Maria Gurina

Descriptive Analysis in Political Science: Applying Theoretical Knowledge of Mixed Research Methods of Analysis to Practice by Analyzing Historical Files on Canadian

Farming at the Initiatives of Change (IofC)

Maria GurinaFormer Historical Archivist Assistant at Initiatives of Change, CSL

6763013POL3370B

Supervised by Elaine Gordon, Historical Archivist at Initiatives of ChangeDr. Stephanie MullenUniversity of Ottawa

Phone: 613-435-0483Email: mguri019@uottawa.ca

https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=318663031&trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile_pic

This paper is a draft and is not for attribution or distribution

Paper presented atThe 2014 University of Ottawa Fall Examination, For Qualitative Analysis in Political Science

class, Ottawa, Ontario, Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Wednesday December 10th, 2014.

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Maria Gurina

Descriptive Analysis in Political Science: Applying Theoretical Knowledge of Mixed Research Methods of Analysis to Practice by Analyzing Historical Files on Canadian

Farming at the Initiatives of Change (IofC)Abstract

Using oral history, field notes, mixed methods, and content analysis, I was able to

conduct qualitative analysis using the knowledge gained in class. I worked as a historical

archivist assistant at the Initiatives of Chance where I applied my knowledge and skills of

qualitative methods to historical documents in a dynamic friendly team-spirited environment of

the archives, under the assistantship of the archivist Elaine Gordon.

Introduction

The Community Service Learning (CSL) provided me with a unique opportunity to

apply my theoretical knowledge of epistemology and logics in qualitative analysis through its

placement of a historical archivist assistant at the archives of an NGO, called the Initiatives of

Change Canada (IofC). By selecting the placement, I was able to enhance my initiative,

accountability, and decision-making skills in working with contextualizing historical documents

through writing descriptions of the content of private newsletters in Excel files, working

chronologically and cataloging historical documents into files, doing preliminary research for

working with oral history audio files, writing observational notes for the oral history files,

conducting content analysis of textual artifacts on leading farmers throughout the 18th, 19th and

20th century Canada, working with PowerPoint to construct a historical timeline of the

contributions by leading Canadian farmers to the development of IofC through variety of mixed

methods and anecdotal data, as well as reviewing primary sources, including university

publications, journal publications, newsfeeds, books, print-outs, and newsletters about Canadian

farmers of the 18th-20th centuries.

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In terms of evaluating the usefulness of my experience at the placement, I could ask

myself whether my position of a historical archivist assistant had helped me learn to better apply

theoretical knowledge of qualitative methods of analysis to practical situations.

Right from the first minutes of working at the archives, it became evident that the

historical archivist assistant placement had undoubtedly provided me with a rich body of

experience of working with historical files and understanding the significance of a large variety

of research methods in investigating and tracing pieces of Canadian history from the beginning

of 18th century until present day. Therefore, my experience at the Initiatives of Chance had

helped me to acquire valuable employment skills and knowledge, as well as practical

applications of several qualitative techniques, including documentary research, oral history,

content analysis, field notes, and mixed methods.

The location of my placement was highly convenient for me because the archives were

located 105-261 Cooper Street, in the downtown of Ottawa, which allowed me to get to campus

and back very quickly; thus, the placement shifts were easy to incorporate into my class schedule

to the close proximity to university buildings. Initiatives of Change located on the first floor of

the conventional part of an apartment building, surrounded by offices and apartments. It was a

very fun and enjoyable experience working in downtown among other businesses and fancy

office workers.

Initiatives of Change (IofC) considers itself an NGO that promotes peaceful change in

behavior and attitudes of individuals across the world with an aim to inspire, educate, and form

strong communities of people to address pressing world issues, beginning with individual

change. IofC can further be seen as an international movement that operates more than 60

countries and formally incorporated in 44 countries.

