Joe Pierce
I am an urban geographer based in Worcester, Mass.
I use both qualitative and quantitative methods to understand urban processes.
Mixed Methods, Hybrid Epistemologies
My methodological strengths are centered in qualitative approaches: interviews, surveys, focus groups, and participant observation. However, I believe in mixed approaches to urban research, and I both apply more quantitative approaches (descriptive statistics, quantitaive validity tests, etc.) and actively seek out opportunities for collaborative research with colleagues whose core approaches are more quantiatively driven. This requires a serious engagement with the implications of various epistemologies and the tensions and overlaps between them if the results are to be rigorous, and thus involves constant reflection about the assumptions built into different methodological approaches.
Qualitative Spatial Data and GIS
Often, when people talk about qualitative GIS they either mean participatory GIS (in which non-expert users participate in the production of maps using GIS tools), or else research which tries to use quantitative data to speak to qualitative reserarch questions. I certainly am interested in both, but I am also interested in asking: how do we generate more qualitative spatial data sets for analysis? How can we engage in a process that captures emotive, experiential sense of the city and exposes it to analysis (and comparison with more quantitative layers)? These kinds of questions challenge us to consider what it means for data to be spatial or mappable. I am actively exploring what kinds of research methods can help us to better understand what can comprise "qualitative spatial data," and how best to present such data visually and narratively.