2013 News

NSU Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research to Add New Autoethnography Course

Ron Chenail, Director of Nova Southeastern University’s Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research, announced the creation of new elective – QRGP 6310: Autoethnography. He said the online course, starting in January 2014, will introduce students to the historical, epistemological, theoretical, methodological, and procedural foundations of autoethnography. Students will learn a variety of approaches to autoethnography including individual, collaborative, critical, interpretive, and transformational forms and will practice appraising the quality of different types of autoethnographic reports. Lastly, he noted they will also learn how to conceive and conduct an autoethnography. More information about the Certificate can be found on the program’s web page located athttp://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/Graduate_Certificate_in_Qualitative_Research.html.

(Posted October 14, 2013)

TQR Editorial Board Tony Adams Receives NCA Award

Mitch Allen, Left Coast Press, Inc. Publisher announce this week TQR Editorial Board Tony Adams, along with his co-editors Stacy Holman Jones and Carolyn Ellis, will receive the 2013 National Communication Association Ethnography Division Best Edited Collection book award for their Handbook of Autoethnography. More info on the Handbook can be found here:http://www.lcoastpress.com/book.php?id=429

(Posted October 14, 2013)

Jennifer R. Wolgemuth Joins TQR Editorial Board

We at TQR are delighted to announce Jennifer R. Wolgemuth has joined the journal as our newest Editorial Advisory Board member. Jennifer is an Assistant Professor of Educational Research at the University of South Florida where she teaches doctoral and master’s level research design and qualitative research classes. Her scholarship focuses on the unintended and messy outcomes of social science research, including its personal and social impacts on researchers, participants, and those who shepherd research evidence into policy and practice.

(Posted October 7, 2013)

The Qualitative Report Achieves Three Important Community Milestones

The Qualitative Report has reached 3 important milestones in the last two weeks. TQR Facebook has achieved over 1700 fans becoming one of the largest qualitative research pages on Facebook. TQR Twitter account has grown to over 1900 followers surpassing Facebook in a shorter lifespan. The Qualitative Report‘s Twitter account was also rated #5 by onlinephdprogram.org list of the Top 101 Twitter accounts that every #PhD Should Follow. In addition to our growing social media community, our subscriber base has reached over 7,000 subscriptions, reaching our yearly goal of 1000 subscribers 3 months early! If you have not subscribed yet, you may do so for free here.

(Posted September 23, 2013)

The Qualitative Report Names Melissa Rosen as Its New Production Editor

We at TQR are delighted to announce Melissa Rosen has joined the journal as our new Production Editor. Originally from Bensalem, PA, where her parents and two sisters reside, Melissa completed her Bachelor’s degree in psychology at Nova Southeastern University (NSU), and is also a proud alumna of Sigma Delta Tau. Currently, she is working on earning her Master’s degree at NSU in Family Therapy. She hopes to one day pursue a career working with military families and veterans as a family therapist.

(Posted September 23, 2013)

Jeffrey M. Keefer Joins TQR Editorial Board

We at TQR are delighted to announce Jeffrey M. Keefer, Ph.D., as our newest TQR Editorial Board member. Dr. Keefer is a Project Manager in Clinical Education and Quality Management Services at Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY), where he manages instructional and program design initiatives, strategizes and integrates social media and learning across the enterprise, manages eLearning and community grants, administers WebEx webinar services, and directs programs that oversees organizational access to the evidence and research database utilization. He teaches at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies in the Management and Systems (MASY) and the Human Resource Management and Development (HRMD) graduate programs, where he teaches the core graduate research process and methodology course. He is also an instructor in the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Program at Pace University’s Lienhard School of Nursing, where he teaches Teaching and Learning in Advanced Practice Nursing. His teaching flows from his doctoral work in Educational Research, having recently defended his doctoral thesis “Navigating Liminality: The Experience of Troublesome Periods and Distance during Doctoral Study.” Jeffrey’s research interests cover educational research and interdisciplinarity. He focuses on distance and online learning, internet research, digital identity, social learning and social media, networked and technology enhanced learning, threshold concepts and liminal experiences in higher education, teaching and program design in adult and organizational learning, communities of practice, qualitative methodologies, narrative inquiry, and actor-network theory. You can also follow Jeffrey on his blog, “Silence and Voice: Educational Research, Distance, & Liminality.”

