Data Collection as a way to build a global perspective

Basically, the world encompasses interconnected local, national and global units so what is around us is also a world matter. It is not just a personal issue or a local issue, everything is a global issue that individuals might encounter sooner or later. Our mission is not only to live in the present but also to learn from the past, embrace the uncertainty and plan ahead with a global perspective.

As usual, I would like to start this blog with a story from the past. For two years in my old university, I never learned how to write essays academically, or how to conduct academic research. Lots of assignments given as “mini-essay” (Tieu luan) required me to write about macroeconomic theories and some whatever statistics. I did not know what to start, how to find out the data, how to analyze the statistics, how to present our findings in freaking 15 pages. Crucially, I didn’t even know how to work in a team, not even being a leader. It was me 4 years ago when I was 18, the age that many young people should be able to handle teamwork effectively and inspire their friends to achieve things together. Accordingly, I looked for information from different random sources all over the Internet, not Google Scholar even once. I copied them into the essay, having no clue about the essence of plagiarism or citation. It was all a disaster for the fact that only until the final year will university students (in Vietnam) get to learn research methodology to prepare for their senior thesis unless the students attend some competition regarding academic research earlier. I was a complete dump student. I didn’t know whether my presented data was correct or not, even when I knew the result, I don’t know the satisfaction level of our professor. I never stood out as a team leader, even a spokesperson because I felt too weak. Essentially, I had no idea of how the economic, accounting theories or the mini-essays relate to the reality and interests of my life.

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My blog today is about a learning method at my faculty, and being applied in all of my projects in terms of community building and social innovation. Actually, this is only part of the learning method in academic research and running projects, called Data collection, synthesis and analysis. In short, I put it as “play with data”. I would like to share how this process is effective for social science, critically thinking and learning and how it helps me understand people and the world in a practical way. To demonstrate that, I will share about 2 interesting projects I am doing this semester where data collection acts as the main approach. Hopefully, my real experience helps to elaborate the definition and application of data playing, and you can better understand what I learn and do at School of Global Studies, to gain a global perspective.

What is global studies?

We study world issues in different political, cultural and economic contexts to have a global perspective of what is happening and build a sense of empathy for human beings around the Earth. As I am a small individual in a large universe, I am, in many ways, connected to other human beings socially and emotionally, though not physically. We have to look at the issues through different lenses with an interdisciplinary mindset such as anthropology, philosophy, psychology, economics, businesses, management, politics and all. Indeed, I would rather know here and there a bit to have a general understanding of each sector, rather than boxing myself in a single path.

For example, a recent class on Globalization Flow taught me about the complexity of public health. Public health is made of multiple determinants, defined as protection and promotion besides curation. Beyond that, it’s global health that aims to improve the health of all countries, by all means, impacting all Sustainable Development Goals.

At its core, we have to embrace an interdisciplinary approach to tackle health issues. The normal thought of healthcare is about taking medicine, or the main responsibility of doctors is to do prescriptions to cure patients’ illnesses. Yet, public health is allocated in a larger context in a society where health is influenced by layers of factors from individuals to family, communities, schools and society. So doctors need to view healthcare from an anthropological perspective to understand the behaviors of their patients in order to support them to make better decisions in self-care, money spending, sleeping routine, etc. To teach students effectively, teachers must learn from a psychological point of view to know their students’ personalities and design teaching strategies. Teaching is not just delivering the content to learners without paying attention to whether or not students are able to absorb the knowledge and apply it to their life. A very interesting lesson I learned in my first year at SGS was about the importance of urban planning to social issues. I never thought that building cities has many-thing to do with human needs. All I knew was that it is an area of architecture that infrastructure is built. Technically, it sounds boring and artificial. Yet, on a deeper level, it is rooted in designing to serve the human’s needs by transforming the natural environment into the built environment. The construction has to be for the betterment of people’s daily lives for different purposes and create the least destruction to the ecology. And development projects usually lead to the conviction of long-tradition communities, resulting in the loss of cultural values, livelihood and conflicts among the people and the government. This urban planning happens in the place where I was born that I can easily relate to in the big picture.

How have my perspectives and actions changed from global studies?

Back then, I usually blamed the big thermal plant’s owner and the government because many of my friends’ parents had to give up their farmland which acted as the main source of income for their family. Unfortunately, even when I have a more holistic view of the problem, I can’t do anything but seeing the massive changes in my hometown. With such a large amount of expenditures, how to halt the project, regardless of the negative impact on the environment and people’s health? The government only showed up in person on the launching day several years ago to kickstart the project and they never come back to feel how the air has become bloodily polluted. This is a local and global issue that many other countries face at the same time caused by governmental mega projects. At least, I understand several alternative ways of communication and actions to advocate for the change steadily. Simply, I share this real story with people who care about it or analyze it in class as a global citizen with respect for the government and empathy for the community people. Lots of trade-offs have been made and both sides gained some positivity, I try to view the situation from a brighter point where economic values are created, and people found ways to adapt to modern lives and sought for better opportunities outside their conventional bubble. By that, the people themselves recognize some hidden strengths they might never know before to sustain themselves and enjoy the newness of the urban environment.

