Conference Board of Canada Ignores Research

The Conference Board of Canada, which apparently holds itself out to be non-partisan, non-lobbying, and independent, has ignored some research it commissioned, research that contradicts the findings in its recent report. The report sides with recent corporate interests and stances in the U.S. by stating:

"The Conference Board report calls Canada 'the file-swapping capital of the world' and calls for strict new copyright legislation as well as new power for border guards to deal with counterfeit and pirated goods."

So far the Board has been accused of plagiarism, and has been asked to withdraw its report.

However, the Board admits:

"According to the Conference Board, the report was funded by the Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network, the Canadian Intellectual Property Council, the Copyright Collective of Canada and the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation as well as other lobby groups who are pushing for stronger Canadian copyright legislation."

This is a really interesting area of the law developing in Canada - it appears to be one of those cases where the "researcher" ignores evidence that is against the researcher's own position. It seems to be that step-by-step U.S. corporate interests will have their way in Canada.

http://www.canada.com/Business/Independent+study+fuels+debate+copyright+report/1632787/story.html

Human Origins: A NSF RFP

"Human Origins": A National Science Foundation Request for Proposals.

My interest in copyright law, in what it tries to accomplish, is linked to my broader interest in origins, and in discourses about origins, including human origins. Origins, as I've previously mentioned, is linked to the concept of "authorship." I've been following numerous publications that provide information on new RFPs -- funding opportunities. And so, I thought I'd collect this RFP on Human Origins from the NSF. The rest of this post is a direct quote from the RFP:

http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf09521

This competition is directed towards increasing our knowledge of the complex biological, physical, and behavioral interrelationships that led to the development of our species and that are responsible for both the shared and variable features that characterize living human populations. It recognizes that understanding of the processes and pathways of human evolution requires input from a wide range of disciplines which examine our species from multiple perspectives and across both time and space. Accomplishing this goal requires a large scale initiative which allows research activities that go beyond the smaller, shorter duration, single investigator awards that disciplinary programs have been able to provide in the past. The Human Origins: Moving In New Directions (HOMINID) competition will support large scale, long term, integrative research and infrastructure projects through awards of up to $500,000 per year for up to five years. Contingent on the availability of funds, the program expects to make two awards in each fiscal year. It is intended that HOMINID awards will provide for transformative approaches to long-standing questions about the history of our species. Infrastructure development is also eligible for support either as a stand alone project or as part of a research award. One goal of the competition is to develop a portfolio of awards that reflects the multiple approaches to the understanding of human origins. It is expected that the combination of awards will complement each other and prove to be mutually informative as they progress.

My Guest Blogging Appearance on Beyondwords

http://beyondwordsblog.com/2008/10/15/guest-blog-copyright-and-digital-writing/

Survey Random Sample Calculator

I found a cool online calculator that purports to calculate the number of population participants needed in order to get your desired confidence level. It might come in handy. (although I cannot guarantee its accuracy)

http://www.custominsight.com/articles/random-sample-calculator.asp

What percent of a population do I need to select in my random selection in order to have adequate representation of the population?

I was recently asked about selecting percentages of the population when selecting sample size. Below I provide the response to the question: What percent of a population do I need to select in my random selection in order to have adequate representation of the population?

On the percentage issue - Juswik et al. (Writing Into the 21st Century An Overview of Research on Writing, 1999 to 2004, Written Communcation, 2006) in their article discuss percentages for purposes of validating coding - a 10% sample (assumed then to represent the larger population).

"Inter-rater reliability on the exclusions was high at 97.5% based on a sample of 10% of the studies." Juzwik et al p. 460

"A sample of 10% of the studies was taken for an exact inter-rater reliability on the coding of the studies that were included in our database. This reliability check determined that the initial coder and the reviewer agreed on 97.5% of the articles that were included in the study, on 96.0% of the age codes, and on 91.0% of the problem codes." Juzwik et al p. 463

In "The ‘Doing boy/girl’ and global/local elements in 10–12 year olds’ drawings and written texts," Qualitative Research, 2007, by Pat O'Connor, University of Limerick, he used about 10% of the population of texts to study but did not say it in terms of percentages:

"In this article, the focus is on a randomly selected sub-set (n = 341) from the total sample of 3464 texts written by those aged 10–12 years." (p. 234)

Another useful article on the topic is:
Collins et al.
A Mixed Methods Investigation of Mixed Methods Sampling Designs in Social and Health Science Research
Journal of Mixed Methods, 2007

On page 273 is Table 2 which lists typical sample sizes and some rationale.

