Seminars

*Upcoming*

28th April  2010

Critical reflections on Qualitative Research Praxis in Policy Commissoned Research on 'Crisis Pregnancy'

Catharine Conlon
Women's Education, Research and Resource Centre, UCD

Venue : NIRSA/NCG Conference Room, Third Floor
John Hume Building, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland
28 April, 2010 @ 4pm

In this paper Catharine Conlon reflects on the particular opportunities and constraints offered by applied policy qualitative research including how the parameters of such a context for knowledge generation within the interpretative paradigm shapes what can become known.

Catharine Conlon Following a BA (Law and Sociology and Politics) from NUI Gaway 1990-1993, Catharine Conlon graduated with an MA in Women’s Studies from UCD in 1994 and took up work as a social researcher both within the university sector at Trinity College Dublin (Department of Sociology) and Women’s Education, Research and Resource Centre, University College Dublin, as well as in the public sector as Research Officer at the National Council on Ageing and Older People. Most recently (1999-2006) she was Research Co-ordinator at WERRC, UCD working on a range of projects in the areas of social policy, gender and equality, gender and health, and women’s adult education. In 2006 she was awarded an Ad Astra Scholarship to undertake a PhD looking at concealed pregnancy in contemporary Ireland and in 2007 awarded a joint Crisis Pregnancy Agency Fellowship for same.

Her PhD research draws together and develops on insights generated in applied policy research with pregnant Irish women that she has been involved in since 1995.  These entailed two commissioned research projects of women’s 'crisis pregnancy' experiences during the ten years between 1995 and 2004 incorporating interviews with up to 200 women.  Subsequently, she came in 2005 to a smaller study of ‘concealed pregnancy’, also commissioned by the Crisis Pregnancy Agency.  Following feminist principles of reflexivity, her own political and ontological perspective as well as her reproductive biography, culminated to shape her decision to critically revisit the data generated by that research in an attempt to ‘get to’ the subjugated voice of women that she argues got ‘left behind’ in the thematic analysis framed by the commissioning bodies’ research aims and objectives written for the policy reports.

*Upcoming*

22nd June 2010

Irish Qualitative Data Archive Launch

We are delighted to announce the launch of the IQDA which is being held in June in order to coincide with the ISSP Summer School.

Venue : Renehan Hall, South Campus, NUI Maynooth, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland. Directions can be found here.
22nd June, 2010 @ 6.20pm

Please RSVP to issplatform@nuim.ie byby by

Cancelled. The speaker is unable to fly out of Finland as the European air space remains to be closed due to the cloud of  volcanic ash.

Ethical Dilemmas of Archiving Qualitative Data

Dr Arja Kuula

Finnish Social Science Data Archive/University of Tampere, Finland

Abstract:
When rejecting the archiving of qualitative interviews, researchers mainly invoke the confidentiality of the interview situation. Researchers tend to define the interview relationship as something unpredictable and private, and interviewees as participants in need of protection. According to the experiences of Finnish Social Science Data archive the interviewees themselves define the relationship as an institutional one aiming to foster science. The participants also value the idea of archiving their experiences for future research. So should we move beyond the ethical impasse of ethical objection to data archiving?

Arja Kuula has a PhD in Sociology and works as a development manager in the Finnish Social Science Data Archive. She is responsible for the archiving processes of qualitative data and information service on research ethics, privacy protection and copyright issues relating to both quantitative and qualitative data. In 2006, Kuula published a handbook on research ethics and legislation regulating data collection
and re-use. Kuula has been a member of the Finland's National Advisory Board on Research Ethics and she chaired 2008 a working group to make a plan for ethics review system in the humanities and social sciences in Finland.

3 February 2010
What is the role of qualitative research in policy development?
Dr Liz Kerrins
Children's Research Centre (CRC), TCD

Powerpoint Slides


2 December 2009
The Role of Qualitative Data in Evaluation, Practice & Policy: the CDI Experience
Dr Tara Murphy
Tallaght West Childhood Development Initiative (CDI)

Powerpoint Slides



25 February 2009
Secondary analysis of 
qualitative data: 
why should post-graduates care?
Libby Bishop
ESDS Qualidata, University of Essex
Timescapes, University of Leeds
Powerpoint Slides

24 February 2009
Skeletons in the archive:
 Ethical and methodological challenges 
of sharing data
Libby Bishop
ESDS Qualidata, University of Essex
Timescapes, University of Leeds

Powerpoint Slides