Following up on LibQUAL+: Qualitative Data Analysis Workshop

1. Following up on LibQUAL+: Qualitative Data Analysis Workshop Canadian Association of Research Libraries Association of Research Libraries October 24, 2007 Colleen Cook, Dean of Libraries, Texas A&M University

2. What are the characteristics of qualitative methods? • The observer/researcher inseparable from the study • Consists of a set of interpretive practices that tries to make sense of a cultural context • Data sources: field notes, interviews, conversations, photographs, recordings, and memos to the self • Study a natural setting, attempting to make sense of, or to interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them

3. How did qualitative methods evolve? • Beginnings in Sociology: 1920s and 30s in the “Chicago School;” in Anthropology: in the studies by Boas, Mead, Benedict, Bateson, Evans-Pritchard, Radcliffe-Browne, and Malinowski • Through seven moments (Denzin & Lincoln, 2001) • Today: influences of poststructuralism and postmodernism from textual studies

4. How do qualitative and quantitative methods differ? • Multiple realities, not a single one “out there” to be discovered • Value laden, subjective rather than objective • Seeks closeness with the investigated through interviewing and observation rather than abstract relationships • Inductive rather than deductive • Purposeful sampling chosen for diversity rather than random sampling

5. Thick descriptions rather than crisp and terse background information • Comfort with contradictions, ambiguity • Representations include ethnographic prose, historical narratives, first-person accounts, still photographs, life histories, biographical and graphs, third-person narratives autobiographical materials rather than mathematical models, statistical tables

6. What data are collected by the qualitative researcher(researcher as bricoleur, montage maker)? • Case studies, personal experience, introspection, life story, interview, artifacts, cultural texts and productions, observational, historical, interactional, and visual texts, statistics that describe routine and problematic moments and meanings in individuals’ lives. • Inherently multimethod in focus: triangulation

7. What fields of study are included in qualitative methods? • Ethnomethodology, phenomenology, hermeneutics, feminism, deconstructionism, ethnography, interviews, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, survey research, participant observation

8. Qualitative research: the method of choice

9. Multiple Methodsof Listening to Customers • Transactional surveys* • Mystery shopping • New, declining, and lost-customer surveys • Focus group interviews • Customer advisory panels • Service reviews • Customer complaint, comment, and inquiry capture • Total market surveys* • Employee field reporting • Employee surveys • Service operating data capture Note. A. Parasuraman. The SERVQUAL Model: Its Evolution And Current Status. (2000). Paper presented at ARL Symposium on Measuring Service Quality, Washington, D.C.

10. LibQUAL+ as a research example

11. Purposeful sampling • Unstructured interviews - “conversations with a purpose” • Peer review • Immediate and continuous analysis informing further exploration • Journal • Member checks • Audit review

12. Establishing Trustworthiness: A Comparisonof Conventional and Naturalistic Inquiry Adapted from Lincoln & Guba, 1985.

13. The Audit Trail Excerpted from Skipper, 1989.

14. Affect of Service “I want to be treated with respect. I want you to be courteous, to look like you know what you are doing and enjoy what you are doing. … Don’t get into personal conversations when I am at the desk.” Faculty member

15. Affect of Service “I want to be treated with respect. I want you to be courteous, to look like you know what you are doing and enjoy what you are doing. … Don’t get into personal conversations when I am at the desk.” Faculty member

16. Library as Place “One of the cherished rituals is going up the steps and through the gorgeous doors of the library and heading up to the fifth floor to my study. … I have my books and I have six million volumes downstairs that are readily available to me in an open stack library.” Faculty member

17. Library as Place “I guess you’d call them satisfiers. As long as they are not negatives, they won’t be much of a factor. If they are negatives, they are a big factor.” Faculty member

18. Information Control “By habit, I usually try to be self-sufficient. And I’ve found that I am actually fairly proficient. I usually find what I’m looking for eventually. So I personally tend to ask a librarian only as a last resort.” Graduate student

19. Information Control “…first of all, I would turn to the best search engines that are out there. That’s not a person so much as an entity. In this sense, librarians are search engines [ just ] with a different interface.” Faculty member

20. LoadedPT:P1:01xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.txt,S:\Admin\Colleen\ServQual Interviews\TEXT Only\01xxxxxxxxx.txt (redirected: c:\zz\atlasti\fred

22. Library Service Quality Information Affect of Service Control Empathy Scope of Content Responsiveness Convenience Assurance Ease of Navigation Library as Place Reliability Timeliness Utilitarian space Equipment Symbol - Self Reliance Refuge Model 3 Dimensions ofLibrary Service Quality

23. So…..what did we do at Texas A&M?

25. Affect of Service

27. Library as Place

28. Renovation

30. Information Control

31. Digital Initiatives Research Team Digital Repositories

32. What are we doing now?

33. Total Circulation Note. M. Kyrillidou and M. Young. (2005). ARL Statistics 2003-04. Washington, D.C.: ARL, p.6.

41. The use of focus groups in planning

42. The End woof