My further explanation included the following with respect to my dissertation:

That percentage (I used of 20%) in part reflects that I wanted to get over 400 participants in order to have certainty of + or - 5%. I was estimating how many teachers and students I'd get from each program - I had about 250 programs. So if I started with 20% and 10 people from each program responded, that would give me 500 respondents. However, as summarized below, I had to do about 60% of the population through the use of insurance samples.

That said, when I was working with texts at a research center, it was understood that you needed at least 10% to have a chance at having a representative sample. But, I've never found this rule in writing because it's more complex than that, ultimately. It depends on how much variability there is in the entire population. The more variability, the larger your sample size should be because then that variability will have a greater chance of being captured. As always, whatever you do you have to be able to contextualize your choices and findings in the data analysis.

The issue is how big do you need the sample to be in order to get a representative sample? -- A sample that represents the same characteristics as in the entire population. In my study, the only characteristics I had available to check this was program type - PhD, Masters, Four Year, Two Year, and Certificate.

I was able to show that the final group of respondents fairly closely reflected the larger population's characteristics. Except PhD programs over-responded. You just have to talk about that then in the data interpretation.

The larger the sample, the greater the chance you will have a representative sample. So if your entire population is 50% women and 50% men, and your sample ends up being the same, you know that at least in this one respect, it's representative.

I also had two additional "insurance" samples selected in case I got skewed responses on the first try, or in case I for some reason had a low level of response. Ultimately, I had to select three phases of 20% of the entire population because of lack of response with my initial attempt at 20%. I believe I was close to 60% and was concerned that I'd end up having to select the entire population rather than the randomly selected population. Depending on your situation, I recommend thinking about having one or two insurance samples ready to be selected in addition to the initial sample.

The percentage you choose might also be matched against the number you want in the end (confidence level) - based on that table in Lauer and Asher's book -- page 58.

From Earl Babbie: "The larger the sample selected, the more accurate it is as an estimate of the population from which it was drawn." p. 193 10th edition. This is a book I'd recommend for any student working on this kind of research because Babbie explains random selection and lots of other research methods in really easy to understand terms.

"The kind of sampling procedure used also affects sample size. As we gave mentioned, for the same level of precision, stratified samples usually require fewer people than the simple random sample, and cluster samples usually require more" (Survey Research, 2nd edition, Backstrom and Hursh Cesar).

In my study, I did a stratified sample taking 20% of each of the five categories. That was 20% of the whole as well. But I ended up having to do this 3 times in order to get close to my desired 400.

Later I went on to say:

I've never seen a publication actually give a minimum percentage of the population that needs to be selected in order to have a representative sample. I would say that you need between 10 and 20% of the entire population. But level of confidence goes by the *number* in the sample rather than the *percentage* of the entire population. However, percentage of the entire population does matter because the larger the percentage obviously the more representative. I mean, it can never be a simple solution like a percentage because it all depends on the context . . .

The area that might be informative is mass media or comm. arts. I'm attaching the sampling chapter from Riffe, Lacy, and Fico's book. It might be helpful in explaining all the nuisances of your question and why no one is willing to just say you are safe if you pick at least 10%. The language I underlined on page 105 might be relevant. They actually mention 20% as being a magic number in that if you have it (or more than 20%), your confidence level goes up even though your actual number of samples is not that high. Lauer & Asher talk about this as well in their book when they discuss the "correction factor" pp.58-59-60 . Riffe et als. book is cited as well in _What writing does and how it does it_ in case you need to tie any of this into our field.

