When Qualitative Researchers Care
January 12-14, 2017
As qualitative researchers, we explore, we discover, we describe, we interpret, we analyze, we synthesize, and we report. We perform these actions as we conceive, conduct, and compose our inquiries, but we also care for the people who share their lives with us. We care for their struggles, their dreams, and successes. We try to help their voices to be heard with the hopes of not only enriching the global narrative with the inclusion of these local experiences, but to also possibly help improve the conditions of these resident experts.
When we as qualitative researchers care, we embrace the potential to change the worlds and people we study. The choices we make as to who we study and how we go about designing and delivering these studies can be life changing for participants in the research, including ourselves, as well as anyone who comes in contact with our accounts from the field. This choice-making responsibility reflects an ethical imperative we as qualitative researchers must embrace so we actively reflect on what we do, why we do it, and with whom we do it.
Whether or not we overtly characterize our purposes as action, participatory, appreciative, critical, emancipatory, provocative, or social justice, our work can embody these qualities. People who participate in qualitative research can feel better and empowered. They can change products, organizations, communities, families, countries, and us along with themselves. What happens with what we produce as qualitative researchers, what others do with what we do, what anticipated and unanticipated consequences come from what we report makes us take special care when reflecting on what implications our work can have for the world including what might have been.
At The Qualitative Report Eighth Annual Conference, we want you to share your stories of how you care as qualitative researchers for your work and for those with whom you work to produce the inquiries you do. How do you conduct your studies such that you design for making a difference? How do you embrace the relational in your research? What of your studies have helped to produce change and why do you think that outcome occurred? We want to hear these narratives in your proposed papers, panels, and workshops so we all can learn what happens when qualitative researchers care.
Please submit your presentation ideas and join us next January at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida USA for TQR2017! We will be accepting submissions from February 1st to April 30th, 2016. Over the next few weeks we will share more details about TQR2017 on the conference's web site: http://tqr.nova.edu/tqr-8th-annual-conference/. As always, please let us know your questions and comments by sending us your emails to , posting to our Facebook page, or by tweeting us!
Conference Registration
Conference Registration for TQR 2017 is $150. The cost includes breakfast and lunch each day (Thursday through Saturday). Based on feedback from last year’s conference the following changes will be implemented:
- Breakfast and lunch each day. (Even if we start later in the day, both meals will provided on that Thursday)
- Increased interaction time
- Moderators will be brought back in to each room so timing is more concise
- Closing of the conference will involve a workshop from Dr. Chenail that will include time for post reflection