GEOG 696 Readings
Seminar in Geographical Research Methods
Spring 2009
Readings, in order of assignment
Introduction to Graduate School (by 2 February)
- Hornbeck, D. 1989.
- So ... you wanna go to graduate school? In On Becoming a Professional
Geographer, ed. M.S. Kenzer, pp. 10-16. Columbus, OH, and other places:
Merrill.
- Clifford, Nicholas, and Valentine, Gill (eds.). 2003.
- Getting started in geographical research: How this book can help. Ch. 1
of Key Methods in Geography, ed. N.J. Clifford and G. Valentine, pp. 1-
16. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
- Groening, Matt. 1987.
- Lesson 19: Grad school -- some people never learn. From Life in Hell:
School Is Hell but It Beats Working. Available at: http://www.futurama-area.de/LiH/OComics/16.gif.
Current Trends in Three Journals in General Geography (by 9 February)
- Healey, Mick. 2003.
- How to conduct a literature search. Ch. 2 of Key Methods in
Geography, ed. N.J. Clifford and G. Valentine, pp. 17-36. Thousand Oaks,
CA: SAGE Publications.
- For each of the three general journals below, browse any six issues (eighteen in total) of tables of content dating from the year 2004 and later, taking notes on recent trends in the kinds of research being reported in it, paying special attention to trends in your area of geography: human, physical/environmental, or technical (accessible online through our library):
-
- Annals of the Association of American Geographers
- The Professional Geographer
- Transactions, Institute of British Geographers
Quantitative Methods in Physical Geography (16 February)
- Reid, Ian. 2003.
- Making observations and measurements in the field: An overview. Ch. 14
of Key Methods in
Geography, ed. N.J. Clifford and G. Valentine, pp. 209-222. Thousand Oaks,
CA: SAGE Publications.
- Lane, Stuart N. 2003.
- Numerical modelling in physical geography. Ch. 17 of Key Methods in
Geography, ed. N.J. Clifford and G. Valentine, pp. 263-290. Thousand Oaks,
CA: SAGE Publications.
- Grundstein, Andrew. 2008.
- Assessing climate change in the contiguous united states using a modified
Thornthwaite climate classification scheme. The Professional
Geographer 60, 3 (August): 398-412, doi: 10.1080/00330120802046695.
- Laity, Julie, and Bridges, Nathan T. 2008.
- Ventifacts on Earth and Mars: Analytical, field, and laboratory studies
supporting sand abrasion and windward feature development.
Geomorphology in press: electronic proof published online
doi:10.1016/j.geomorph.2008.09.014
- is the sentence clear and concise?
- does the verb imply methodology?
- is the subject clear and focussed (not cosmic or scattered)?
- while acknowledging differences in training and background, can you imagine your own self writing the implied thesis in no more than a year, realistically?
- what ideas do you have that you think might help your colleague improve this sentence?
Remember that you will be ranked by your "victims" in terms of how helpful your comments were in revising their sentence and moving on to the pre-proposal.
GIScience (23 February)
- Batty, Michael. 2003.
- Using geographical information systems. Ch. 23 of Key Methods in
Geography, ed. N.J. Clifford and G.Valentine, pp. 409-423. Thousand Oaks,
CA: SAGE Publications.
- Aplin, Paul. 2003.
- Using remotely sensed data. Ch. 18 of Key Methods in
Geography, ed. N.J. Clifford and G.Valentine, pp. 291-308. Thousand Oaks,
CA: SAGE Publications.
- Ban, Hyowon, and Ahlqvist, Ola. 2008.
- Representing and negotiating uncertain geospatial concepts. Computers,
Environment, and Urban Systems (forthcoming: search on "Ban" in journal's
ScienceDirect CSULB page), 14 pp. doi: 10.1016/j.comenvurbsys.2008.10.001.
- Mills, Jaqueline Warren; Curtis, Andrew; Pine, John C.; Kennedy, Barrett; Jones, Farrell; Ramani, Ramesh; and Bausch, Douglas. 2008.
- The clearinghouse concept: A model for geospatial data centralization and
dissemination in a disaster. Disasters 32, 3: 467-479. doi:
10.1111/j.0361-3666.2008.10150.x
Qualitative Methods in Human Geography and Protection of Human Subjects in Research (2 March)
- Longhurst, Robyn. 2003.
- Semi-structured interviews and focus groups. Ch. 8 of Key Methods in
Geography, ed. N.J. Clifford and G. Valentine, pp. 117-132. Thousand Oaks,
CA: SAGE Publications.
- Laurier, Eric. 2003.
- Participant observation. Ch. 9 of Key Methods in
Geography, ed. N.J. Clifford and G. Valentine, pp. 133-148. Thousand Oaks,
CA: SAGE Publications.
- Thien, Deborah. 2005.
- After or beyond feeling? A consideration of affect and emotion in
geography.
Area 37, 4: 450-456.
- Rodrigue, Christine M. 2002.
- Patterns of media coverage of the terrorist attacks on the United States
in September of 2001. Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information
Center, University of Colorado Quick Response Report 146. Available
at: http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/research/qr/qr146/qr146.html.