In a study I worked on previously, Stewart Whittemore and I took 10% of the entire population of texts in order to get inter-rater reliability. I remember being in the same quandary there with respect to how many texts I needed to select in order to have a reliable coding scheme. I could find nothing firm in writing. Bill Hart-Davidson just said 10% minimum, if I remember correctly-- but those texts were very very homogeneous because they'd been written based on a prompt. In part it was ultimately an issue of labor, time, and money, like a lot of these decisions. I don't think I've ever seen anything written up with less 10%.

What does Latour say about research, reading, and writing?

Below is one of my favorite quotes from Bruno Latour, and a quote that sustained me during the dissertation process, and that helped me place the dissertation experience in perspective. I thought about this all the time when I was conducting research, talking with advisors, interacting with my family, and writing up my findings.

Begin quote:

What is an account? It is typically a _text_, a small ream of paper a few millimeters thick that is darkened by a laser beam. It may contain 10,000 words and be read by very few people, often only a dozen or a few hundred if we are really fortunate. A 50,000 word thesis might be read by half a dozen people (if you are lucky, even your PhD advisor would have read parts of it!) and when I say ‘read’, it does not mean ‘understood’, ‘put to use’, ‘acknowledged’, but rather ‘perused’, ‘glanced at’, ‘alluded to’, ‘quoted’, ‘shelved somewhere in a pile’. At best, we add an account to all those which are simultaneously launched in the domain we have been studying. Of course, this study is never complete. We start in the middle of things, _in medias res_, pressed by our colleagues, pushed by fellowships, starved for money, strangled by deadlines. And most of the things we have been studying, we have ignored or misunderstood. Action had already started; it will continue when we will no longer be around. What we are doing in the field – conducting interviews, passing out questionnaires, taking notes and pictures, shooting films, leafing through the documentation, clumsily loafing around – is unclear to the people with whom we have shared no more than a fleeting moment. What the clients (research centers, state agencies, company boards, NGOs) who have sent us there expect from us remains cloaked in mystery, so circuitous was the road that led to the choice of this investigator, this topic, this method, this site. Even when we are in the midst of things, with our eyes and ears on the lookout, we miss most of what has happened. We are told the day after that crucial events have taken place, just next door, just a minute before, just when we had left exhausted with our tape recorder mute because of some battery failure. Even if we work diligently, things don’t get better because, after a few months, we are sunk in a flood of data, reports, transcripts, tables, statistics, and articles. How does one make sense of this mess as it piles up on our desks and fills countless disks with data? Sadly, it often remains to be written and is usually delayed. It rots there as advisors, sponsors, and clients are shouting at you and lovers, spouses, and kids are angry at you while you rummage about in this dark sludge of data to bring light to the world. And when you begin to write in earnest, finally pleased with yourself, you have to sacrifice vast amounts of data that cannot fit in the small number of pages allotted to you. How frustrating this whole business of studying is.

And yet, is this not the way of all flesh? No matter how grandiose the perspective, no matter how scientific the outlook, no matter how tough the requirements, no matter how astute the advisor, the result of the inquiry – in 99% of the cases – will be a report prepared under immense duress on a topic requested by some colleagues for reasons that will remain for the most part unexplained. And that is excellent because _there is no better way_.

From Reassembling the Social, pages 122-123

Is There a Chilling of Digital Communication?: The Dissertation

I've finished a complete copy of my dissertation and submitted it to the committee.

http://sites.google.com/site/martinecourantrife/

An abstract for the 300+ page document appears below.

ABSTRACT

IS THERE A CHILLING OF DIGITAL COMMUNICATION? EXPLORING HOW KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING OF FAIR USE INFLUENCE WEB COMPOSING

The study explores copyright law’s mediational influence on digital composing using a sequential transformative mixed methods research design. The author conducted a digital survey and discourse-based interviews with digital writers regarding how they factored in copyright law and fair use in their composing decisions. The study is framed with activity theory, rhetoric theory, and also draws upon Foucault’s notion of the author-function. Three main areas of inquiry in the study include examining the status of knowledge and understanding of copyright law in the field of technical and professional writing (TPW) as well as in professional writers. A second research goal is to investigate the creative thinking processes, or rhetorical invention, of writers in these programs composing webtexts in light of copyright law. A third research goal is to examine what happens to mediational means as writers leverage them in digital contexts.

