20th Annual Conference on Interdisciplinary Qualitative Studies
Purpose, History and Activities
Purpose:
- The Qualitative Interest Group (QUIG) at the University of Georgia is a collection of faculty, staff, and students who share an interest in using qualitative research to study human beings. This document is a brief overview of the purpose, history, and activities of QUIG. The scope and nature of qualitative research is one of the ongoing debates sometimes addressed by the membership. The label "qualitative research" is used generically for approaches to inquiry that depend on elaborated accounts of what we see, hear, taste, touch, smell and experience. It has roots in cultural anthropology, field sociology, and the professional fields. Qualitative research includes field research, case study research, ethnography, document and content analysis, interview and observational research, community study, and life history and biographical studies. Other names sometimes used as synonyms for qualitative research are interpretive, naturalistic, phenomenological, and descriptive. Qualitative research is associated with such theories as symbolic interactionism, constructivism, and ethnomethodology. Qualitative researchers have a lot of fun, which sustains them through the aggravation, frustration, uncertainty, and sheer slipperiness of most of the approaches to inquiry considered qualitative.
History:
QUIG is housed and supported at the University of Georgia by the College of Education. QUIG's functions have evolved as the membership has grown and diversified. However, collegial support and encouragement continue to be the focus. Through discussions, workshops, and conferences novices are introduced to qualitative methods, and more experienced scholars develop and elaborate their knowledge. QUIG has become a global center for the interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary exchange of scholarly experience in qualitative research.
In the fall of 1985 Alphonse Buccino, then Dean of the College of Education, invited faculty involved with or curious about qualitative research to form an interdisciplinary interest group. He appointed as temporary chair, Judith Preissle, who has continued in that office. An earlier group, the Committee for the Investigation and Support of Qualitative Research (CISQR), had met informally throughout 1980 but dissolved from lack of administrative support. QUIG, in contrast, has always had a much larger constituency and has enjoyed increasing support from around the university community and elsewhere.
Activities:
QUIG began as a purely local support group, but expended rapidly. First, faculty, staff, and students from the university community outside the College of Education became involved. During the first two years of operation, QUIG was organized into committees that planned and conducted various activities. Margaret D. LeCompte and Frederick Erickson spoke on campus in 1986 and 1987 as QUIG lecturers. Other activities included workshops, brownbag roundtable lunches, curriculum planning and support, and lectures.
The most enduring effort of this period was the development of an annual conference. A QUIG committee, chaired by Tom Cooney and composed of Jerry Bozarth, Linda Grant, Noel Gregg, Bob Heslep, and Sharan Merriam, proposed that QUIG sponsor a conference for 1988. The annual international conference on Qualitative Research in Education, sponsored by QUIG and supported by the College of Education at the University of Georgia, has been enthusiastically received by the research community locally, nationally, and internationally; it continues to grow in numbers and scope. The program has expanded from 20 sessions in 1988 to around a hundred in recent years. (**See the QUIG conference proceedings for keynote speakers and other presentations**).
In 1992 QUIG was joined locally by SQUIG, the Student Qualitative Interest Group. This is an independently run affiliate of QUIG directed to students at the University of Georgia (For further information see the SQUIG faculty advisor Frances Hensley, Instructional Technology, Aderhold 607, fhensley@moe.coe.uga.edu). The same year the Department of Sociology at the university, with assistance from QUIG faculty, began an annual summer workshop in fieldwork research for graduate students at institutions lacking adequate resources in this area (For further information see its director Linda Grant, Sociology, Baldwin Hall, lgrant@uga.cc.uga.edu).
Another effort to reach out to scholars elsewhere is QUALRS- L (Qualitative Research for the Human Sciences), a discussion list for researchers who use electronic mail. QUALRS-L is also available on Usenet for those preferring that route. The discussion list is directed to anyone concerned with the topic, qualitative research in studying humans. QUALRS-L is a network where people can discuss, ask questions, give answers, and make their work and ideas available to colleagues around the world. QUALRS-L also solicits abstracts of papers and research studies, job announcements, meeting announcements, and the like. QUALRS-L began operating September 6, 1991 (**See archives of the QUALRS-L logs from that time to the present**).
- To subscribe to QUALRS-L, send an e-mail message
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