http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/health/research/24aids.html?_r=1&hpw

Some images from the dance Still/Here - mentioned in the book.

http://www.billtjones.org/repertory/past/stillhere/images_4.php

Still/Here explores and contemplates survival, life, and art through dance and music. Still/Here is a two-act, evening-length dance-theater piece (premiered 1994) with a visual score made from edited interviews with people who were or are facing life-threatening illnesses.

The following references belong to articles and books I am interested in reading. They are related to HIV/AIDS in Latinos.

Albarracin, J., & Plambeck, C. (2010). Demographic factors and sexist beliefs as predictors of condom use

among Latinos in the USA. AIDS Care, 22(8), 1021-1028.

Branch, M., Harvey, S., Zukoski, A., & Warren, J. (2010). Prevention of Unintended

Pregnancy and HIV/STIs Among Latinos in Rural Communities: Perspectives of Health

Care Providers. Health Care for Women International, 31(8), 718-736.

Chase, S. (2011). Surviving HIV/AIDS in the Inner City: How Resourceful Latinas Beat the Odds. New

Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

Diaz, R. (1998). Latino Gay Men and HIV: Culture, Sexuality, and Risk Behavior. New York: Routledge.

Kinnevy, S., & Sununu, T. (2010). Community-Based Program for Latino Substance

Abusers at Risk for HIV. Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work, 7(1/2), 69-87.

Rivera, G. (1990). HIV/AIDS: Images of Hispanic Youth. USA: The American National Red Cross.

Schifter, J., & Madrigal, J. (2000). The Sexual Construction of Latino Youth: Implications for

the Spread of HIV/Aids. New York: Haworth Hispanic/Latino Press.

van Servellen, G., , & Lombardi, E. (2005). Supportive Relationships and Medication Adherence in HIV-Infected, Low-Income Latinos. Western Journal of Nursing Research, 27(8), 1023-1039.

Lots of stuff

1) The book was powerful. As a gay male, I think it is important to relate the tension and perhaps uncomfortable moments the book caused me. I wonder of there is an appropriate way to make a connection in our presentation for this issue. The whole 'validity' is real, hits-home, applicable, etc.

ISSUES FROM CLASS - Relating to text

From my notes here are some topics:

Naturalistic environment- studying the subject (?)

Participatory action research- working on the effort together

Queer theory (?)

Who is the research for? For whom? Researching on whom? Research about whom?

Research as Praxis- everyone gets smarter

Ethics- Do no harm to the subject

Methodology- What was the research design? Did they pilot questions? (I can't remember)

Progressive focusing - I see this relating to questions they asked

Reciprocity

Was the data minimally or maximally mediated?

I have several other points in the notes that are 'maybes':

Troubling the binaries

False consciousness

Phenomenology

the use of bias in research work

truth of voice

Do we want to simply define these terms and explain the text relation to the class?

Dave

Validity

Following the Validity 101 Handout by Lincoln & Guba, here is how I see it relating to our book:

Credibility

• Activities in the field that increase the probability of high credibility
• Prolonged engagement: taped interviews for about 2 years, kept participants involved until 1996 (4 years of engagement)
• Persistent engagement: attended retreat in addition to support group meetings, phone and email communications, also attended many personal events- "holiday and birthday parties, camping trips, retreats, hospital rooms, funerals, baby showers, and picnics" p xix
• Traingulation:2 researchers; methods: group & individual (phone/email) interviews, research journal, context research (factoid boxes); sources: 4 support groups

• Peer debriefing: between the 2 researchers, I can't think of anyone outside of the 2 researchers that they explicitly noted consulting with
• Negative case analysis: I think that in the women's stories there is plenty of disconfirming evidence; a variety of women's stories are included so that the message is this can happen to anyone and HIV+ women are different.
• Data corpus/referential adequacy: I looked for an explicit description of the data corpus and couldn't find one. :( We do get the impression that a considerable amount of data went into this book, but I wanted to know exactly how much!
• Member checks: There were both in process (1994) and terminal (1996) member checks. Some of the women's "checks" or "reflections" were printed in the book. The Epilogue deals with the final member check and the researchers reaction to it.

Transferability

• Thick description: I think that lots of information about the women and their context was included. At times, when I would read the interviews (top) first, I would have questions about the context. Then, I read the bottom and the researchers had usually provided more of the women's histories that illuminated their interviews.

Dependability

• Dependability audit: We have no information on this.

Confirmability

• Confirmability audit: Patti didn't even seem to know what this was. Ha. Also, we don't seem to have any information on this in the book.

All of the above

• Reflexive journal: I felt that the reflexive journaling by the two researchers was a strong point of this book, although I did not love the split page format.

I bolded the forms of validity that were real strengths to this book.
Please add comments to add to these points or to disagree with them!

Further Readings

Let's build off this post to list further books and articles we'd like to read as a result of this book.

Myself, I'm interested in HIV+ women choosing to become pregnant. There's a lot of moral arguments wrapped up in this issue but there's also a lot of science to support their rights, as well. There is a recent document created by a conference in March 2010 at Harvard that sums up the research and lists the current gaps in the field. I would like to read this...

Other good suggestions would probably be further books on methodology and issues of representation or social justice for PLWHA's.

A final word...

I know this book is screaming critical theory, deconstructive, and interpretivist paradigms...

However... I continue to have some difficulty painting a CLEAR picture in my head of the relationship to angels. I know I mentioned this in my first post and I don't like that I continue to feel this way. I sometimes understand the relationship more than others... I see it and then it disappears... It starts making sense and then I forget what I was thinking and how I made sense of it... Anyone else feel like this? Is it just me? :(

It's late...

So I've been reading all evening and I got to chapter 18 (page 193)...

The recurring themes found throughout the book are excellent examples of validity... Some of the the ones that have caught my attention are:

- protecting loved ones from the pain the HIV+ women are experiencing
- going through a full circle of emotions
- issues with intimacy
- bravery, being "ready for death"
- faith and religion
- positive effects of the support group experience - relying on each other
- dislike of uncertainty - when will I die? when will I get really sick?
- discrimination, or change in relationships with friends and family; also employer


I was very moved by the last paragraph on page 164: Linda describes all the positives that came from having the disease - going to see a ballet for the first time, learning to meditate, listening to new music, etc. The resiliency these women show! Also the hopefulness and the ability to look at the positive among so much negative. I admire them tremendously!

Presentation Guidelines

• Generate a short bibliography of 2-4 key annotated readings that the exemplar makes you want to follow up on.
• What do you want to read as a result of this book? Explain what that reading is about and how it relates to the exemplar.
• Probably should be scholarly articles or books.
• Discuss how the exemplar illuminates and/or fleshes out issues raised in class.
• Discuss the exemplar in terms of the paradigms and methodologies we learned in class, i.e. deconstructive paradigm (or others), observation/interviewing/focus groups (how would we describe the methodology), issues of voice/transcription/interpretive responsibility and validity, issues of power
• Discuss one measure of validity used in the exemplar.
• We will be discussing validity, or trustworthiness, in qualitative research in class next week! We will need to describe one way that the book ensured its trustworthiness. (Two ways we've already discussed in class are member checks and reflexive notes/field journal. We should probably communicate with the other group to make sure we're doing different ones!)

Article

Hi y'all,

After reading the heartbreaking chapter (9) about Alex's death, I couldn't help but notice that one of the headlining articles on the New York Times' website today is about children living with H.I.V. As I was reading the chapter yesterday, I kept thinking, "what if Alex had lived?" Today's article attempts to address just that. . .

Here's the link if you are interested: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/06/us/06hiv.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

Have a great weekend,

Sarah