in student studying

Godor, Brian P. (2016, January 17). Moving beyond the deep and surface dichotomy; using Q methodology to explore students’ approaches to studying. Teaching in Higher Education, (http://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2015.1136275) ePublication prior to print.
Abstract:

Student learning approaches research has been built upon the notions of deep and surface learning. Despite its status as part of the educational research canon, the dichotomy of deep/surface has been critiqued as constraining the debate surrounding student learning. Additionally, issues of content validity have been expressed concerning situational and contextual differences in its interpretation. Q methodology was used as both a research method and an analytical technique for this study and has as its aim the exploration of subjectivity. The deep/surface dichotomy was not found in this study, but rather three unique types of study approaches. Moreover, through Q methodology, new novel combinations of statements were able to emerge, thus allowing the academic discussion to move beyond the deep and surface  dichotomy.

Brian P Godor <godor@fsw.eur.nl> is Honour’s Program Coordinator, Erasmus School of Pedagogical and Educational Sciences, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
sbrownkentedu Monograph, Publication

Stewart on leadership and management in the U.S. armed forces

Stewart, William G. (2008, October 23). Perceptions of leadership and management: In the Armed Forces of the United States. Saarbr�cken, Germany: VDM Verlag. 156 pp. ISBN-13: 9783639088427. $75.77.

Summary: This study probed U.S. military officers on their perceptions of effective leadership and management behaviors. Serving military members reported the leader styles they found especially useful. The study’s aim was to build a theory describing those leader styles that would lead to organizational success. It was based on a series of surveys and interviews of commissioned officers representing all services and commissioned grades, conducted at a joint service headquarters in Europe. The factor analytical techniques of Q methodology were used to distill meaning from the subjective judgment of the participants. Subsequent semi-structured questioning helped to put the findings into context and triangulated the results with qualitative data. Respondents reported that they consciously used both transformational and transactional leader styles. They demonstrated the application of a variety of cognitive leadership frameworks. The officers studied displayed important though sometimes subtle differences in their leader styles. As a whole they made their focus on mission accomplishment of paramount importance when balanced against any other concerns.

William Stewart joined the University of Maryland faculty in 1990, after retiring from the U.S. Air Force with 21 years of service in ICBM operations, as a pilot, and in international politico-military affairs for Germany and the United Kingdom. He completed his Ph.D. in organizational leadership at the University of Oklahoma, writing a dissertation on perceptions of leadership and management in the Armed Forces of the United States. He received an MBA from the University of South Dakota and a BA in international relations and German from Brigham Young University.

sbrownkentedu Monograph, Publication

New book chapter on Q methodology and risk under complexity

Brown, Mary Maureen (2008). Illuminating risk with Q methodology: The complexity of trans-disciplinary information system integration. In Linda F. Dennard, Kurt A. Richardson, & Goktuo Morcol (Eds.), Complexity and policy analysis: Tools and concepts for designing robust policies in a complex world (Exploring Organizational Complexity series, Vol. 2, pp. 307-322). Goodyear, AZ: ISCE Publishing [Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence, available at http://isce.edu/]. 420 pp., $65.99 (sale 52.79) cloth, $15.00 eBook download, ISBN 978-0-9817032-2-0.

According to the book blurb: It is well known and acknowledged that public policies are inherently complex. But the implications of complexity theory (or complex adaptive systems theory) for policy analysis have not been explored fully. The authors of this volume offer perspectives and methodological tools to fill this gap. Among the questions explored in the volume are, does complexity theory offer a ‘new science’, an alternative way of thinking to the pervasive rationalism of the mainstream policy analysis, or is it merely a novel analytical tool kit? Does the theory suggest a new way of knowing – and consequently solving – complex public policy problems, for example? How does the theory conceptualize complexity, and is this different from common understandings of the term? What should be the involvement of policy analysts in the process of change from the perspective of complexity theory? Does the theory support or suggest a complexity ethics? The authors of the book also illustrate how agent-based models, the most commonly applied tool of complexity theorists, can be used in policy analysis, as well as creatively applying other methods such as Q-methodology and qualitative case study in understanding complex social problems.

An outline for the chapter by Maureen Brown is available here. Her chapter appears in Section III, “Information Management and Network Rules”.