qualitative – Heather E. Lanthorn

Oops, Got Long-Winded About ‘Median Impact Narratives’

*A revised version of this post is also available here. I finally got around to reading a post that had been flagged to me awhile ago, written by Bruce Wydick. While I don’t think the general idea of taking sampling and representatives seriously is a new one, the spin of a ‘median narrative’ may beContinue reading “Oops, Got Long-Winded About ‘Median Impact Narratives’”

planning for qualitative data collection and analysis

this blog reflects conversations and on-going work with both mike frick (@mwfrick), shagun sabarwal (@shagunsabarwal), and urmy shukla (@urmy_shukla) — they should receive no blame if this blog is wacky and plenty of credit if it is not. a recent post by monkey cage contributors on the washington post, then summarized by BITSS, asked/suggested whetherContinue reading “planning for qualitative data collection and analysis”

Anecdotes and simple observations are dangerous; words and narratives are not.

*this blog post was also cross-posted on people, spaces, deliberation, including as one of the top 10 posts of 2014. In a recent blog post on stories, and following some themes from an earlier talk by Tyler Cowen, David Evans ends by suggesting: “Vivid and touching tales move us more than statistics. So let’s listenContinue reading “Anecdotes and simple observations are dangerous; words and narratives are not.”

here’s an idea — if they are trying to tell you something, make it easy for them to do so.

there’s been a good deal of press around the unfortunately insignificant results of a major HIV prevention trial with products for women in south africa, uganda and zimbabwe. the results had little to do with efficacy of the products (a pill and a gel) but rather with the fact that most of the participating women did notContinue reading “here’s an idea — if they are trying to tell you something, make it easy for them to do so.”

i know – but couldn’t we have asked, too?

things i know & understand: this is cool research from @poverty_action it’s fun and important to show and know that ‘we’ (development types) have poor assumptions about what will work time and budgets are always constrained this comment is super-predictable coming from me. but… when i read this: our results showed that although the consultingContinue reading “i know – but couldn’t we have asked, too?”