(Posted August 21, 2013)

TQR Now Distributed to Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology Membership

Starting with its August 19, 2013 issue, The Qualitative Report (TQR) has partnered with the Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology(SQIP) to distribute TQR to SQIP’s 1300 scholars of qualitative research. This collaborative effort brings TQR‘s subscriber base to over 8,000 people. The Society for Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology serves as a forum for researchers and practitioners to reflect on forms of qualitative study in psychology. It also serves as a vibrant community to stimulate deliberation on the methodological, theoretical, and philosophic status of such forms of inquiry. SQIP is also a newly formed section of Division 5 of the American Psychological Association. To learn a more about becoming a member click here. To join their list serve follow them on Facebook here.

(Posted August 20, 2013)

Jim Bernauer’s TQR Conference Paper Published in Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research

An article based upon Jim Bernauer’s Third Annual TQR Conference presentation was published in the September issue of Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research. In the article, entitled “The Serendipitous Shoemaker: Creativity and Passion in Participant Selection,” Jim offers a particular perspective on creativity and relates this perspective to how a participant was selected for a qualitative study. In presenting this perspective on creativity and participant selection Jim hopes the approach can be transferred to different contexts based on this description.

The Qualitative Report Fifth Annual Conference (TQR2014) will take place January 17-18, 2014 at Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida USA. The two-day event will feature plenary addresses by Johnny Saldaña and Sam Ladner along with 81 presentations by 127 presenters. Registration for TQR2014 will open October 1, 2013.

(Posted August 19, 2013)

NSU Appoints TQR Editor-in-Chief Ronald J. Chenail Associate Provost for the Division of Applied Interdisciplinary Studies

Ronald J. Chenail, Ph.D., has been appointed Associate Provost for Nova Southeastern University’s (NSU) Division of Applied Interdisciplinary Studies (DAIS) effective Aug. 1. The announcement was made by NSU President and CEO George L. Hanbury II, Ph.D. As Associate Provost, Dr. Chenail will provide leadership for DAIS’ Center for Psychological Studies, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Mailman Segal Center for Human Development, and Institute for the Study of Human Service, Health and Justice. He will be responsible for furthering the Division’s efforts to achieve its goals as part of the University’s Vision 2020 Business Plan with special focus on collaboration, fiscal performance, extramural research, fundraising, and student recruitment. He will report directly President Hanbury until the new NSU provost is named.

“Dr. Chenail has a solid track record of research and scholarship achievements,” said Hanbury. “His facilitative style of leadership and extensive knowledge of the DAIS people and programs will be instrumental in helping the University reach its strategic goals.”

Prior to being appointed as Associate Provost, Dr. Chenail served at NSU as Vice President of Institutional Effectiveness, Assistant to the President for Academic Affairs, Dean of the School of Social and Systemic Studies (the former name of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences – SHSS), and Interim Dean of the Center for Psychological Studies. He is also a Full Professor of Family Therapy in SHSS and Editor-in-Chief of NSU’s The Qualitative Report, the world’s first online interdisciplinary qualitative research journal. Since becoming a faculty member at the University in 1989, he has secured 12 grants and contracts for NSU totally over $1,000,000; produced over 120 publications including four books (Medical Discourse and Systemic Frames of Comprehension; Practicing Therapy: Exercises for Growing Therapists; The Talk of the Clinic: Explorations in the Analysis of Medical and Therapeutic Discourse; and Qualitative Research Proposals and Reports: A Guide), and given over 180 formal academic presentations at conferences and meetings. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy (JMFT), the flagship research journal of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), for two terms. In addition he is an editorial board member of Qualitative Research in Psychology; Qualitative Social Work; Counselling, Psychotherapy, and Health; and Sistemas Familiares; as well as a founding editorial board member of Qualitative Inquiry.

