published_or_final_version / Language Studies / Master / Master of Arts

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The purpose of my dissertation research was to ascertain participants' perspectives regarding perceived risk in unstructured qualitative interviews. The impetus for my research was the current crisis in research ethics governance; namely, its lack of evidence with respect to research participants' perspectives and experiences and to the appropriateness of the current normative context of research ethic oversight to qualitative research. My hope was the actual experiences of participants would inform the moral conduct of interviews and their ethical review. Research Ethics Boards and some researchers regard emotional distress as a predominant risk to participants in interview research. My first paper, "Research Ethics Boards and the Ethics of Emotion", is a conceptual analysis of this phenomenon. Contemporarily, emotion has been conceptualized in terms of valence and polarity; that is, either negative or positive and one opposite to another. Thus, emotional distress is regarded as negative and harmful and the opposite of benefit. However, this conceptualization is too simplistic to capture the complexity of emotion. My paper contributes to the literature an explication of emotion as well as an elucidation of the factors of ethics oversight that perplex the proportionate review of emotional distress and confound the presumptions of emotional distress as harm. In my second paper,"The Diversification, Utilization and Construction of the Semi-structured Interview", I elucidate various types of semi-structured interviews that I discerned within the literature. The descriptive/corrective type of semi-structured interview is selected for my study because of its unique capacity to describe, compare and correct dominant conceptualizations of risk that reflect non-participants' perspectives with the actual experiences of participants themselves. In my final paper, "Participants' Perspectives of Risk Inherent in Unstructured Qualitative Interviews", I describe participants' paradoxical responses to interview participation. They experience distress but report benefit, not harm. Participants believe unstructured interviews provide a unique and profound opportunity to tell their stories. Most find interview experiences to be revelatory and transformative. Despite REB presumptions of risk to participants in unstructured interviews, participants report no experience of harm. I discuss the implications for ethical conduct and oversight of interview research.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1982. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-157).

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This study was designed to portray some of the personal attributes of Emma Lou Diemer, a contemporary composer, and to describe her compositional processes and products through videotaped interviews. Over a two year period and during five days of interviews and discussion, Dr. Diemer and this writer developed a rapport allowing the composer to reveal insights into her attitudes about music composition and her methods and techniques for composing. The writer then prepared and edited the videotaped interviews specifically for the following purposes:1. to provide insight into Emma Lou Diemer's philosophy of music composition2. to offer first-hand commentary on two of her own compositions3. to give composers and conductors insight, in Dr. Diemer's own words, into her compositional processes.The two videotapes central to this study provide visual records of the discussions of the composer at work, thereby allowing viewers access to her original comments, facial expressions, conversational nuances, and humor. The tapes show Dr. Diemer's energy, vitality, and sense of purpose as she continues to seek creative channels within her chosen field of composition.The videotapes are supported by a written document containing background information, related literature, and a biography of Emma Lou Diemer. Chapter four contains the narratives of the videotaped interviews and a discussion of two of Diemer's compositions, "There is a Mom Unseen" and "To Come So." The final chapter includes a summary and recommendations for further research.The writer recommends the use of videotape for recording interviews with contemporary composers; this medium was an effective tool for this study. Suggested procedures include: the recording of a composer's perspectives on interpretations of his/her compositions, recording of composing techniques, videotaping of the composer as performer or conductor, and videotaping of related performances of a composer's works by selected individuals and groups.Suggested audiences for the videotapes prepared for this study are: 1. university composition classes;2. conductors preparing to present compositions by Emma Lou Diemer in concert;3. high school groups looking at composition as a career;4. individuals who wish to study Dr. Diemer's compositional processes and style. / School of Music

This dissertation is a study of how anthropologists in Canada over the previous thirty years, have constructed anthropological knowledge. It reports, examines, and comments upon interviews with anthropologists trained inside and outside of Canada. Most occupy senior academic positions at Canadian universities. Interpretation of this material takes place within the discourses of the anthropology of knowledge and education. Anthropologists say that ways of thinking about anthropological knowledge conflict at the theoretical level but do not conflict in practice. Practice is defined as fieldwork and teaching. Here, theory is felt only indirectly. Various tensions follow from this understanding. They include those between subject and object, positivism and post-positivism, value and validity, field and archive, and cultural relativism versus scientific knowledge. The concept which mediates these tensions is that of the field. Fieldwork is seen by anthropologists as an experience with both epistemological and ethical implications. Ethically, the field supports a certain manner of living and outlook on humanity. This outlook includes respect for cultural differences. Yet, epistemologically, the field is divisive because it is cast as the promotional agent for various kinds of method, theory, and reflective analyses. These analyses include a belief in value relativism in concert with a scientific notion of validity. For example, if it were not for the fundamental tools of positivism in anthropology, anthropologists felt that anthropological knowledge might be seen as idiosyncratic. In their search for human knowledge, anthropologists are united by their methods and ethics. They are divided, however, by their theories. These divisions and unities are inherited in the culture of anthropology. Although anthropologists understand different cultures' values to be equal, they suggest that ways of knowing another culture through anthropology are not equally valid. Theoretical conflicts are also produced in institutions. These are seen as major influences on the 'look' of anthropology at various times and places. Departments, publishers, students and teachers are all influences on anthropological knowledge construction. Anthropological knowledge is also seen as being constructed at a personal level. Anthropologists feel the concept of vocation in the individual's life-narrative as an anthropologist is important to this construction. Anthropology is seen as a calling or assignation. As well, the purpose of anthropological knowledge is seen as an ethical precept. The sanctity of field experiences for these anthropologists brings them together ethically but divides them epistemologically.

The main research question of this study is: What discourses of learning and identity do students develop in relation to their individual learning histories, their experience of learning and of knowledge-acquisition in the HE environment, and how critically reflective are students of the positioning enacted through the dominant discourses of the HE environment with particular regard to institutional discourses of academic learning and knowledge? Rationale: The university is seen as a significant stage in the development of students' learning histories, of particular relevance for the students' perceptions of self, learning and knowledge. The role of discourses of knowledge acquisition and learning in talk - 'learning discourses' - is examined against the background of general study conditions for students poised between study and work. The case study: methodology and methods The dissertation, which is an example of computer-aided qualitative research, describes a small-scale ethnographic study of students at a German university. The researcher adopts a broadly ethnomethodological approach. The data was collected in a limited number of individual in-depth research interviews to construct a language corpus. Other data regarding the research site was collected via observation and from documentary sources. Data analysis: the interview transcripts were analysed using a mixture of conversation analysis; institutional discourse(s) analysis and narrative analysis. Results: the study provides evidence of the production of learning biographies in interview talk. Evidence is also produced in this study of the 'biographization' of students' talk. The coherence of students' discourse practices in relation to their experience of learning is underlined and the researcher argues that the student respondents negotiate the intrinsic difficulties of asymmetrical institutional talk by deploying a range of discourses, both institutionally-generated as well as individual discourses of resistance and opposition. The evidence of individual discourse practices provided by the data employed here is seen as a strong argument for a <b>low-inference</b> approach to data analysis. The results produced by analysis of the interview transcripts demonstrate the central importance of heteroglossic elements in talk, - here described as <b>'embedded speech'</b> and understood to function as a <b>’plausibility device'</b> - in the process of self-expression and the production of own discourse Relevance This research is seen as relevant for university learning strategies, for the appreciation of student self-perception, their discourses of knowledge and resistance to the prevailing 'human capital' discourses of learning, exam success and career orientation of HE study.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-141). / iv, 141 leaves, bound 29 cm

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on November 27, 2007) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.