TEAMWORK WINS IN BARCELONA

       

(picture by No Pip No!)

Reports of the death of qualitative research have been greatly exaggerated.

I returned from the 4th annual AQR/QRCA conference in Barcelona with the feeling that there is life both within and beyond the focus group. What started as an idea over crab cakes lunch in Grand Central Station nine years ago has become a regular collaboration between AQR and QRCA - qualitative research trade associations based in UK and US respectively.

That restaurant has now gone, Pat Sabena tells me. I hope the conference continues to thrive – it really has something to offer. It was quite possibly the best thing to happen in Barcelona since April 23, at the nearby Nou Camp.

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My personal highlights were: Rosie Campbell's Best in Show paper, ‘Are We Confusing New Qual Data Sources with Analysis?’ exploring language and analysis, the hidden art of qualitative interpretation; Andy Barker raising a lot of ethical issues in ‘Pimp my Qual’; Sarah Davies encouraging us to make more connections between the real world and the virtual world, because that’s what people themselves are doing; Siamack Salari (below) doing the laundry, ethnographically, people watched videos of themselves and gave a commentary on the role of washing in their lives.

Not to mention the presentations on why anyone listens to the Archers (Russell Chant and Chloe Fowler) and why anyone does groups in Second Life, (Jack Tatar) both very good.

THE conference talking point was the talk by Dana Barsch and Kendall Gay about ‘Proxy Ethnography’, using an actor to act as a patient in order to uncover how doctors made prescription decisions.

The conference was co-chaired by Mark Lovell and Philly Desai (the best double act since Walter Matthau and Jack Lemon) and included some impressive ad libbing while the votes were being counted.

Andre, the sound man for the conference, also proved a revelation and a singing sensation on the Thursday evening. The same evening that the Brits took to the dancefloor as the Americans looked on – a role reversal if ever there was one!

Sure, there were things to work on for next time. We attempted too many papers with not enough discussion and debate. This is a perennial conference 'issue', but maybe it is time to innovate on format. There were not many clients (3) or younger audience members, I think. There were a few technical glitches, especially Day One.

But the AQR/QRCA international conference is a great platform for qualitative research and has established a good pedigree for high quality papers and a good social scene. I hope that there will be a 'reprise' of some of the papers in the UK. We make a good team, AQR and QRCA. There have been disagreements, occasionally we have been out of step, but I hope that we can build on the joint conference's success to date. There was talk of inviting the other substantial body of quallies, in Australia, to join in the next one.

‘Triango’, anyone?