“They are not just anecdotal stories.” Capturing Ripples of Influence Through Qualitative Research in the Métis Settlements Life Skills Journey Project
Location
DeSantis Room 2060
Format Type
Plenary
Format Type
Paper
Start Date
16-1-2020 8:45 AM
End Date
16-1-2020 9:05 AM
Abstract
Personal narratives, reflections, and stories about and from research participants in social science projects are frequently met with the question “so what?” This dismissal of qualitative research is prevalent outside academia, “in the real world,” where it is often viewed as a collection of unscientific “anecdotal stories.” Anecdotes are generally considered subjective short stories about a specific individual, time, and place. Therefore, their usefulness as research data is questioned or dismissed as unreliable and invalid. Such “findings” may be perceived as limiting to funding agencies, especially to those whose mandate may include public service delivery and policy reform. This poses a challenge for community engagement projects where individual human interaction is one the most prominent and variable features. This is the case for the Métis Settlements Life Skills Journey (MSLSJ), a service delivery and research project funded by a government health department. In this presentation we focus on one key stakeholder, the community program assistants, to illustrate how incorporating a range of qualitative data collection methodologies in the MSLSJ tool kit enables us to capture personal narratives, reflections, and stories that speak to the influence and impact their participation in the project has had. These “ripples of influence” not only suggest the power and significance of personal stories, they enable us to learn, adapt, and improve training and content towards building relationships, capacity, resiliency, and project sustainability
Keywords
Cross-Disciplinary Methodology, Mixed-Methods Design, Qualitative Evaluation and Social Policy, Community Based Participatory Research, Participant Observation
“They are not just anecdotal stories.” Capturing Ripples of Influence Through Qualitative Research in the Métis Settlements Life Skills Journey Project
DeSantis Room 2060
Personal narratives, reflections, and stories about and from research participants in social science projects are frequently met with the question “so what?” This dismissal of qualitative research is prevalent outside academia, “in the real world,” where it is often viewed as a collection of unscientific “anecdotal stories.” Anecdotes are generally considered subjective short stories about a specific individual, time, and place. Therefore, their usefulness as research data is questioned or dismissed as unreliable and invalid. Such “findings” may be perceived as limiting to funding agencies, especially to those whose mandate may include public service delivery and policy reform. This poses a challenge for community engagement projects where individual human interaction is one the most prominent and variable features. This is the case for the Métis Settlements Life Skills Journey (MSLSJ), a service delivery and research project funded by a government health department. In this presentation we focus on one key stakeholder, the community program assistants, to illustrate how incorporating a range of qualitative data collection methodologies in the MSLSJ tool kit enables us to capture personal narratives, reflections, and stories that speak to the influence and impact their participation in the project has had. These “ripples of influence” not only suggest the power and significance of personal stories, they enable us to learn, adapt, and improve training and content towards building relationships, capacity, resiliency, and project sustainability