Content, Context, Reflexivity and the Qualitative Research Encounter: Telling Stories in the Virtual Realm

The arrival of the virtual realm and computer-mediated communication (CMC) has attracted considerable interest within the discipline. However, the full potential of computer-mediated conversation as both a research resource and medium of communication within the qualitative research encounter awaits further exploration. In this paper, I discuss the dimensions of the qualitative \'tradition\', the recent burgeoning interest in biographical methods shaping the research agenda and the significance of the virtual realm as a locus of communication. In so doing, I draw from my recent research exploring 15 women\'s accounts of their experiences of infertility and assisted reproductive procedures. Often, the qualitative encounter becomes a shared medium of trust, reciprocity and revelation. This research highlights the importance of not just making \'space\' for participants voices and words but of acknowledging the significance of the context of communication itself – paying attention to \'where\' and \'how\' we speak is as critical as paying attention to what might be said. Participants within this study used and translated virtual text and virtual participation into a sense-making vehicle. In this respect, the virtual space offers a new dimension to the qualitative research encounter and we need to remain aware of the opportunities this affords.Qualitative Methodology; Computer-Mediated Communication; Biographical Methods; Reflexivity

Putting the horse before the cart: formulating and exploring methods for studying cognitive technology

The First International Conference on Cognitive Technology (CT'95, Hong Kong, 1995) explored a radically new way of thinking about the impact computer technology has on humans, especially on the human mind. Our main aim at that time was a consideration of these effects with respect to rendering the interface between people and computers more humane. And we exemplified our approach by pointing to existing trends and tendencies in the vast new loosely organized field of research often referred to as `HCI' (`human computer interaction'; the replacement for the politically and factually `incorrect' MMI, `man machine interface')published_or_final_versio

Gendered embodiment and the time of infertility

Despite recent attempts to retrieve the body within sociology and the assumption of a now 'embodied' framework, how this should be done remains problematic, contentious and disputed. Current tensions more than partially revolve around the difficulty overcoming the limitations of foundationalist and anti-foundationalist approaches, restricting the development of a truly embodied and empirically driven conceptual framework. Remarkably little theory has entered the body and considered the body in terms of its own inner processes, the result of a persistent ontological queasiness concerning bodily interiority. The exclusion of the interior of the body problematises any integration between not just what bodies mean but also what they can do. As a field of location, I address the question of how both the female body and women's embodied experiences within the field of infertility can be both theorised and explored without succumbing to these limitations. Acknowledging the influence of both feminist and hermeneutic perspectives, and situating my approach within a temporal and biographical framework, I acknowledge both the interior and exterior of the female body. An empirical study of 15 women's experiences of infertility treatment was conducted using life story interviews and researcher-solicited diaries. Analysis focused upon the conditions of meaning-making and understanding, emphasising the biographical and temporally-situated of women's narratives in relation to the female body. By overcoming the difficulties admitting the female body into our analyses, this thesis illuminates the process of embodiment itself in the development of a truly embodied and empirically driven theoretical and conceptual framework in this field

Semantic and pragmatic characterization of learning objects

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Informática. Universidade do Porto. Faculdade de Engenharia. 201

Understanding suicide : conversations with the bereaved

This thesis presents a sociological inquiry into the meanings that families bereaved by suicide attach to the suicide of a young man. Through in-depth interviews and an email based focus group, this study explores families' attempts to understand how and why their loved one chose to end his life. Whilst interviews and focus group discussions were centred on the life and death of the young man, it became clear that the narratives of the bereaved were as much tales of themselves as they were tales of the deceased. The narratives of the life and death of the young man are only ever reconstructions from the relative's perspective. Therefore the research developed a broadly dual focus. It begins by exploring the families' constructions of the young man's life and death before moving on to look the experiences of the bereaved and their (reconstructions of themselves and their families. A social constructionist approach was adopted in order to explore the most significant discourses in helping families make sense of their loved one's death. This thesis shows how the discourse of mechcal-psychiatry was especially salient in their attempts to reach an understanding of their young man's suicide. In particular, families either resisted, or appealed to its dominant construction of suicide as showing signs of mental illness. In addition, the meanings and understandings attached to the young man's death were highly sophisticated attempts to negotiate blame to establish who was responsible for their loved one's death. Importantly whether families appealed to or resisted the dominant medical-psychiatric discourse - the salient point in all the families' constructions was the need to place responsibility outside the family. Moreover, suicide is a devastating death, often leaving families feeling isolated and stigmatised. As such, this thesis also chronicles the families' experiences of being bereaved by suicide their attempts to manage such a profound disruption in their own lives.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Understanding suicide: Conversations with the bereaved

This thesis presents a sociological inquiry into the meanings that families bereaved by suicide attach to the suicide of a young man. Through in-depth interviews and an email based focus group, this study explores families' attempts to understand how and why their loved one chose to end his life. Whilst interviews and focus group discussions were centred on the life and death of the young man, it became clear that the narratives of the bereaved were as much tales of themselves as they were tales of the deceased. The narratives of the life and death of the young man are only ever reconstructions from the relative's perspective. Therefore the research developed a broadly dual focus. It begins by exploring the families' constructions of the young man's life and death before moving on to look the experiences of the bereaved and their (reconstructions of themselves and their families. A social constructionist approach was adopted in order to explore the most significant discourses in helping families make sense of their loved one's death. This thesis shows how the discourse of mechcal-psychiatry was especially salient in their attempts to reach an understanding of their young man's suicide. In particular, families either resisted, or appealed to its dominant construction of suicide as showing signs of mental illness. In addition, the meanings and understandings attached to the young man's death were highly sophisticated attempts to negotiate blame to establish who was responsible for their loved one's death. Importantly whether families appealed to or resisted the dominant medical-psychiatric discourse - the salient point in all the families' constructions was the need to place responsibility outside the family. Moreover, suicide is a devastating death, often leaving families feeling isolated and stigmatised. As such, this thesis also chronicles the families' experiences of being bereaved by suicide their attempts to manage such a profound disruption in their own lives