The study’s six major findings are that 1) web spaces are sites of cultural collision, or commonplaces, where students occupy sometimes conflicting positions such that the very notion of “studentness” is inverted. Web spaces as commonplace challenge existing concepts such as “author” and “originality”; 2) The intertextuality of web-space-writing provides support for Foucault’s theory that the single author is an ideological production representing the opposite of its historical function, i.e. the “author-function,” in the larger culture. “When a historically given function is represented in a figure that inverts it, one has an ideological production” (Foucault, 1984, p. 119). No support was found for a human culture existing without an “author-function,” whether it is a workplace culture or even a more community-knowledge-focused culture as exists in India. Yet, “the author” switches in and out of a subject position in relationship to human and non-human actors; 3) For this group of writers, digital speech was not chilled. Copyright law as a system of invention organized by rhetoric, produces knowledge; 4) Rhetorical topics congeal as a heuristic mediating the digital composing process of writers. This study provides a small and incomplete snapshot of this heuristic structure; 5) When we consider the hierarchical and embedded nature of rhetorical topics that mediate digital composing choices, for this group of writers, ethics trumped the law; 6) While the study supports the idea that laws have agency, as knowledge and understanding increase, that agency is increasingly diminished by the human actor. The agency of the law is connected to where the law ends up on the AT triangle.

The author ends the study by calling for more research in the area of copyright law’s agency in the composing process, suggesting that drawing upon Actor Network Theory and its notion of radical symmetry might prove helpful for future studies.

Study posted on a listserv that talks about doing national online research

Giguette, M.S., and Davis, K.C. (2005). Challenges for conducting a computing sciences national study. ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference.

ATTW Proposal, 2008: Ethos, pathos, logos, kairos: Rhetorical strategies in digital survey research

I examine the challenges and affordances of conducting programmatic research virtually, and the role of rhetoric in executing such studies. As part of a two-year study on rhetorical invention in copyright imbued environments, I examined knowledge and understanding of US copyright law among digital writers (both students and teachers) in US technical/professional writing programs. The study’s first phase included administering an online survey to a randomly selected population of such programs. I outline three different rhetorical strategies used when administering this survey to different but equivalent populations and the widely differing responses. Further, I discuss ironic glimmerings of resistance-to-digital-research in TPW– as the field simultaneously holds itself out to value knowledge production in the new economy. At issue are the methodological problems arising when a field fails to see itself as a “community.”

I end the presentation by offering a heuristic to facilitate successful online programmatic research. Finally, I imagine a digital architecture that breaks out of content silo effects of “membership lists” posted to various websites. Such architecture might engender online collaboration, distributed models of work-research, and cross-programmatic/cross-global communication such that the field of TPW could self-reflect, model the processes it upholds, and gain disciplinary strength through cohesion.

As part of a two-year study on rhetorical invention in copyright imbued environments, a survey was administered to randomly selected TPW programs examining knowledge and understanding of US copyright law among digital writers. The effectiveness of differing rhetorical strategies is discussed when conducting online survey research. A heuristic is offered to facilitate success in these types of studies.

The “shock and awe” of digital research design//anticipated proposal for IEEE

IEEE International Professional Communication Conference 2008 (IPCC 2008)
Conference Theme: Opening the Information Economy
Conference Location: Concordia University, Montréal, Canada
Conference Dates: July 13-16, 2008

Martine Courant Rife, JD, PhD Candidate
Rhetoric & Writing Program
Michigan State University
c/o 7805 N. Gregory Rd.
Fowlerville, Michigan 48836
517/4839906::martinerife@gmail.com
http://www.msu.edu/~courantm
September 30, 2007