(Posted August 12, 2013)

Keeney, Keeney, and Chenail’s TQR Article Published in New Book

The 2012 TQR article, Recursive Frame Analysis: A Practitioner’s Tool for Mapping Therapeutic Conversation by Hillary Keeney, Bradford Keeney, and Ronald J. Chenail has been republished in the Keeney’s new book, Creative Therapeutic Technique: Skills for the Art of Bringing Forth Change. In their book, the Keeneys begin by envisioning every psychotherapy session as a three-act structure with a beginning, middle and end. This orienntation helps therapists maintain a focus on movement and change, like a compass that allows practitioners to keep track of the plot line and direction of every session. Their exercises help readers make these ideas their own. In the Keeney, Keeney, and Chenail chapter Recursive Frame Analysis (RFA), both a practical therapeutic tool and an advanced qualitative research method that maps the structure of therapeutic conversation, is introduced with a clinical case vignette. The authors present and illustrate RFA as a means of mapping metaphorical themes that contextualize the performance taking place in the room, recursively enacted to produce a lineal progression from an opening act to a closing act. RFA is offered to therapists, supervisors, teachers, and researchers as an exit from impoverished ways of framing both the choices therapists have in how to work with clients as well as the ways in which pedagogy is structured and research conducted.

(Posted August 5, 2013)

TQR Names New Editorial Board Member and Apprentice
We at TQR are delighted to announce our newest TQR Editorial Board member:

Judy Mullan (PhD, BPharm, FSHPA, BA) is a senior lecturer and academic leader for Research and Critical Analysis within the University of Wollongong, Graduate School of Medicine, Australia. She is also the theme leader for Ageing and Chronic Conditions within the Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute (IHMRI) and has over 25 years’ experience as a registered pharmacist. Since completing her PhD in 2005, Judy has had research experience using both qualitative and quantitative research methods in a diverse range of areas, including health literacy, aged care, chronic conditions and medical education. To date, her research has focused on patient education and communication with a view to improving patients’ medication compliance, therapeutic and health outcomes. More recently, she has also been involved in medication education research focusing mainly on the integration of research and critical appraisal within a medical school curriculum. Judy’s academic experience also includes teaching and facilitating the learning of students studying medicine, pharmacy, nursing, health sciences and nutrition. as well as supervising and mentoring over 100 undergraduate and post graduate higher degree research students. To date, in collaboration with other chief investigators, she has been successful in acquiring over $2,000,000 worth of research funding, has published in range of different peer reviewed journals, presented at many national and international conferences, and performed numerous peer reviews of articles submitted to eight different medical, health and medical education peer reviewed journals.

We are also pleased to announce our newest TQR apprentice:

Pragashnie Naidoo is currently a lecturer and doctoral candidate at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa. She is an occupational therapist by profession and is currently engaged in both undergraduate and postgraduate supervision of students. Her research interests are in qualitative and mixed methods inquiries. She has been a candidate on the South Africa-Netherlands Research Programme on Alternatives in Development (SANPAD) 2012/2013 cohort. This research initiative has capacitated her in research, having being trained by both international and national facilitators. She holds a national scholarship for her current research in paediatric neurodevelopment and is currently an emerging researcher at her university, having begun to develop a research portfolio.