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In my CSL experience, I had a chance to work in the archives the IofC Canada that is

closely affiliated to Initiatives of Change International (IofC International), which occupies

Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the UN, and Participatory

Status at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. The general goal of the organization is to

promote personal responsibility, ethical leadership and building trust within and between world

communities.

In particular, I was placed into an archives environment under the supervision of Elaine

Gordon, who volunteered her time as a recent senior immigrant from Ireland to Canada in a

position of the historical archivist and my supervisor for the CSL placement. Elaine was a

former music teacher who obtained her M.A. in Music in Ireland. She was a very pleasant and

extremely warm person to work with because she was patient and allowed me to get familiar

with archives prior to diving into the complex issues of farming for the IofC, instead of assigning

me difficult task right away.

My other coworkers included a bilingual IofC manager Viola who is a M.A. student of

Social Work at the University of Ottawa. Viola was very lovely and had helped me a lot with

technology at the archives, including teaching me how to operate their scanning machine and

databases when Elaine was away.

The archives take a small space in a tiny apartment of the first floor of the Cooper

apartment building, which provides a great deal of discomfort for the archives' workers due to

the lack of space for the documents that need to be properly and chronologically stored at the

IofC. I learned that IofC recently decided to move archives to a new location, which will allow

the archives to organize themselves much more efficiently and carefully. In fact, as I was

completing my last working shifts, the archives were beginning to be packed into boxes all ready

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to move into a new space. I was very happy to learn that the archives will finally have the space

that IofC needs to store its precious historical documents.

I also worked with my fellow classmate Jessie who was completing a CSL portion of

course work like myself. We instantly became friends and it was very easy to work with her.

In terms of my responsibilities, I worked very closely with Elaine, my supervisor, and

Viola, the manager of IofC. Together we worked in a very dynamic and united team to achieve

maximum productivity and clarity in organizing historical documents at the archives. Officially,

my tasks as a historical archivist assistant included arranging and chronologizing documents,

describing and contextualizing the content of primary and secondary documents and entering

data in content inventories using Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and PowerPoint , as well as

organizing digital records.

Methodology

Ethics

During my work at IofC, I specifically inquired whether I could disclose information that

I was working with in my Qualitative Research in Politics report, and Elaine gave me a verbal

consent. She said she did not need written consent and that anything that I was working for is

very valuable information which, however, does not seem to cause any danger to anyone if being

disclosed. Hence, I obtained a verbal consent that I could use any bits of information from the

archives I was working with. In fact, due to the IofC archives moving to a new location, I was

given multiple information booklets with interesting historical information about Canadian and

international politics because the archives had no storage space for them anymore. As discussed

in class in Mullen's PowerPoint presentation on ethics in research (2014), I had to insure that

Elaine and IofC had the freedom to be protected as participants of my research, and that I had to

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ensure their confidentiality, and obtain informed consent, as well as grand them the right to

withdraw from any point of the study. I ensured that Elaine and her co-workers understood the

ethics considerations I had to take in performing my research at IofC by explaining the nature of

my research myself, as well as through the Community Engagement Navigator service who took

care of the confidentiality agreement between my workplace and myself as a temporary position

holder. When I came to work to IofC, Elaine knew clearly that I was there to conduct research

my applying various qualitative research methods that I have studied in class that would be

relevant for the archives. If any questions arose, I was always more than happy to oblige and

answer them to clarify my research objective as a participant of the CSL program to Elaine or

other IofC employees or employers. Elaine had my contact information, including my school

email address and home phone number, through which we had often made communications

regarding work, scheduling and other issues. Elaine clearly understood that she took a risk for

the archives to invite university students into her space, but she expressed her joy that me and my

classmate Jessie were good workers and that she did not regret taking risks. Elaine further

understood that participation in my research was voluntary that she did not have to do it, and if

she wanted, I could always discontinue my work at the archives or she could withdraw at any

point in the research. Elaine requested more information about my project requirements during

the course of my work term at IofC which I sent out to her immediately based on the instructions

given by Dr. Mullen. Since I obtained my position through uOttawa, ethical considerations were

ensured and present throughout my entire research process. Elaine further expressed her endless

trust in my research and said she does not need any consent forms.

