Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Protection from the "Downward Spiral"

"The downward spiral for many manuscripts begins with the failure to adequately define the focal construct(s) of the study..." MacKenzie (2003), p. 323

The Coding Task Ahead

The next step in my dissertation work is to further define and develop the main construct, so as to then develop a codebook that can be piloted, then used in the fall for coding all the adoptive parent transcripts. I have brainstormed in the past about what this central construct is. I got so far as to call it "genetic narratives." However, this is still the ballpark topic, and not the construct that I will eventually try to test for empirically. The general topic I have now needs further work to get it to that point.

Which is where this entry comes in.

First, a recap of where I have been so far. Second, some brief discussion of other topic areas in the existing literature that currently employ conceptsclose to what I am aiming for. Third, I discuss one description of what a good construct should and shouldn't look like. Then in the final section I sketch a definition and description of the actual construct I want to use in my dissertation.

(S., D., and L.: It is not necessary at this point to read these articles but skimming the previous blog posts I list may be helpful.)

1) Recap

Probably the first time I had a substantial talk with myself about my dissertation topic was in this post. This was back when I had finally settled on the idea that I wanted to limit my dissertation to the adoptive parent interviews, and by extension make my project be about adoptive parenting. (I know this seems to be a pretty inconsequential thing. But when you have available so much data from so many sources, just getting this far is a big deal!)

Then the following month in this post I tried to work on exactly what it is about adoptive parenting I wanted to look at. But I really began to get some clarity about the subject in this post. (Hmmm...maybe I ought to break out the Miles Davis again...)

At the start of this calendar year I started to turn my attention to the methodologies I might use in my dissertation. Proof that this process is not a linear one: Thinking about this latter stage task actually helped me go back to my initial construct development to get a clearer idea of that. I explored that a little here, here, and here.

2) "Genetic narrratives" in the literature

There are three streams of literature I am bringing together to get at a definition. I'll just briefly touch on them here.

Family Narratives. First is the area of "family narratives" that H. and colleagues have already done work with using MTARP data. (S., D., L.: Family Narrative Consortium Project. This work should be in the lab.)

A key aspect of this work is that through the "stories" that family members tell, we can get a glimpse of how they have "made meaning" out of certain aspects of their lives. According to Fiese & Sameroff, family narratives

become a scrapbook of family history resulting from a process of meaning-making in the family. When family members are called upon to recount an experience, they set an interpretive frame reflecting how individuals grapple with understanding events, how the family works together, and how the ascription of meaning is linked to beliefs about relationships and the social world.

However, as I may bave mentioned in previous posts, what I am aiming for in this particular project does not necessarily meet the FNC definition of "family narratives"--though I may be positioning my work as a preliminary step in this direction. For one thing, the FNC researchers made a distinction between "narratives" (form and process) and "stories" (content). I am not confident at this point that I have enough data to make such a distinction, or that the genetic content of interest will be coherently found in such a recognizable structure. Again, though, I hope that exploration of my construct will assist in further research design meant to specifically elicit such fleshed out tales.

Gene Talk. Second is the concept of "gene talk" that I have already discussed in previous posts. One benefit of using this as a conceptual lens is that it is much more likely that the data I have will be in the form of this type of shorter, more telegraphic statements related to genetics than it will be in the form of full-fledged narratives. (Though I recognized this lack of congruency, I did use the term "genetic narratives" as a placeholder in my previous blog posts.)

A key aspect of borrowing a little conceptual light from Fox Keller's concept is that she does an excellent job of showing how this type of professional talk can serve all sorts of purposes in scientists' interactions--with each other, with the public, with funders and policy makers, and with their own further research efforts. While "gene talk" refers to how scientists talk about genes, I want to explore how lay persons talk about genetics. From one of my earlier posts:

So, my question becomes, in lay (non-scientific) settings, does something analogous to "gene-talk" exist?... What are "gene," "genetics" and their gene-based metaphorical stand-ins (e.g., "in her blood," "inner make-up," "blueprint," "biological program") "operational shorthand" for in the adoptive context? What are the "clearly uinderstood" social contexts in which this language is invoked by adoptive parents? What are the outcomes--both beneficial and not--for explaining one's adoptive family processes using genetic narratives?