How data collection facilitates global studies?

Data is a set of information collected and processed from observation to eventually make sense of something. Data is a result of a production process by organizing, finding patterns and interpreting them. Primary data is raw. It is firsthand information unmediated by interpretation or considering other sources of information. Secondary data is from a secondary source that someone already did before for some specific purposes. We have to be cautious of the purpose and the agents behind the secondary data as there is a high chance of political manipulation over the provided research. A huge challenge of data collection is to fall into ecological fallacy. Ecological fallacy is a disadvantage of data collection because of the limited number of data that are perceived as the representative of a large population. While in fact, the small groups do not share the similar characteristics of a larger group. This blog will mainly focus on the process of collecting primary data since it is a captivating process for me to pick up real observations, opinions, emotions, unspoken interpretations and sensations that secondary data can’t give me.

The most common methods: Online survey and interview

There are many ways to gather data in global studies such as participant observation, interviewing, surveys to create data from the testimony of people who are living. It is to explore the social relations of people, their daily interaction, power, personal awareness, beliefs, ideas and experience regarding certain topics. Surveys are a shortcut of time, and data as well, while interviews are conversations facilitated by guiding questions of interviewers, then stories are told by interviewees from their own opinions.

“Interview has to be understood as a part of a process by which contemporary society is defined and individuals understand their position within it” (Ward, 2020).

In many cases, interviews empower ordinary people to express themselves on certain sensitive topics, for instance, power relations, that they don't usually speak for. So the role of interviewers is important to set the context in a way that others feel comfortable and reliable to provide authentic stories.

Case studies: Work-study Projects

Workstudy projects are not part of my academic courses, they are part of the scholarship responsibility. Students have the opportunity to earn additional income and work with professional faculties through different projects. It could be assisting the ongoing ones or creating new initiatives to serve the faculty. All of my workstudy projects for the past 2 years have been about Playing with data. I have been assisting my professors and the faculty to collect data related to International Aid, Knowledge Management and Community of Practice, Internship Experience of GSSE students.

My first data collection project had a very tedious and daunting method but it’s an inevitable part of research. My professor gave me a database of hundreds of NGOs in Nepal with their website. I need to get there to look for specific details such as phone numbers, email addresses, year-end financial reports and synthesize them into an Excel sheet and Google Drive folder. The next topic was much more interesting related to the education at our faculty. My supervisor is passionate about building a community for all members to exchange knowledge and transfer ones’ expertise to enhance the cohesion and productivity of all. We are expected to collect data about the learning experience of all students at our faculty and which teaching methods and conditions are most effective to support students’ learning at best, also we aimed to identify professors who correspond to students’ expectations to learn. I was working on this during the first lockdown in history and it saved me from the tension of the pandemic.

We spread the google survey to collect students’ opinions and analyze the responses in Spreadsheet. We also interviewed students to gather more insightful qualitative data. It was just so interesting to analyze all of the results from students related to their favorite teachers such as personality, teaching methods, activities, etc. My teammate and I were playing with data by grouping them into different categories, simple their words, and arranging the patterns based on the Learning Taxonomy Theory. The Theory advised by our supervisor helps us to understand what it means to be “learning”. Is it just about finding the subject interesting? Or is it about remembering the content? Indeed, learning ranges in 6 levels (remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create). The ultimate goal was to give recommendations for the faculty to identify potential and influential professors who are able to generate their knowledge and experience to others and take some initiatives to build the learning and teaching community.

A snapshot of our findings

The latest workstudy project is about collecting data related to the online learning experience of my faculty during the pandemic, supervised by the Education Sector of my faculty. The objective is to find out the advantages and disadvantages of online learning from both students and Ajarns, then necessary updates will be communicated to both sides in order to improve the virtual learning environment for the upcoming semester. The objective of this project is similar to the Knowledge Management one and an improvement is to survey both students and professors as well for more comprehensive insights. I first reframed all original expressions and group similar ideas together. Then I reorganized the data and analyzed it on Mural, a very creative platform for data visualization and online collaboration. After that, I transitioned smoothly to write up the report based on the post-it note map as below.

Case studies: Social Innovation Project

The most comprehensive project about data collection currently is a one-year social innovation project. The purpose of the project is to understand the system, how it is shaped by different actors, the role of which to think systematically. The key is not to change the society but to explore the issues from a hands-on approach by talking to real people and telling their stories and illustrate key insights of the community changes in the final report. Whether or not the report is helpful for social change depends on what data we can construct and how the world will be in the future. Our research topic is on how local grocery stores in Nang Loeng community have changed by the big retail chains which are popularly known as monopoly corporations. It took us 4 months to find out the research topic after uncountable times changing and finalizing the topic. The first semester was just to build up the research topic, research design and action plan for the second semester. In order to come up with a comprehensive research question, we have to make sure it is innovative, doable, arguable and relevant to the current situation. How to know that? Test it out! Our initial idea on universal design (UD) in cities and the disabled was already done, we had to give it up regardless of our interest. We tried to seek other aspects of universal design in urban space, UD in Education, we came to interview students in 2 universities around Nang Loeng area with unexpected vague data. Even though UD in education is a great focus in some developed countries according to many secondary data, it is not a great concern for the area we have to look at, so it’s not context-relevant. Finally, we arrived at the topic of the Thailand capitalist economic system in relation to local business which is worth investigating during this ongoing covid crisis.

