I'm still digesting what we talked about in class, and I'm only just beginning to explore atlas.ti, so I'm not sure I have a lot of thoughts to share yet.
My initial reaction to atlas.ti is that I like its underlying assumptions. I like that you can work in a non-linear process (though, as I said in class, I need to remind myself that that's ok), and I like that you can work with a kind of messy space. But I wonder how I would do with it - I'm thinking I might get lost in the messiness...I might need the kind of structure that comes with some of the other tools, but I'm not sure. I need to play with it.
I also just want to touch on the point we started to discuss about bringing findings to the public without compromising participants. I don't know how to do this, and I've grappled with this problem a bit in previous posts. I really like the notion of making the data and the research process accessible, open to the public, and even commentable. But when we do that, we put our participants at risk because even if we use pseudonyms and change the genders, they at least will know their stories and feel vulnerable, whether they are or not from an IRB standpoint. This concerns me greatly as I write up this research. I'd really like to explore this more.
Yes! Really important point here about making our work public. There is always a risk when moving to public domains with our work and this is an ethical dilemma that we simply cannot escape. There is also an inherent dilemma with our work not being shared more broadly, considering the underlying assumption of why we engage in social science. We will explore this further indeed! Important topic/practice.
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