- Guest Lecture
- Dr. Dale Jorgenson (Director for Research Compliance, Office of
University Research, Division of Academic Affairs, CSULB) will provide
background on Human Subjects issues, how the CSULB IRB is set up to review
Human Subjects before research takes place, the power it has to stop a
research project that has not undergone IRB review, and how you can get your
project "vetted" ahead of time. Dr. Jorgenson is on the Institutional Review
Board. To prepare for his talk, please take the self-directed module on Human
Subjects linked here before he comes to talk: http://www.csulb.edu/divisions/aa/research/our/compliance/orientation/modules/human_subjects/index.html.
It should take you maybe an hour to go through it.
Pre-Proposals (9 March)
-
This is the week you'll turn in your pre-proposal. This is an expansion of
your thesis purpose statement into about one or two pages. In this
pre-proposal, you should have a paragraph or so in which you situate your
project in some larger conversation or problem area, indicating why the
subject is important and including a few sentences sketching some of the
previous work done on this problem area. This paragraph is the kernel of what
will become your literature review and it should identify a few themes that
can organize previous work and show where your project fits in.
Your pre-proposal should include a revised and improved (perfected?) statement of purpose. As with your original statement assignment, you need to make this succinct and clear, and its verb should imply the methodology framing your project.
From your statement of purpose, there should flow one or a few hypotheses or research questions. These link your purpose to your data and methods.
Then, include a paragraph or two describing specifically what kinds of data you anticipate needing to collect and the methods you plan to use to collect them. Maybe you'll be assembling "texts" to analyze quantitatively or qualitatively; perhaps you'll be downloading Census data; maybe you'll be acquiring remotely sensed imagery and pre-processing it for your use; perhaps you'll be conducting a participant-observation ethnography; maybe you'll be out collecting water samples and pre-processing them for storage and later analysis; or perhaps you'll be poring through archives.
Lastly, talk about the methods you think you'll need to process and analyze your data. Maybe you'll use statistical tests or GIS queries, or maybe you'll deconstruct layers of meaning or different points of view exposed in images and other "texts." How long do you think data collection and analysis might take, realistically in terms of your life and other obligations? You might want to bounce ideas for data sources and analytic approaches from your peers or faculty here: Don't be afraid to ask a faculty member for a short meeting to explain your project and ask for ideas to carry it off.
The hard part is boiling everything down to a crisp one to two page summary document. Remember that each paragraph in this pre-proposal is going to be expanded in your full proposal: Context and literature, purpose and questions or hypotheses, data and methods. You're trying to get the seed-ideas down at this stage and start sensing the thesis as A Real Thing.
- Bradford, Michael. 2003.
- Writing essays, reports, and dissertations. Ch. 29 of Key Methods in
Geography, ed. N.J. Clifford and G.Valentine, pp. 515-532. Thousand Oaks,
CA: SAGE Publications.
- Madsen, David. 1983.
- Preparing the research proposal. Ch. 4 of his Successful Dissertations
and Theses, pp. 35-62. San Francisco and other places: Jossey-Bass.
First Draft Proposals (6 April)
-
This is the week you'll turn in the first draft of your full proposal, using the guidelines
in the syllabus, with an eye to the assessment rubric. Bring in four copies: One for
me and one for each of your peer group members to critique.
Work on Critiques of First Draft Proposals (13 April)
- This is the week I'll be at the Western Social Science Assocation conference. Use the time to critique your peers' first drafts, aspiring to be ranked their most useful critic.
Critiques of First Draft Proposals (20 April)
- This is the week you'll turn in thorough, frank, and helpful criticisms of your peers' proposal drafts. We will spend the entire time discussing these.
Back to Reading (27 April)
- Cope, Meghan. 2003.
- Coding transcripts and diaries. Ch. 25 of Key Methods in
Geography, ed. N.J. Clifford and G. Valentine, pp. 445-459. Thousand Oaks,
CA: SAGE Publications.
- Welch, Catherine; Marschan-Piekkari, Rebecca; Penttinen, Heli; and Tahvanainen, Marja. No date.
- Interviewing elites in international organizations: A balancing act for the researcher. Available at http://www.uni-muenster.de/PeaCon/dgs-mills/mills-texte/The%20QualitativeInterview-InternationalBusinessResearch.htm. This piece later appeared as "Corporate elites as informants in qualitative international business research." International Business Review 11, 5: 611-628.
Back to Reading (4 May)
- Aitkenhead, Matthew J.; Lumsdon, Parivash; and Miller, David R. 2007.
- Remote sensing-based neural network
mapping of tsunami damage in Aceh, Indonesia. Disasters 31, 3: 217-226. doi:10.1111/j.0361-3666.2007.01005.x
Available at:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118504738/PDFSTART.
- Sieber, Renée and Welken, Christopher. 2007.
- Blending participatory GIS and geo-spatial ontologies for indigenous knowledge preservation. Presentation to Colloque International de Géomatique et d'Analyse Spatiale, Clermont-Ferrand, held with the Conférence Québéco- Française de Développement de la Géomatique CQFD-Géo 2007, Ateliers «Modélisation spatiale et décision territoriale participative», Saint-Etienne, 2007. Available at http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=11&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.emse.fr%2Fsite%2FSAGEO2007%2FCDROM%2FCQFD14.pdf&ei=Gzj1Sb_cApTEswO015hG&rct=j&q=participatory+GIS+water&usg=AFQjCNFYSCsDWm3L81Do51RsS9YWxj98Fg&sig2=lvH8zzwAaRNEKWY7fAMYjQ.
Majestic Final Draft (and Peer Rankings) Due (11 May)
Adoption Papers Due (18 May)
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First placed on web: 01/15/99
Last revision: 04/27/09