PROPOSAL
The “shock and awe” of digital research design: An argument for building disciplinary cohesion and strength via the affordances of digital technologies
In this presentation I examine the challenges and affordances of conducting programmatic research virtually, and the role of rhetoric in executing such studies. Connors (1982), Dobrin (1983), Durack (1997), Lay (1991), and Rutter (1991) (among others), outlined debates within the field of TPW regarding how we define ourselves as a profession, what matters, and what we study, while writers such as Charney (2004, 1998), Haswell (2005), Johanek (2000), North (1987), and Phelps (1988) document debates on appropriate methodologies and resistance to the use of typical “social science” and/or “empirical” research design in TPW or composition studies. I will further complicate this “identity crisis” by showing the methodological problems arising when a field fails to see itself as a cohesive unit. Further, I discuss ironic glimmerings of resistance-to-digital-research in TPW – as the field simultaneously holds itself out to value knowledge production in the new economy.

As part of a two-year study on rhetorical invention in copyright imbued environments, I examined knowledge and understanding of US copyright law among digital writers (both students and teachers) in US technical/professional writing programs. The purpose of the study is to obtain an overview of this population’s understanding of fair use/copyright, and to explore how that understanding influences digital composing processes. The study’s first phase includes administering an online survey to a randomly selected population of such programs. This aspect of the study posed the researcher as “consumer,” and the participating programs as “contributors,” relying on a distributed work model where program directors across the US were asked to “reach” into the classrooms for student-survey participants. Yet, the roles of consumer/contributor became intertwined and blurred since knowledge generated from the study hopes to make important contributions to the field.


After outlining rhetorical considerations such as ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos as well as specific methods used to execute this digital research, I document the varied responses from program directors asked via email for programmatic participation in the study. Reaction from the population varied, and in some respects challenges existing notions that US professional/technical writing is a cohesive academic field. Upon receiving inquires from prospective participants, I illustrate how rhetorical considerations factored into my own subsequent digital responses – each response tailored to the rhetorical nature of potential participants’ inquiries.

I end the presentation first by offering a heuristic to facilitate successful online programmatic research within our current environment, and then by imagining an architecture, leveraging the affordances of digital technology, one that breaks out of content silo effects of “membership lists” posted to various websites, an architecture that might engender online collaboration, distributed models of work-research, and cross-programmatic/cross-global communication such that the field of TPW could self-reflect, model the processes it upholds, and gain disciplinary strength through cohesion.

References
Charney, D. (2004) Empiricism is not a four-letter word. In Johndan Johnson-Eilola & Stuart A. Selber (Eds.). Central Works in Technical Communication (pp. 281-299). New York: Oxford UP.

Charney, D. (1998). From logocentrism to ethnocentrism: Historicizing critiques of writing research. Technical Communication Quarterly. Retrieved on April 12, 2007, from http://www.attw.org/TCQarticles/7.1/7-1Charney.pdf.

Connors, R.J. (1982). The rise of technical writing instruction in America. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 12(4), 329-52.

Dobrin, D.N. (1983). What’s technical about technical writing? In Paul V. Anderson, R. John Brockmann, and Carolyn R. Miller (Eds). New essays in technical and scientific communication: Research, theory, practice. (pp. 227-250). Farmingdale, NY: Baywood.

Durack, K.T. (1997). Gender, technology, and the history of technical communication. Technical Communication Quarterly, 6, 249-60.

Haswell, R. (2005). NCTE/CCCC’s Recent War on Scholarship. Written Communication, 22(2), 198-223

Johanek, C. (2000). Composing research a contextualist paradigm for rhetoric and composition. Logan, Utah: Utah State UP.

Lay, M.M. (1991). Feminist theory and the redefinition of technical communication. Journal of Business and Technical communication, 5(4), 348-70.

North, S. (1987). The making of knowledge in composition: portrait of an emerging field. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

Phelps, L.W. (1988). Composition as a human science: Contributions to the self-understanding of a discipline. New York: Oxford UP.

Rutter, R. (1991). History, rhetoric, and humanism: Toward a more comprehensive definition of technical communication, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 21(2), 133-53.

Outcome of update memo

We decided that I would start contacting students and faculty in TPW/writing majors directly, rather than going through program directors. Upon reflection, I think program directors might not be completely in touch with the issues.

I am going after population 3 as well.

