The Evolution of Ethnographic Research Methods: Curiosities and Contradictions in the Qualitative Research Literature

This article evaluates six recent contributions to the literature on ethnographic research methods. Four concern collecting and analyzing texts, one introduces the use of textual and numerical data, and one illustrates the use of quantitative methods for qualitative data. The first four books reveal that current thinking in qualitative methods continues to privilege inexplicit criteria for data collection and analysis despite recognizing that explicit criteria work best. The last two books show how to effectively integrate qualitative and quantitative data in ways that resolve these contradictions.     

How to Handle a Liberated Woman

Abstract

In this article, the author presents a strategy for designing relational databases with the program FileMaker Pro (FileMaker) to study the histories of individuals and organizations. The approach facilitates efficiency in inputting data and flexibility for constructing statistical analyses from the raw data. The key feature of the strategy is to define the basic unit of observation in the database in terms of an agent, an event, and a date. Given that programs such as FileMaker can easily sort data by agent and date, once one structures the data correctly, he or she can construct well-ordered event histories for agents, even if the researcher enters the data in an unordered fashion. By using events that happened to an agent at a particular time as the basic unit of observation, one maintains maximum flexibility to do statistical analysis that aggregates basic data in different ways. This article illustrates the power of the approach by outlining ways to analyze changes in geographic distances between two events marking the life histories of chemists.     

Airborne LiDAR application to karstic areas: the example of Trieste province (north-eastern Italy) from prehistoric sites to Roman forts

The Trieste Karst, at the northernmost shore of the Adriatic Sea, is rich in prehistoric caves and protohistoric hill forts. Most of these archaeological sites were already identified in the second half of the 19th century when large parts of the area were almost without vegetation coverage for the effect of sheep breeding and exploitation of wood resources. Only a few open-air archaeological sites have been discovered in recent years due to the lack of systematic archaeological surveys and reforestation.     

Population Distribution and Spatial Structure in Transitional Chinese Cities: A Study of Nanjing

Two geographers use population surface model techniques to analyze the distribution of population in Chinese cities. Focusing on Nanjing, they utilize detailed urban land use and building distribution data to develop a productive alternative method to reveal spatial variations in the distribution of inhabitants. The findings indicate that despite suburbanization, Nanjing remains a compact city with a population density that declines rapidly as distance from its central business district increases. Also, suburbanization has been limited to an inner area where population is densely distributed while commercial and office development is less prominent. Lastly, commercial activities influence the distribution of urban inhabitants and suburbanization more significantly than industrial development in suburbia. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O15, O18, R12, R14. 9 figures, 3 tables, 37 references.     

Content,Community, and Collaboration at ESRI Virtual Campus: A GIS Company's Perspective on Creating an Online Learning Resource

GIS requires training to use it to its potential. In 1996, ESRI began exploring ways to expand its successful educational programmes to a worldwide audience via the Web. The ESRI Virtual Campus (VC) opened in July 1997. The paper discusses a few of the many lessons learned during the operation of VC, related to content, community and collaboration, and considers future prospects. The VC continues to evolve in the areas of component-based design, database publishing, community and collaborations. As new technologies become available and bandwidth increases, features that could not be imagined at its conception can now be developed.     

Teaching Geographic Information Systems in a Problem-Based Learning Environment

How, where and why GIS is taught has been debated heavily in the geography literature. This article is a contribution to that debate, because it offers a new perspective from which to teach GIS: problem-based learning. In a problem-based learning classroom, theoretical foundations and the real world of problems are understood as constitutive of one another, rather than theory being prioritised over the real world of experience. In this paper, the author describes an introductory-level GIS class in which GIS was taught with a problem-based learning pedagogy. The problem around which the class focused was a proposal to add a new school district in the San Antonio, Texas metropolitan region. This article describes the class, including the nature of the problem and the way GIS skills were sequentially taught and integrated into the analysis of that problem.     

基于遥感数据的中亚五国城市时空扩展变化研究

借助遥感与GIS技术,以1990年LandsatTM和2000年Landsat ETM+遥感影像为数据来源,提取中亚5国首都城市建设用地信息。计算1990年和2000年中亚5国首都城市的城市扩展强度、城市年扩展速率及城市形状紧凑度,对中亚地区五国城市扩展的时空变化进行定量分析。结果表明:1990年和2000年,中亚5国首都城市扩展强度指数和城市扩展速度差距较大,其中阿什哈巴德的扩展强度指数和城市扩展速度最大,分别为0.93、4.6,而最小的是杜尚别,分别只有0.001、2.6,二者相差悬殊。而紧凑度变化幅度不大,2000年,杜尚别、塔什干的紧凑度较大,分别为0.6、0.46,其城市结构更为紧凑,用地集约程度增大,而阿斯塔纳、比什凯克和阿什哈巴德城市结构相对较为松散。同时,中亚五国首都城市空间向外扩张、向内填充的强度、方向各不相同,从而呈现出各自的扩展特点。     

An Exploration of Peer-to-Peer Teaching and Learning at Postgraduate Level: The Experience of Two Student-Led NVivo Workshops

This paper explores peer-to-peer teaching and learning at a postgraduate level using the example of two NVivo workshops run by geography postgraduate students. The workshops took place in March and May 2011 and feedback was collected from all attendees in both sessions. This paper aims to provide a practical guide to organizing and facilitating such an informal workshop on the NVivo software for postgraduate students based on the outcomes of the two workshops. Hints and tips for others considering running similar events are provided based on the feedback received following the sessions and reflections on the organizers experiences.     

Development of critical spatial thinking through GIS learning

This study developed an interview-based critical spatial thinking oral test and used the test to investigate the effects of Geographic Information System (GIS) learning on three components of critical spatial thinking: evaluating data reliability, exercising spatial reasoning, and assessing problem-solving validity. Thirty-two students at a large state university completed pre- and post-tests administered during the 2010 fall semester. This study found positive relationships between GIS learning and critical spatial thinking. We argue that the improvement can be attributed to students' experiences in a GIS course.