“Which One Is Yours?”: Children and Ethnography

This paper explores roles that children play in ethnographic research. Based on the limited literature on children in the field, and drawing on examples from ethnographies across disciplines, I identify four roles for children: 1) as “wedges,” or as instrumentally important in helping adult ethnographers gain access in various ways; 2) as collaborators; 3) as objects of study; and 4) as subjects of study. I also discuss the ways in which these roles illuminate key methodological issues in ethnography, like reflexivity, ethics, and agency. The paper synthesizes and integrates previously disconnected research on the presence of children in the field with ethnographies in which children and childhood are the topics of research. I draw on my own fieldwork experiences for further illustration.

On the computation of the noncentral <Emphasis Type="Italic">F</Emphasis> and noncentral beta distribution

Unfortunately many of the numerous algorithms for computing the comulative distribution function (cdf) and noncentrality parameter of the noncentral F and beta distributions can produce completely incorrect results as demonstrated in the paper by examples. Existing algorithms are scrutinized and those parts that involve numerical difficulties are identified. As a result, a pseudo code is presented in which all the known numerical problems are resolved. This pseudo code can be easily implemented in programming language C or FORTRAN without understanding the complicated mathematical background. Symbolic evaluation of a finite and closed formula is proposed to compute exact cdf values. This approach makes it possible to check quickly and reliably the values returned by professional statistical packages over an extraordinarily wide parameter range without any programming knowledge. This research was motivated by the fact that a very useful table for calculating the size of detectable effects for ANOVA tables contains suspect values in the region of large noncentrality parameter values compared to the values obtained by Patnaik’s 2-moment central-F approximation. The cause is identified and the corrected form of the table for ANOVA purposes is given. The accuracy of the approximations to the noncentral-F distribution is also discussed. The authors wish to thank Mr. Richárd Király for his preliminary work. The authors are grateful to the Editor and Associate Editor of STCO and the unknown reviewers for their helpful suggestions.     

Students’ health engagement and affective relations in Danish upper secondary school

To increase our understanding of the dynamics of young people’s embodied engagement in health, this article analyses Danish upper secondary school students’ understandings and practices of health and the role of the school environment in these dynamics. Participatory, visual and narrative data were collected during fieldwork with 37 students aged 16–17. Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy of the body is applied to analyse the affective relations and emerging body-health assemblages within the students’ school life, which generated force and vitality (here conceptualised as health). Through becoming within sensuous, social and political body-health assemblages, the students attempted to curb school stress, sustain social belonging in an individualistic school environment and both reproduce affirming power discourses and subvert their territorialisation. The study proposes an analytical shift in perspective on young people’s health away from an individualistic ‘components approach’ towards a relational understanding, and suggests that students’ health at school relates to collectivity, quality, rhythm and co-produced engagement, rather than individuality, quantity, rules and performance, which increasingly characterise Danish health discourse and school policy.     

Observational sketching as method

This paper explores the potential of observational sketching as a social science research tool, informed by our own recent experiments with observational sketching techniques and approaches. We first outline the historical roots of academic sketching and note a recent resurgence of interest in sketching in certain disciplines. We then introduce our own explorations in sketching as method, based on a year-long collaboration between an observational artist and a group of qualitative researchers with interests in creative methods. The paper outlines some of the lessons we learnt from our partnership, focusing on three themes: (i) ‘sketchiness’; (ii) ‘concentrated seeing’ and (iii) sketching as interaction. We conclude that observational sketching generates a refreshingly different form of visual data which has considerable potential to be used as a complement to other methods, including as a participatory method and as a useful tool for thinking.     

Who needs Cantonese,who speaks? Whispers across mountains,delta, and waterfronts

This essay digs into the ‘dirtiness’ of cultural studies to prioritize praxis, or as the way my mountain folks collect summer lotus: putting our feet in the muddy water, and finding ways to get the stems underneath the smooth leaves. Using Cantoneseness as a case to locate such ‘dirtiness’, I draw on personal/familial histories as well as research projects to tell how conjunctures of Cantoneseness are politically and unevenly lived. This complex journey travels roughly from my childhood in the Yuebei mountains of northern Guangdong through my teenage and early adult years in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) to my current location as a temporary resident in the East Pacific port of Vancouver. I selectively emphasize and speak on three different locations: first, the rural inland Cantonese location of Yuebei mountains – the borderland and hinterland experiences of my family and myself living what the mountains would offer and how these have changed; second, the industrial superior Cantonese location of PRD in Shenzhen and Guangzhou – my personal experiences and identities as a migrant youth, combined with a case study including interviews with migrant peasant-workers and their children; and third, the western transnational Cantonese location of East Pacific waterfronts in Vancouver and Richmond – my personal engagement with social activism as an ethnicized, international student, combined with a narrative study including interviews with social activists with different Cantoneseness and migration routes. While this mix of whispers speaks in its own way towards using cultural studies with more seriously (global) space-sensitive and (social justice) praxis-sensitive approaches, the primary focus is more modestly on my autobiographical accounts and research efforts as a specific case: to show some strategic locations of ‘Cantonescape’ on the one hand, and to invite wider conversations around cultural-spatial politics on the other.     

Influence of Female Genital Cutting on Sexual Experience in Southern Ethiopia

Female genital cutting (FGC) is a persistent social norm in the Liben district of southern Ethiopia. This study explores whether the sexual experiences of married men and women differ by women's FGC status. Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with 28 women with different types of FGC (or no FGC) and 21 husbands. Compared to others, women with more severe FGC reported traumatic sexual experiences and decreased sexual desire. Nonetheless, participants largely endorsed FGC for daughters, revealing pressure to maintain the practice. Opportunities for change exist, as women and men recognized the sexual pleasure and healthy birth experiences of uncut women.     

Riemann manifold Langevin methods on stochastic volatility estimation

In this article, we perform Bayesian estimation of stochastic volatility models with heavy tail distributions using Metropolis adjusted Langevin (MALA) and Riemman manifold Langevin (MMALA) methods. We provide analytical expressions for the application of these methods, assess the performance of these methodologies in simulated data, and illustrate their use on two financial time series datasets.     

The effect of different data structures,sample sizes on model fit measures

In this study, our aim was to investigate the changes of different data structures and different sample sizes on the structural equation modeling and the influence of these factors on the model fit measures. Examining the created structural equation modeling under different data structures and sample sizes, the evaluation of model fit measures were performed with a simulation study. As a result of the simulation study, optimization and negative variance estimation problems have been encountered depending on the sample size and changing correlations. It was observed that these problems disappeared either by increasing the sample size or the correlations between the variables in factor. For upcoming studies, the choice of RMSEA and IFI model fit measures can be suggested in all sample sizes and the correlation values for data sets are ensured the multivariate normal distribution assumption.