(Posted July 29, 2013)

OnlinePh.D.Program.org Selects The Qualitative Report‘s Twitter Account @T_Q_R Number 5 Twitter Account for Doctoral Students

OnlinePh.D.Program.org selected The Qualitative Report‘s Twitter Account @T_Q_R Number 5 on its 101 Twitter Accounts All #PhDs Should Follow. This list is the culmination of extensive research and exploration by OnlinePh.D.Program.org into the PhD community on Twitter, and they envision their list will be a great resource for new PhDs or those who are just getting involved in online communities. The information shared through these accounts, and in the #PhDChat discussions could be very valuable for many of their readers, and The Qualitative Report‘s Twitter account is an important part of it. OnlinePh.D.Program.org will be sharing news of @T_Q_R and the other 100 resources with as many new PhDs and interested readers as possible. The Qualitative ReportCommunity Coordinator and Social Media Director Adam Rosenthal manages @T_Q_R tweeting the latest news from The Qualitative Report and the world of qualitative research. @T_Q_R currently has over 1,600 followers and the journal itself has over 6,700 subscribers plus over 1,500 friends on Facebook.

(Posted July 15, 2013)

TQR Editorial Board Member Gary Shank Publishes The Spirit of Qualitative Research Lecture Series with Amazon Kindle Store

Gary D. Shank, renown qualitative researcher, Duquesne University professor of research methods and education, and TQR Editorial Board Member, announced this week he has published The Spirit of Qualitative Research Lecture Series with Amazon Kindle Store. In the eleven lectures he addresses issues that are not often discussed in print in the qualitative research literature focusing why rather than how we do our qualitative research. For more information please contact Gary at garyshank@comcast.net.

(Posted July 15, 2013)

TQR Editors Receive Honorable Mention for 2013 Anselm Strauss Award for Qualitative Family Research

TQR Editors Ron Chenail, Sally St. George, Dan Wulff, Maureen Duffy, and Karen Wilson Scott, along with colleague Karl Tomm, received honorable mention for the for 2013 Anselm Strauss Award for Qualitative Family Research to their article, “Clients’ Relational Conceptions of Conjoint Couple and Family Therapy Quality: A Grounded Formal Theory,” which was published last year in Journal of Marital and Family Therapy. The recognition was made by the Anselm Strauss Award Committee, which is part of the Qualitative Family Research Network, Research and Theory Section, National Council on Family Relations. The Strauss Award, which is given each year, recognizes significant work in the area of family theory, methods, and research that comes from a qualitative tradition. Honorable mention is granted to those articles or chapters which do not receive the award but otherwise meet the award criteria and, in the assessment of members of the committee, also deserve recognition. In making this recognition, the Anselm Strauss Award Committee noted, “Qualitative metasynthesis is an innovative approach in qualitative family scholarship. Committee members noted several strengths in this article, most importantly having a strong and detailed research design. Committee members suggested that this article can be a model for others wanting to conduct their own qualitative metasyntheses.” For more information on the Strauss Award, please see visit its webpage located at http://www.ncfr.org/awards/section-awards/research-theory-focus-group-awards/anselm-strauss-award-qualitative-family-res.< /p>

(Posted July 8, 2013)

TQR Reader Discount Available for Social Fictions Series

Series Editor Patricia Leavy has announced the release of the fifth title in the Social Fictions series – Zombie See and the Butterfly Blues: A Case of Social Justice by R. P. Clair. To celebrate she is offering TQR readers 25% off any title in the Social Fictions series during the month of June 2013. To get the discount TQR readers must buy the book from the sense website located athttps://www.sensepublishers.com/catalogs/bookseries/social-fictions-series/ and use promo code 192837 at checkout.

(Posted June 3, 2013)

Call for New Resources for Revised Compendium

TQR Editor-in-Chief Ron Chenail announced work on the new edition of A Compendium of Teaching and Learning Qualitative Research Resources, a publication in the TQR Qualitative Research Resource Series, is under way and he is asking authors to submit information regarding their new articles, chapters, books, and web-based resources so these new sources can be added to the 2013 edition. He is also asking folks who have read a helpful, new source on teaching or learning qualitative research, mixed-methods, or action/appreciative inquiry to also submit that information. Please send all notes on suggested additions to Ron Chenail (ron@nova.edu). Everyone submitting suggestions will be acknowledged in the new edition.

