Exposing anthropology undergraduates to new tools

Overview

Associate Professor and Chair of the State University of New York’s Anthropology Department, Dr. Victor De Munck, introduced NVivo software to his undergraduate Anthropology Research Methods class in late 2008. NVivo was integrated into a first year class where students used it for their assignments involving the analysis of life histories, stories and beliefs.

What characteristics do Americans look for in a future President? How are drugs impacting American college students? Do young people still have faith in the institution of marriage? What does a campus-based religious community really think about the theory of evolution?

Forget longitudinal studies and dissertations; these are the questions posed by a group of undergraduate anthropology students at the State University of New York (SUNY), New Paltz as part of an innovative trial involving qualitative data analysis (QDA) software program, NVivo 8.

Giving undergraduates new tools

Associate Professor and Chair of the SUNY’s Anthropology Department, Dr. Victor De Munck, introduced NVivo software to his undergraduate Anthropology Research Methods class in late 2008. While QDA packages are regularly taught at a graduate level, the use of the software for first year students is now steadily gaining traction.

“Until recently, few universities, either public or private, taught QDA software at the undergraduate level and even less used it in their anthropology classes,” he said.

“But the majority of data collected by anthropologists – the things people say to the ethnographer – is qualitative. Attending to the issues of reliability and validity of this data is critical to the research process. To teach my students how to only conduct interviews, or to simply have them extract quotes from an interview to support a particular interpretation, would have been to short-change them. They’re smart and ambitious – why shouldn’t they have the same tools as their graduate peers?”

Taking software from the field into the classroom

Dr. De Munck has been teaching research methods, social organization, cultural and cognitive anthropology at SUNY since 1996 and recently published the book, Research Design and Methods for Studying Culture (Altamira Press 2009). An accomplished researcher in his own right, he started using NVivo last year while working in Lithuania on a Fulbright Scholarship.

“I needed a more effective way of managing and using my interview materials to discern the cultural patterns and processes that I was observing as my research progressed,” said Dr. De Munck.

“I’d been using the traditional cut-and-paste method with index cards. While I’d played with another package, I found it too difficult to learn on my own. My colleagues recommended NVivo and it was my first proper attempt at using a QDA package.”

NVivo 8 allows users to import and analyze documents, video, audio and images side-by-side. It’s used by academic, government and commercial organizations in 150 countries on a wide range of projects, from literature reviews and ethnography, to grounded theory, discourse analysis and mixed methods research.

What started in Lithuania continued in the United States, with Dr. De Munck integrating NVivo into the undergraduate anthropology research methods class at SUNY upon his return. Twenty of his students were introduced to NVivo 8 via an interactive, online demonstration with one of QSR’s US-based Business Development Managers, Stacy Penna. This allowed the students to see the software in action, ask questions, and receive answers from Stacy in real time.

Choosing NVivo over traditional methods

While the software was integrated into the module they were learning, Dr. De Munck’s students were given the choice to either use NVivo 8 or rely on traditional manual methods for their assignment, which involved the analysis of life histories, stories, thoughts and beliefs. Seventy five per cent of the class chose to use NVivo.

“I did not need to sell the students on the pragmatic benefits of learning the software. My undergraduates were quick to see that using NVivo to organize and analyze their own data was going to give them an advantage. They were highly motivated and acquired basic competency quite quickly — within two weeks,” he said.

“Two of the students learnt the software so well that they even used the transcription function to transcribe their interviews within the software.”

To make the learning experience more rigorous, Dr. De Munck employed a combination of research approaches. His students started the course with statistical methods, pie square, frequencies and very structured interviews, and then followed with more unstructured methods, including in depth interviews. Their topics ranged enormously, from religious beliefs and drug use, to social norms and issues of love, sex and culture. The students using NVivo imported their audio and text into the software and used its tools to help query, organize, and extract themes from their data.

“The emphasis in my class is on managing data, assigning themes – or coding – and then using queries to help analyze interviews and other narrative data in various modes, including through text, email, visual, audio and audio-visual materials,” he said.

“NVivo 8 empowered the students to do that. They also learnt that qualitative data can be systematically analyzed and just as reliable as quantitative data. And, if you take sampling considerations into account, that it can perhaps even offer more external validity.”

Giving New Paltz students an advantage

As part of the pilot, several of the undergraduate students provided feedback on their use of NVivo. The responses were overwhelmingly positive, with most noting the software was easy to use and beneficial.

“It helped organize the coding process and allowed me to view my transcripts fluidly,” said one student.

“It allowed important multimedia files to be sorted in this program so instead of having to save each file in different places on your computer or a flash drive, you can have one organized program with all the different sources,” noted another.

Dr. De Munck said while he wanted his students to gain insight into the use of QDA software in the ethnography field, he also appreciated it offered them an advantage over their peers. Accordingly, students who achieved either an A or B grade in the course were awarded a certificate recognizing their use of NVivo.

“Not many undergraduates, even from more prestigious schools, will be able to say that they have experience or the know how to use a program like NVivo 8,” he said.

“Learning how to use NVivo and actually coding and analyzing their own data is a tremendous advantage for SUNY undergraduate students. It will give them a leg up both for graduate school and for employment because they will be able to include in their resume that they have competency in using a popular QDA program.”

Based on the success of Dr. De Munck’s pilot, the State University of New York plans to purchase a site license for NVivo 8, allowing the software to become a regular fixture in its undergraduate classes. Dr. De Munck’s first-year Anthropology Research Methods students will benefit from extended modules incorporating the software in Fall 2009 and Spring 2010.