I am backtracking on programs contacted, but avoiding the three programs that told me no outright.

I need to add pop 3 to the list of choices in the question that asks "please select your program."

Then I can go for it.

Memo to Bill HD Re: Update on survey and request for advice

MEMO

To: Bill Hart-Davidson, Chair

From: Martine Courant Rife, Student

Date: October 1, 2007

Re: Update on survey and request for advice

Overview

The purpose of this memo is to update you and seek advice regarding next steps for the survey. The survey was supposed to be finished between 9/17 and 10/7. That won’t be enough time at this point. The interviews were supposed to take place in November. I still hope that I can do those the same semester I am collecting survey data.

TABLE 1: SURVEY METHOD AND RESPONSE
Total Census = 200	POP 1, N= 52		POP 2, N= 50
	date	# survey responses	date	# survey responses
First Recruitment Email (pop1, long version; pop2, short version)	Monday, 9/17 pm	6	Monday, 9/24 pm	9 (no students)
Follow-up Email with survey link to Named Contacts		unknown	N/A – survey link sent with first recruitment email.
*First Reminder Email to those not heard from at all.	Thursday, 9/27	+4=10 (one student-no contact info)	10/8
First Reminder Email to named contacts	10/8		10/15
Second Reminder Email to those not heard from at all.	10/8		10/15
Second Reminder Email to named contacts warning of survey close date	10/15		10/22
TOTAL RESPONSES		10		9	19

*For each reminder, the population has been funneled. For example, from some program directors, I received contact names after the first recruitment email. Those individuals already received a follow-up email for population one. A few individuals stated they did not want to participate. Their names were removed from the list. So the first reminder email went to those I had not heard from at all. I’ve heard from some of them. Therefore, the second reminder email will go to those left who I have not heard from at all.

Also, on the N’s, this is estimated for the responses because I’m going by how many people contacted, how many people take the survey. I’m not looking at how many programs responded – because while people can select their program on the survey, they don’t have to. The idea for the population is that program directors represent programs, but not for purposes of the N’s.

Discussion

At this point I have no students to interview, because only one student responded, and didn’t leave contact information. That’s a serious problem, because my study is dependent on having students to interview.

End date for the first two population surveys is planned for October 30, 2007. This date is relevant in order to plan reminders. I chose not to tell participants this unless they ask because if they know the survey is going to be open for a period of time, they are less likely to take it soon, and may totally forget to do so.

One of my main goals is to sort writer-participants for purposes of selecting interviewees, and then analyzing how one’s overt knowledge and confidence maps onto one’s rhetorical inventive strategies when composing – as those strategies depend on tacit knowledge.

Another of my goals was to take a snapshot of the current status of knowledge and certainty of fair use/copyright within the TPW community for purposes of curriculum planning. I wanted to know how important this community thought fair use/copyright was. I wanted to know if their speech was chilled. (It appears to be nonexistent rather than chilled). However, if this is not possible then this goal will have to remain unattainable. I can of course theorize about what causes a failed attempt to gather this data. When reviewing the members of the population (TPW programs), I visited almost every programs’ webpage. I learned much by doing this. Some TPW programs and/or writing majors have no digital writing component in their curriculum. Perhaps my research question should have been: Do you teach digital writing in your program? Do you want to teach digital writing? Do you think there’s any value to teaching digital writing? But that is a different research project. I can easily make the argument that the teaching of digital writing in TPW and in writing major programs, is inevitable. At some point, fair use/copyright will have to be acknowledged and addressed in curriculum. Perhaps the field is just not there yet. There are also issues with my “social science” methods, and documented debates within the field about the use of more traditional social science research methods. Objections to such methods are legitimate – have legitimate backing. But that shouldn’t mean such methods are shunned.