(Posted May 6, 2013)

TQR Board Member Valerie Janesick Makes Multiple Recent Presentations
TQR Editorial Board member Valerie Janesick made a series of recent presentations:

  • American Educational Research Association: “Explaining Poverty through Digital Oral History: Using Technology Effectively”
  • International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry: “Oral History in the Digital Era: Making Meaning through Testimony, Interviews, Film and Photography” and “Going Digital: Using Freeware, Software, and Digital Techniques in Qualitative Research Projects”

Besides her work with TQR, Dr. Janesick is also a Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida USA. You can learn more about her work by visiting her website located at http://sites.google.com/site/valeriejjanesick.

(Posted May 20, 2013)

TQR Names New Assistant Editor
We at TQR are delighted to announce our newest TQR Assistant Editor:

Stephanie Fleming is a student in the Qualitative Research Graduate Certificate program at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She has a Master of Arts in Writing and a Juris Doctorate Degree. She works as a freelance editor, and has experience editing many types of writing including: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, technical and academic writing. She has also worked as a writing tutor in the Office of Academic Services at NSU’s Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences, and is a CRLA Level I certified tutor. Her main interest is in studying the teaching/tutoring methods for ESL (English as a Second Language) students, and she has focused her qualitative research studies around this interest.

(Posted April 22, 2013)

TQR Passes 6,500 Subscribers

Adam Rosenthal, TQR Community Coordinator, reported this week the number of subscribers to The Qualitative Report topped the 6,500 mark. He also noted the total of TQR Community social media followers on Facebook and Twitter have passed 2,700.

(Posted April 8, 2013)

TQR Names New Board Member
We at TQR are delighted to announce our newest member of the TQR Editorial Advisory Board

Raji Swaminathan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Policy and Community Studies in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Currently, she also serves as Director of the Urban Education Doctoral Program. She received her Ph.D. in Cultural Foundations of Education at Syracuse University. Her areas of teaching and research are creative qualitative research, urban education and leadership, alternative education and gender and education. Currently she is working on two collaborative projects that build leadership capacity for aspiring school leaders besides researching creativity in qualitative inquiry.

(Posted March 11, 2013)

TQR Names New Board Member
We at TQR are delighted to announce our newest member of the TQR Editorial Advisory Board

Patricia Alvarez McHatton is Professor and Chair of the Inclusive Education Department at Kennesaw State University. Her research interests include teacher education with an emphasis on preparing culturally competent educators, collaboration, and school experiences of diverse youth and families. Her work centers on school-university-community partnerships. A major emphasis of her work is engaging disenfranchised youth in participatory action research for social change and arts-based research as a method for making research findings accessible to the communities in which it is undertaken. She is active in several professional organizations having served as President for both the Division for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Exceptional Learners (DDEL) and the Teacher Education Division (TED) of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC).

(Posted February 18, 2013)

TQR Names New Board Member
We at TQR are delighted to announce our newest member of the TQR Editorial Advisory Board

C. Amelia Davis, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Educational Research in the Department of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading at Georgia Southern University, where she teaches educational research methods and qualitative research to graduate students. Amelia’s research focuses on adult education, particularly youths transitioning as adult learners and assumptions and knowledge claims made regarding adult basic education student populations. Her interest in qualitative research methodology includes narrative, ethnography, performance ethnography, and arts-based research. In her own work, Amelia experiments with alternative forms of re-representation including ethnodrama and poetic transcription.

