Category: dissertation

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Explaining “contradictory” identities, joining the military, a sense of service, and military benefits

Last week while reviewing some of my dissertation data with the research assistants, we dove into some contradictory remarks.

My data consist of interviews, or “semi-structured conversations,” with veterans at a university during their first semester as undergraduates. During these conversations, I have a set of questions that guide my question-asking. I like this method because it seems to relax the participants. Although since this is all done via zoom, I’m not sure yet if that’s still true. When face-to-face, I’ve noticed only once that a participant oriented towards the recording device (i.e they looked at it while talking to me). If this sounds interesting, I’d check out my advisor’s work on the observer’s paradox.

Anyway, in my data, I talk with each of my participants about their decision to join the military. One participant first described their hometown of blue-collar workers (many who joined the military), and that they felt the collective call of 9/11. Later on in the same interview, while explaining their interest in sports and working out, they prefaced how they played sports throughout high school. And, that they had hoped to go to college and continue playing sports. However, one summer they experienced an injury that prevented that dream. They then explained joining the military as an opportunity. This “opportunity” aligns with my other participants’ explanations for joining the military. They saw the benefits (e.g. paying for school, career, work experience) of joining the military. This also parallels Martinez and Huerta’s (2020) findings in their study about Chicano/Latino males who enlist in the military. They found, among their participants, that joining the military was a pathway to upward social mobility and a career.

What I find interesting about this is the way the participants talk about their reasons for joining the military. It’s transactional. This contrasts with the 9/11 collective call narrative that is in the beginning of my participant’s interview, and contrasts with the narrative I hear so often by folks who joined when I did – around 9/11.

But how do I explain this? I don’t. I think identities are complex and how they emerge in interaction is complex (and messy at times). As a researcher, I think of my role is observing and describing what is going on. If there are contradictory and paradoxical behaviors manifested in the language, then I say “oh that’s interesting” .. and think about it more. What I think is happening is that the participant is drawing on sociably recognizable discourses – the collective call to service that was invoked by President Bush during 9/11 (See Podvornaia, 2013) and the military as a bunch of benefits (this is the stuff that recruiters talk about). All of which they are using to construct their identity.

What I think is interesting and will explore further is the development of a sense of service in my data. Each one of my participants talk about being proud of their service and how they want to continue doing something that benefits people around them.

Martinez Jr, E., & Huerta, A. H. (2020). Deferred enrollment: Chicano/Latino males, social mobility and military enlistment. Education and Urban Society, 52(1), 117–142.

Podvornaia, A. (2013). The discursive battlefield of the “War on Terror.” In A. Hodges (Ed.), Discourses of war and peace (pp. 69–91). Oxford University Press.

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Create (your own) back up (and check your Document System) in MAXQDA!

My dissertation project has seven participants who I interviewed three times over the course of their first semester. I then transcribed each interview during the same semester to start my analysis mid-January. (It’s going ok, not as fast as I’d like it to). To facilitate my analysis, I am using MAXQDA. It’s been really helpful for organizing my data into “categories” and then coding it for specific themes. To help conceptualize this process, I recommend checking out Johnny Saldaña’s book The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers.

So in MAXQDA, the project itself creates back up files automatically. You can set this up for everyday or every 12 days. I do every day and I’m glad. The program also automatically saves your project because it’s a database program. It’s like working on a google doc. It just saves your file automatically.

This morning (however) as I’m coding a transcript, I notice one of my participant’s files has zero coded segments. I then went back ~3 weeks to a (automatic back up) and found the coded transcript. I also opened the back up I created yesterday but the transcript wasn’t coded.

So you’re probably wondering why I would title this post “Create (your own back up).” I still think it’s important but what I should have done was checked my document system that all my transcripts had codes in them before creating my own back up. Because I had to go back nearly 3 weeks to find the project with the transcript coded means I didn’t notice it for some time.

To resolve this issue, I opened up the older back up and exported the transcript with the coded segments as if I were a team member working separately. I then imported the transcript with all the codes into my current project file.

If you’re unfamiliar with MAXQDA I created this working document to teach my research assistants how to use the program.

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First dissertation post

Last semester I defended by dissertation prospectus which is a major milestone in finishing my PhD. To add some context because only 4.5% of the U.S. population has a PhD, I’ll explain what the process looked like.

In 2017 I entered my linguistics program as a master’s student at Georgetown University. The requirements for my master’s degree was 36 credit hours and a master’s thesis. It took me two years to complete. In my second year, I decided I wanted to stay in school and pursue a PhD in sociolinguistics in the same department at Georgetown. So I reapplied to the program as a PhD student. My reasons for doing so is I thought there was much more I wanted to do. There is a dearth of research on doing language in the military and in my experience there are only a handful of veterans doing it.

So after getting accepted, my credits from my master’s degree transferred over to my PhD requirements. I had to do two more semesters of coursework to meet the 54 credit hour requirement. In addition to the credit hours, I had to do two qualifying papers. These papers should represent your overall research and work quality. I submitted my master’s thesis as my first qualifying paper. In my sixth semester (spring of my 3rd year), I submitted my second qualifying paper. This was the final requirement I needed before being able to prepare for my dissertation.

So during Spring 2020, if you’ve already forgotten – the United States (and really the world) was coping with the collective shock of COVID-19. My original plans for conducting my dissertation research disappeared because of the nationwide shutdowns. Then the Summer of 2020, it was exceptionally difficult to work because I shared the collective outrage about the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Tayler, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless other Black Americans. My thoughts were on contributing to social change in some way.

Montage forward to August and I revisit the idea of military socialization. Since I couldn’t go to bootcamp or basic training (I’m immunocompromised and getting permission would likely take months), I decided to see if I can explore how military indoctrination lingers after a service member leaves the military. So that’s how I arrived at my now dissertation project which is “Constructing institutional identities: How veterans talk about their transition to college.”

Participants in my study are veterans or currently serving from the Navy, Army, and National Guard. I have a total of 7 participants who I interviewed 3 times over the course of their first semester (beginning, middle, and end). Doing so, I hope I’m able to examine some change in how they talk about their experience. In total, I have about 35 hours of interview data and 450 pages of transcript. To help organize and analyze the data, I’m using MAXQDA. Since this is my first time using MAXQDA, I self taught myself and then I taught my two undergraduate research assistants how to use it. It makes collaborating nearly effortless and we’re able to share our work. I created a google doc tutorial as well to document want works for me and other folks who do discourse analysis. It’s a working document as I continue to find out new things about MAXQDA.

So now my blog is caught up with where I am in my PhD.

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