I learned about doing surveys in a quantitative research class at Michigan State University, taught by an individual in Communications –a very quantitatively focused discipline at MSU. We read example survey studies of professional populations. In one study I read (done in 2000), a paper survey was sent to 506 environmental journalists, with a response rate of 50.3% (Babbie says you need 50% to publish, but this is not true in language and learning disciplines – lower response rates are published). I expected that if journalists would respond at this rate, surely program directors of TPW – a discipline as focused on writing as journalism, would respond at an even high rate. But the critical difference is that in journalism research, the survey method is tried and true, and accepted within the field. Such research is written up and depended on by journalists. This kind of research generates funding, and financial support for initiatives like the Knight Foundation. I’d guess that environmental journalists know this – they know that their existence depends on research.

In contrast, TPW is just beginning to seek grant funding – humanities-English department situated programs are less likely to do so. So, there is no inherent benefit to supporting programmatic research. (With all the scholarly discussion on professionalizing and legitimizing the field, there certainly is benefit, but no one’s attending to this). In the environmental reporting study, it was determined that working conditions and funding for environmental reporting lacked. Showing something like that makes an argument for philanthropists and others that money is needed to support this kind of activity. These kinds of dots are not connected in TPW. The funding tail is not yet wagging the disciplinary dog such that individuals in the field see how programmatic research will benefit them. Improving curriculum is apparently not a good motivator. (If we showed that there was massive ignorance, but a lot of interest regarding copyright/fair use, that would provide an argument for MacArthur and other funding agencies, even organizations of copyright holders, to fund educational interfaces, more research, etc.).

I found out I don’t really like doing this type of national survey because I feel too disconnected from the participants. I feel guilty because I am imposing. Yet, if someone sent me this survey in this context I would complete it immediately. I would have my students do it. But that’s because I’m also trying to teach them about research and help them understand their position in the academy. I also think it’s important to support other’s research. I always complete surveys when people send them around because I like to read them and see how they are constructed. But as far as the downside of administering this survey, I don’t feel connected to the participants. I want see their faces and talk to them, because I don’t really trust the survey data completely. I don’t like the way humans are removed from the scene. I’d feel the same way about an experiment because in an experiment, usually the humans are not really present in the data. You don’t talk to them. You just do things to them and see what happens. It was a lot better when I did the survey at MSU and I knew the people and the program. That seemed more “real.” I’m really worried about the time going by because if I have to revise the IRB approval that will take me into the next semester, probably. I know that delays happen in research.

Possibilities for Continuing the Study

The options as I see them are as follows (these are prioritized on the basis of my preference):

