TURNING TALK INTO DATA: METHODS FOR ELICITING VERBAL DATA IN QUALITATIVE AND MIXED METHODS GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION RESEARCH (Invited Presentation)

Methods for verbal data collection are fundamental to qualitative and mixed methods geoscience education research. In qualitative studies, participants express their lived experiences and perspectives as speech. In mixed methods research, verbal information can augment, explain, or explore quantitative findings. In cognitive science, verbal data are often used to investigate or document thinking processes. While individual interviews are arguably the most common method for eliciting verbal information from research participants, group-based interview methods can offer unique insights as participants collaboratively construct responses. Even an interview can be designed as structured, semi-structured, unstructured, retrospective, task-based, or ethnographic in order to elicit specific experiences or information.

This presentation will highlight the authors’ collective experience with a range of methods that elicit verbal data from individuals or groups in both qualitative and mixed method studies. For example, we used focus groups to generate peer conversation that reveals consensus and insights into topics such as how middle school teachers teach about climate change, what teamwork skills geoscience employers value, and how instructors discover and choose virtual field trips. Retrospective experience-based interviews were used to describe the lived experiences of geoscience students with disabilities, how geologists learn to map, and how herpetologists engage in communities of practice. In the cognitive tradition, think-aloud interviews have revealed spatial thinking strategies as experts and novices work to solve problems in weather forecasting and hydrogeology, and, in a novel adaption, problem-solving strategies during geologic mapping. Currently, we use interactive group problem-solving interviews to investigate how students use spatial thinking skills in working with cross sections and maps to characterize groundwater contamination.

In addition to sharing these examples, we consider strengths and limitations of various methods, with the goals of helping geoscience education researchers expand their “toolkit” of verbal data methods and making informed choices about which methods are best suited to their research goals and questions.