(Posted February 11, 2013)

TQR Board Member Khawla Abu-Baker Publishes Two New Papers
TQR Board Member and faculty with the Max Stern Academic College of Emek Yezreel, Israel and Al-Qasemi Academy – Academic College for Education, Bafa Al Garbeia, Israel, Khawla Abu-Baker has announced the publication of her two latest papers:

Psycho-social Reactions of Palestinian Families in Israel and the West Bank Following War-related Losses
Israel Journal of Psychiatry & Related Sciences
2012, 49(3), 211-218

Arab Parents’ Reactions to Child Sexual Abuse: A Review of Clinical Records
Journal of Child Sexual Abuse
2013, 22(1), 52-71

For more information on these papers, please email Dr. Abu-Baker at khawla.abubaker@gmail.com.

(Posted February 6, 2013)

TQR Board Member Johnny Saldaña Seeks Recommendations for Outstanding Journal Articles

Sage Publications wants to put up a companion website for my new book that has links to outstanding qualitative research articles from various disciplines (but they MUST be from journals published by Sage, like Field Methods, Qualitative Inquiry, Qualitative Health Research, etc.).

What, to you, are at least 1 to 3 outstanding qualitative research articles you’ve read (or written!–don’t be shy!) that you feel merit a listing on the reference web page? What qualitative research articles do you feel are worth anyone in qualitative research reading, regardless of discipline? Remember: they MUST be from journals published by Sage.

If you can send me any bibliographic info (the more complete the better) about your recommended article(s), I’d appreciate your help with this project. I’m looking for a wide range of genres and topics, from health care to psychology, from ethnography to grounded theory, from mixed methods to arts-based research. Either post to this discussion, or send the info to: Johnny.Saldana@asu.edu.

Thanks!

Johnny Saldaña
Evelyn Smith Professor
Arizona State University

(Posted February 4, 2013)

TQR Names Newest Board and Apprenticeship Program Members

We at TQR are delighted to announce our newest members of the TQR Editorial Advisory Board and Apprenticeship Program

Editorial Board

Dr. Victoria Palmer has worked at the Primary Care Research Unit, The University of Melbourne since completion of her PhD in 2007. Her thesis examined the role of moral protest and cooperation in the building of ethical communities with particular attention to transformative resistance. Prior to this she taught in the humanities and worked on a refugees and education project. She has experience in the design and conduct of participatory action research based projects in primary health care settings and is trained in qualitative research methods for design and analysis. Victoria is a multiperspectival researcher, her theoretical knowledge and interests span: the application of ethical theories to practical problems, the use of narrative theory for analysis and theories of embodiment. Her current responsibilities include: principal investigator for a large study to test the effectiveness of experience based co-design methodology to optimise community mental health services for psychosocial recovery, responsibility for a photo-elicitation pilot project to explore cross cultural experiences of depression, and investigator role to gather and explore patient views of a prediction tool to identify those at-risk of poor outcomes from depression as part of a 10 year longitudinal study into depression (diamond).

Aimee Galick, PhD(c) is a doctoral candidate at Loma Linda University. She is a Feminist Martial and Family Therapist with interest in how the larger social context affects the intersection of health and families. Her main interest in qualitative research comes from a desire to know more about the process of therapy and the therapists and people engaged in the process. She highly values qualitative research as a means to gain a deeper, more complex understanding of relationships and therapy. Most of her research has centered on how contextual influences such as gender and culture affect intimate relationships, the process of therapy, and experiences with illness. She is passionate about mutuality in relationships characterized by mutual attunement, mutual influence, shared relational responsibility, and shared vulnerability. She also administrates a blog, equalcouples.com, to disseminate information to the public on this topic.

Apprenticeship Program

Carmen M. Cusack is a doctoral student in Criminal Justice at Nova Southeastern University (NSU). She holds a BA and a JD from Florida International University. Her dissertation project, chaired by Dr. Lenore Walker, focuses on nonconsensual insemination and intimate partner violence among Planned Parenthood patients. She is an instructor of Theory of Child Protection, Investigation, and Advocacy at NSU.(Posted February 4, 2013)

TQR Names New Board Member
We at TQR are delighted to announce our newest member of the TQR Editorial Advisory Board

Carlene Boucher, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Health Services Management in the School of Management at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Her research areas include leadership, difference and organization, gender and work, human resource management, and change management. She is also interested in innovative qualitative research methods such as autoethnography, action research, collaborative research and alternative forms for representing research findings. She serves on the editorial committees of Qualitative Research Journal and Creative Approaches to Research.

