A guest post (by William Faulkner, João Martinho, and Heather Muntzer) put up on my friend Stephanie Evergreen’s blog sparked a big discussion in the comment section. I’ll paraphrase a little… Stats People – You don’t understand anything. Confidence intervals really stand for blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So this is […]
Are you THE Creative?
“Oh yeah, we have someone like you.” I remember when I first heard that. I thought to myself, “really, you have a cartooning sociologist techie and blogger who also happens to have a decade of experience in research and evaluation?” That’s not what they meant of course. What they really meant was that they had a creative. […]
Understand. Reach. Engage. A 3-part digital dissemination strategy
Far too many research and evaluation teams prioritize high quality dissemination like I prioritize learning a second language. It’s definitely on my list of things to do one day, but it’s so far down in priority that unless something changes it will likely never happen. So instead, we keep with the status quo. We write […]
Don’t be a qualitative bully.
Today’s cartoon comes from a set I created for Michael Quinn Patton.
The difference between the wink and the blink
Today’s cartoon inspired by David Fetterman, who left this in a comment on last Friday’s ethnography blog post. For those who don’t know David, he’s written a significant book on the subject. Wonderful posting and drawing of course. You might add the role of cultural interpretation to the mix. The difference between the wink and […]
Ethnography and Real Research
If you’ve taken enough sociology classes you likely had this assignment at some point, “go somewhere and watch.” And if it’s a grad class you might get asked to go back to the same place several times. Looking back today, these were some of my most memorable academic moments and something I’ve definitely carried with me over the […]
Science is not as tidy as it looks
I’ve recently rediscovered Robert K. Merton. As a student I knew a little about his social roles work but I knew very little about the person. That is until I happened upon On the Shoulders of Giant: A Shandean Postscript which is equal parts history and parody. It didn’t take long before I knew that this […]
The four words that can kill any visual project
I don’t like it. Data visualization experts love to talk about effectiveness, which chart type is better than which other chart type. And while I think the discussion can be helpful sometimes it also misses a big point. Most researchers and evaluators are not making bad visuals, they’re making no visuals (or very few visuals). […]
My top 7 most engaging posts
Many of you are new here so before anything else let me just say, thank you for following. Since you’ve likely not seen them, I thought it might be a good idea to let you know about some of my favorite posts. Being a cartoonist, I have quite a few posts where people show up for […]
22 bloggers with advice for researchers and evaluators, illustrated
**UPDATE** This post really struck a nerve. I want to thank everyone who has read it and shared with others. Now you can get a take home pdf version, just download it here. I really think that you should blog. That whatever is getting in your way, you should shove it aside and just write something. […]