This year’s International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI) featured research from the Family Resiliency Center across five—count ‘em, five!—oral presentations. Hosted at the University of Illinois from Wednesday, May 15 through Saturday, May 18, 2024, the 20th meeting of ICQI focused on how qualitative researchers can intervene and affect change in everyday life given such evolving conditions as political and economic strife, intensifying effects of climate change and the ravages of poverty and war. Scholars from around the world flocked to Illinois to celebrate community, experiment with traditional and new methodologies and resist with new technologies of representation.
Sohyeon Kim kicked things off Friday morning with her presentation on innovations in leisure as a coping mechanism during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kim, a Ph.D. student training with Steering Committee and Collaboratory member Liza Berdychevsky, emphasized that her research with the FRC’s mixed methods COVID study disclosed just how much the pandemic has changed caregivers’ behavior. Meanwhile, across the Quad in a concurrent session, Jacinda Dariotis presented findings from an FRC study that characterized different vaccine uptake personas and health communications strategies relevant for reaching each. Dariotis explained how engaging with a naysayer differs significantly from communicating with a skeptic in “wait-and-see” mode or with a preventionist who is likely to be first in line for vaccination.
Later that morning, Hong Li showcased her conceptual model of how educators’ perceptions and experiences of using music in an early childhood classroom setting impacts whether and in what contexts teachers choose to introduce music. In short, the backgrounds and experiences of both students and teachers with music form complex, interactive feedback loops—for example, an instructor who introduces music into the classroom and does not receive the expected response from children might be less inclined to do so again in the future. In an afternoon panel, Yuliana Soto presented findings from the FRC’s commitment to using participatory approaches to planning and implementing programs, with a preschool-based mindful movement program as an example. The approach engaged community and university partners to increase the acceptance and feasibility of executing the mindfulness interventions.
On Saturday, Dana Eldreth offered a presentation on year-one findings from the FRC’s capacity building work with agencies funded by the Champaign County Mental Health and Developmental Disability Boards. Eldreth showed how participatory approaches can empower both agencies and boards to generate a capacity for self-evaluation that is both sustainable and effective.
Audiences connected with FRC research across the panels. Dariotis engaged in a lively conversation with a researcher about the cultural associations that accompany the application of names to individual vaccine uptake personas, while Kim fielded a question about the composition of her sample, which was predominantly female as a reflection of the fact that over 80% of caregivers—either formal or informal—in the U.S. are female. Eldreth likewise expanded on the methodologies employed in the FRC’s initial assessment of needs among agencies and boards, noting that the participatory approach afforded opportunities for data analysis in real-time by session participants as well as by researchers.
The fun continued this week, when the FRC team hit the nation’s capital to regale conferencegoers at the 32nd annual meeting of the Society for Prevention Research (SPR) with a presentation on mindful movement, an invited panel presentation in innovative approaches to mixed methods, as well as a workshop on participatory methods. Researchers were up and out of their chairs as they literally moved beyond their academic selves.
You can find complete programs for the ICQI and SPR meetings at the aforelinked websites.