(Posted January 21, 2013)

New TQR Feature: Research Rookies

We want to hear from students and researchers new to qualitative research making their first discoveries about their work and themselves. We also want experienced researchers sharing their “origin” stories as well as accounts of experienced researchers experiencing something new in their evolving research experiences. We conceive these stories to be expressed in a variety of media: (a) Written Essays (approximately 2,000 words in length), (b) Image Essays (10 photos/drawings accompanied by approximately 1,000 words of commentary), and (c) Videos / YouTube Essays (10-minute maximum in duration accompanied by approximately 1,000 words of commentary). To submit your Research Rookies contribution, please go to the <i.tqr< i=””>Manuacript Submission Page and upload tour file.

(Posted January 14, 2013)

TQR Names New Board Member
We at TQR are delighted to announce our newest member of the TQR Editorial Advisory Board

James Butler III, DrPH, MEd is an Assistant Professor of Behavioral and Community Health and is an Associate Director of the Maryland Center for Health Equity in the School of Public Health at the University of Maryland. Dr. Butler, trained as a behavioral scientist, has more than 17 years of experience conducting qualitative research (e.g., focus groups, in-depth interviewing, ethnography and participant observation). Currently, he is the Principal Investigator of a National Cancer Institute-funded Career Development Award to Promote Diversity (K01). In this capacity, Dr. Butler conducts qualitative research (focus groups and in-depth interviews) that examines the smoking cessation needs of African American public housing residents and the requisite strategies for engaging the residents in smoking cessation research. Additionally, this research is anchored in an ecological framework that incorporates individual, social structure and environmental influences in understanding and eliminating tobacco-related health disparities. Further, he is dedicated to building ongoing and permanent relationships with community members for the purpose of designing and conducting interventions where the community participates fully in all aspects of the research process.

(Posted January 14, 2013)

TQR Names New Apprentices
We at TQR are delighted to announce our newest members for our TQR Apprenticeship Program.

Jean Providence Nzabonimpa is a PhD student at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. In 2009, he received his master’s degree in social and educational research methods from Kigali Institute of Education, Rwanda, where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Education in 2004. In 2008 and 2009, Jean Providence also received, respectively, his honors Bachelor and Master degrees in Linguistics with Specialisation in Translation Studies from the University of South Africa. Though his academic training prepared him for qualitative research, he embarked on mixed methods research at postgraduate level without giving up his natural propensity for qualitative research. Currently he is specializing in Social Science Methods at doctoral level and he is investigating methods effects in a mixed method study of gendered choices in Rwandan secondary schools. His PhD research project investigates the dynamics and subtleties involved in mixing qualitative and quantitative data which have been concurrently and sequentially collected. Gradually a Tutorial Assistant and a Research Assistant at the Kigali Institute of Education, a Research, Monitoring, and Evaluation Specialist at Population Services International in Rwanda, Jean Providence needs exposure to international best practices in qualitative research for improved contribution in this field. His interests lie in the social, educational and behavioural research. He is fascinated by qualitative research and the use of mixed methods as an alternative “paradigm” in social science research methods. Importantly, Jean Providence is thrilled by this opportunity to be an editorialTQR Apprentice and expects to maximize this excellent learning experience.

Tiffany Rice is a social work PhD candidate at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. Tiffany’s work with qualitative research began during her undergraduate years. She credits The Qualitative Report with being one of the earliest resources she turned to during her time as a novice researcher. She currently works as a research associate, specializing in qualitative research, at a child welfare advocacy firm. Tiffany’s research interests include topics of race, gender, sexual orientation, health disparities and interpersonal violence.

(Posted January 7, 2013)