Lay Theories. Although I think the concept I'll be exploring is not quite as developed as "narratives," I think it also has more form, complexity, and structure than what the term "talk" would seem to connote. So the third research area I'm bringing into this is that of lay theories, specifically lay theories about genetics. The key idea here is that people's talk about genetics will suggest a system of interconnected beliefs that have causes and that in turn may impact other areas of their lives. (This is not yet a definition of the construct as you can see below.)

I have spent a lot of space in previous posts talking about and defining lay theories. I'll add this quote, from Richards (1996):

The public's knowledge and beliefs about inheritance have not arisen de novo with the coming of the new genetics...they have long been part of family culture. Much family talk is about particular characteristics of family members, who these may have been acquired from, and who they may be passed to.

Nice circle back to gene talk and family narratives...

3) For want of a good construct definition...

Before jumping into my definition, I want to review one view of what any good construct definition looks like. MacKenzie (2003) says:

Good definitions should
(a) specify the construct’s conceptual theme,
(b) in unambiguous terms,
(c) in a manner that is consistent with prior research, and that
(d) clearly distinguishes it from related constructs.

(I'm going to shorten the above requirements to "THEMATIC, CLEAR, RESEARCH-BASED, DISTINGUISHABLE" and abbreviate to TCRD.)

A couple of other aspects of good definitions:

* The extent to which values of the construct are expected to differ across cases, conditions, and time are specified
* If the construct is multidimensional, the relations between the subdimensions and the superordinate construct are specified

But note what the author says is not a good definition:

* Defining a construct solely in terms of its antecedents (causes) or consequences (results)
* Merely giving examples of what is included in a construct

Finally:
4) Adoptive Genetics

(OK, number four should have been introduced by an audio clip of a drum roll and cymbal crash...) I am calling my core concept "adoptive genetics" and the entire enterprise as "adoptive parents' lay theories of adoptive genetics." Actually this is still just a placeholder label that I may change yet again. And I guess, now that I lay out the previous research and my previous blogging brainstorms like that it's really not such a brave conceptual leap. But I'm excited, anyway...

So, to try out the TCRD (THEMATIC, CLEAR, RESEARCH-BASED, DISTINGUISHABLE) criteria:

(Brief definition) Adoptive genetics are the ways in which heredity, genealogy, and similar aspects of human biology are thought to influence the experiences, relationships, and identities of adopted persons, their birth family members, and their adoptive family members. Lay theories of adoptive genetics are the store of interrelated beliefs and "common sense(s)" that people hold to explain this influence.

(Expanded definitions) Adoptive genetics suggests that the roles of genetics in the adoption context may be thought to be different from the roles genetics play in biological relationships, but may also be thought to be characterized as having some areas of overlap. Adoptive genetics suggests commonly-held beliefs about processes of inheretance and constitution of the human organism, applied to the adoption context.

Lay theories specific to the adoption context of beliefs about these processes and makeup will be verbalized differently by adoption participants depending on their past and current experiences with adoptive and biological relationships. Specifically, adoptive parents' theories of adoptive genetics will be related to their roles as parents of a specific adopted child (or children) as well as in some cases children related in other ways (e.g., by birth, remarriage, fosterage).

...Not quite totally TCRD-compliant, but I think a good start.

I have in mind several components that further flesh out this concept. (S., D., and L.: In a separate email, probably tomorrow.)

Again, the goal is a tentative codebook to begin piloting using actual data. This codebook would include these definitions (actually, revised versions of them), the components, and definitions of the components.

Posted by perry032 at June 25, 2005 04:23 PM | TrackBack
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