Some insights from an economic perspective

Once the topic has a good stance, our data collection process becomes much smoother. We are expected to conduct at least 15 in-depth interviews which last from 30 minutes to 1 hour. Due to the online learning challenge, we managed to conduct 20 online and offline interviews with 5 groups of stakeholders. It is really interesting to ask different groups of stakeholders about the same topics as the answers come out very differently. We can see what political ideas they hold and what motivations they have to fight for community sustainability. At this moment, my team has finished the data collection phase, we are synthesizing the data which means we organize them in simple terms following the OQIQI structure - standing for Observation - Quotes - Insights - Questions - Ideas. This template allows us to put all responses into a system of coded content to both reflect on what we got and get ready for the analysis step on Mural and write up a final report.

Another level of data synthesis (OQIQI template)

Data presentation

At the last step, data are usually presented in verbal or written format. Verbally, we have to talk about our findings as progress presentations or final presentations with catchy and summary slides. Written, it is in the form of reports or paper. Nowadays, reports tend to become more visual and well-designed with friendly text font, color, and format. Reports with little infographics are not ideal to deliver messages for readers. Noteworthily, writing-up is a crucial part of data presentation. Writing up is the formation of knowledge, we develop our ideas as the flow goes. The ideas occurring are a product, not just of the data “out there”, it even reflects who we are (Gomez, Jones, 2010). A process to produce a report or a paper usually begins by creatively drafting an outline, clarifying objectives, then main findings or arguments, creating a conclusion and summary with reflection on methodology and recommendation for further research, and sew pieces together. Writing is a skill that takes practice to develop the craft out of a bunch of notes, literature review, thematic analysis, etc. I'd like to share with you a brief emphasis on the art of writing reports and the importance of it from my professor. In summary, a report can only capture a period of time, what is in there won’t be the same as time passes by. So all data we have collected have the power of drafting a picture of the current moments, especially in this vulnerable point in time. Thus appreciate this opportunity that we are able to talk to this group of people and write about their life with all of our awareness and respect for the given data. Therefore, the report should carry along authentic stories, on behalf of living people, and be proud of our work because it will be a report of weight and gravity.

Reflection

In general, there are some crucial tools for the process of collecting data, synthesizing and analyzing, in the area of social science that I find super helpful: Google Survey, Google Spreadsheet (Excel), Google document, Mural/ Miro. As you spend more time playing it, you will explore magical formula, function, visualization, effects from these normal tech tools. Along the way, we need to make attempts to have personal communication with participants to encourage them to share their personal thoughts. Imagine you spread a survey to your Facebook without any description of purposes, survey creator, what attracts people to spend their time on it, even if it only takes 3 minutes of their life? However, with all these characteristics, people might still avoid helping you for many reasons. The topic is not their cup of tea or not relevant, you don't reach out to the right people, or they simply don't take your favor as a priority. Pushing people in a friendly way is, often, a frustrating job. :) I just have to slowly get it done with calm.

I found an interesting blog saying that online surveying is good to collect opinions but not behavior. It means what is collected is just a snapshot of the perspectives. We don't know the actual behavior of the person as opposed to what is described in the survey. I agree with this point of view because the content in the survey is captured within a very short period of time as the format of the survey is for quantitative results and time-saving for both participants and researchers. Taking it into consideration is to understand certain limitations of different project scope. For such school projects that take place on a small scale with limited budget and time, conducting surveys is still a great outreach action to get close to the stakeholders. Thus the follow-up steps like synthesis and analysis become more simple than actual professional academic research. And it proves that interview and participation observation together with an anthropological approach, if possible, to immerse in the everyday life of the people, which complement the missing pieces of mere surveys.

A side reflection is related to my destiny to Education. Though I might not be majoring in a pedagogical field or teaching related undergraduate program, most of the projects or activities I do are related to the quality of education. It is because I had an unsatisfying learning experience with my previous university, I become cautiously attentive and appreciative to my current education. And I always look at my path to treasure the values I am living with, that education is really a light to enact human’s potentials. I will try to not only collect data from others, but also data of/from/about myself, my experiences, and cultivate real education-related skills such as teaching, leadership, management, communication, facilitation, punctuality and etc.

If you believe that the world is your oyster, you will actualize everything you want. All it takes is to keep calm, blend nature and nurture, and make the world your oyster. :)

If you have any interesting data collection projects under social studies feel free to share with me.

Reference:

Ward, K. (Ed.). (2020). Researching the city: a guide for students. Sage.

Gomez, B., & Jones III, J. P. (Eds.). (2010). Research methods in geography: A critical introduction (Vol. 6). John Wiley & Sons.