1. I pulled a third population of N=47 using the exact same methods as for the first two populations I created. I very carefully have documented this. MSU *did* come up in this third population. If I send the survey to this third population I will have contacted 75% of the population. (If you want to see the list of the first two populations, I’ve attached those lists). With the first two populations, I’ve contacted already 50% of the population. One alternative is to send the survey to this third population. Danielle DeVoss is the contact for MSU. Advise if there’s anything special I should do – otherwise I send her the same email as everyone else. I’d send Danielle an email ahead of time telling her I’m doing it, or asking maybe, unless you can/should do it. That proved effective. Time is an issue but there’s not much I can do about that. If I have to collect data in the spring, I will start writing some of the chapters now. This survey is really time consuming. If I was doing interviews I’d be done. With this option, IRB doesn’t need to be revised because it’s still a random selection, permitting anonymity in the survey, following the protocol as approved. I could also revise the IRB approval to allow classroom visits like I did in the pilot. The fact I am not recruiting in person with respect to the students, or not contacting people directly by email, is problematic. I seriously don’t know how I will ever get anyone to agree to be interviewed if I don’t ask them upfront, or have someone else advocating for me. [That woman I met at XXX’s party – from the XXXX – she did a survey to all students at XXX, got release of their names, and bought one Ipod that was given away as in a contest to participants. She got a really high N and attributes this “prize” to that. I took her survey last spring. However, I did not tell her it wasn’t because of the Ipod;, it was because I, and every other student I know, is very dissatisfied with the XXXX. {edited some stuff out here} You see, if copyright law is not problematic, people have no reason to care about it].
2. Revise the IRB approval and focus on the MSU program—don’t contact the other parties in the third population. The MSU location solves a lot of problems because it gives me proximity to my interviewees. I will discuss the initial survey attempt in my dissertation of course. I still can accomplish all my other research goals – but I will not be able to make statements about TPW in general. This would change my study design more than #1.
3. Revise the IRB approval and focus on MSU-LCC – this provides contrast. I’d need to do classroom recruiting. This would not be TPW because I’d have to go to digital arts at LCC. Our writing students don’t do digital writing on the WWW other than facebook or what they do on their own. This would push my data collection in the spring.
4. Contact the entire population regarding the survey – all 200 programs. This wouldn’t solve much because I’d still get an overall low response, I’m sure. It doesn’t necessarily allow me to generalize more because participants are self-selecting anyway, and a larger N doesn’t make that fact any less so if I do the entire population and still get only 10%. This option also lengthens the discomfort of administering this survey remotely.
5. Revise the IRB approval and get permission to send out to list serves like ATTW, WPA, TechRhet, CCCC-IP, ATTW, MSU RW, PW, MA list serves and the copyright lawyer list serve I’m on. My main concern here is that it makes me look like a “loose” researcher. I don’t want that. My other concern is that I then have no control over my population. It is no longer the TPW community. I could create a filter question, but still, my “frame” is very fuzzy. I personally would have a hard time generalizing findings especially because when I actually attempted to administer the survey to the community that I’m studying, it didn’t work out too well.
6. I could do both #4 and #5, but then it turns into a free for all.
7. I don’t know what 7 is. Any ideas? I just want some data. I still like my study design and I wished it would work. But the fact that it was rather unusual to do a survey in rhetoric & composition should have been a warning to me that I’d experience resistance on multiple levels, even to the extent that I am prevented from collecting data. I am also aware that I personally lack audience awareness. People may not know what I’m talking about. I helped a colleague log onto a digital interface today. I had to sit with her. I mean, help her create a user name and password – logging on. She needed help logging on. She’s been teaching composition longer than I.
8. The main thing is I need a few people to take the survey so I can interview them. So the question is how to accomplish that most efficiently without undue burden to the participants. You have to think back to Haller’s article – her study (Rhetorical Invention in Design). She went to one class and used teacher recommendations to locate her study participants. The teachers and TAs told her that this one group in the computing documentation class was the most advanced – so that was the group she studied. The survey I have is trying to accomplish this same thing – it’s trying to tell me who to study. So if you think about it like that, I could just use the survey with a small population, a class or two, etc.

Personal Knowledge

I am reading Michael Polanyi's _Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy_ (1958). I am also administering an online survey to randomly selected technical/professional writing programs in the US. So far, response rates are not that great. So I say,

. . . what does the survey really matter anyway - all that matters is Personal Knowledge -- there are statements about probable events, and statements that might be probable {as in truth} (but these aren't the same thing) but, why would I place higher value on knowledge created via a theory on the relationship between two *statements* about probable events, versus knowledge I experience first-hand, and my own assertions of what's probable (based on a logical relationship; empirically validated sensory experience between what I know and what I see).

Polanyi defines a theory as "something other than myself" (p. 4). He draws a connection between maps and theories. "A theory may be regarded as a kind of map extended over space and time" (p. 4). The question he poses, is, should we consider as more objective the form of knowledge that relies "to a greater measure on theory rather than on more immediate sensory experience" (p. 4). He goes on to point out the strengths of theory.

1) A theory is "objective knowledge" as far as it is not I. However it can be proved wrong when I use it.

2) A theory cannot be led astray by my personal illusions.

3) Theories can be constructed without regard to "one's normal approach to experience" (p. 6). However, for this to make theories more "objective" than personal experience means that we have to value the fact that theory may disregard our "terrestrial location," equally applying to inhabitants of all the earth: "provided they share our intellectual values" (p. 6).

Regarding the issue of Personal Knowledge and Vygotsky, although Vygotsky is not cited in the index, Polanyi speaks favorably of gestalt psychology, but Vygotsky does not. However, if as Vygotsky says, we internalize tools that help us know, it would seem to me if you bought that, you'd have to buy the existence and utter superior importance of Personal Knowledge because Personal Knowledge simply reflects an individual's internalization of the tools and ways of knowing in her culture.