Methods Employed: Content Analysis, Oral History, Mixed Methods

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While working at the IofC archives, I used a large variety of methods to analyze,

organize, and catalogue primary sources, including university publications, private information

newsletters, newspaper articles, and oral history files.

Content Analysis: The Use of Documentary Research

As emphasized in her lecture PowerPoint on content analysis (2014), Mullen points out

that content analysis is the use of documentary research or written texts, including historical

documents such as people’s accounts of events and periods, reports based on official statistics,

mass media such as newspapers, magazines, as well as personal documents such as dairies,

biographies, and letters. During my work at the IofC, my job responsibilities were mostly

connected to working with historical documents; thus, it was mostly content analysis.

Furthermore, Mullen further argues in her PowerPoint on content analysis (2014) that documents

could be public and private, and solicited and unsolicited. In my case, the majority of the

documents that I worked with were private newsletters between private individuals within the

IofC organization or between farmers; hence, most were private restricted documents. Some

documents were newsletters and publications, which could be classified as open-published or

open-archival, and of course, public. In terms of further classifying the documents, the majority

o letters were unsolicited because they were produced for personal use. Only publications,

reports, and newspapers were solicited. For the most part, I had to deal with the meaning of my

documents, or the clarity and comprehensibility of a document that contained social context that

enabled understandings (Mullen, 2014). I had to write summaries and description of historical

documents, and in order to find patters and trace historical links together, I had to understand the

meaning of events of the development of Canadian history.

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Specifically, during the first shift, Elaine gave me time to become familiar with archives,

which I had performed by reading private newsletters dated 1880s to 1960s as part of the

process of qualitative analysis of the archives and writing descriptions for those private

newsletters.

During my second shift, I had began working chronologically on files, dated between

1938 and 1939, where I performed detailed content analysis of primary sources (private

newsletters). Analyzing original documents between 1939 and 1939, writing descriptions of the

content in Excel files.

On the third shift, I made writing descriptions for the content of private newsletters, dated

between 1938 and 1939, in Excel files by working chronologically on them.

During my fourth shift, I did quite a bit of cataloging and naming documents into Excel

files, which I organized chronologically into 5-file folders. In particular, the documents that I

had been filing were mostly written either in Toronto, ON or London, England. In it worth

noting that one of my challenges as a historical archivist assistant was naming and categorizing

the files. In addition, my fourth work shift covered a preparation on oral history files.

Oral History

According to Mullet's PowerPoint on oral history (2014), oral history is usually interview

format that is very open ended and unstructured and contains information not found in written

text. During my work at IofC, I had a chance to work with oral histories which allowed me

conduct background research of the descendents of a farmer whose daughters left almost no

information about their biographies. The only way to trace that information was to conduct oral

histories on them. The oral history files had helped me find precious information on the life of

the farmer's daughters and see how the influence on the farmer continues to live on in his

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children who had also tremendously contributed to the development of the sense of togetherness

I communities across Alberta and in Canada as a whole.

To be precise, on the firth shift, I was doing preliminary research in preparation for

working with the recorded oral history files by reading an agricultural magazine, dated 1947, as

well as making notes on the famous Muir faming family who became known of its communal

influence and tremendous war efforts in the agricultural sector for Canada and the UK. In

addition, during the firth work shift, I listened to and made observational notes on the recorded

oral history files.

During my sixth shift, I worked on a hard copy of the observational notes for the oral

history file about the Muir farmer family. I had also had time to edit and polish the final draft of

the observational notes that day and managed to adding historical references from the 1947

agricultural magazine about Bob Muir to the observational notes. I double-checked the spelling

and grammar of the final script.

Continuing Working with Content Analysis

As content analysis continued to be my dominant research method, during my seventh

shift, I conducted content analysis of textual artifacts on the Muir family, meaning reviewing

personal historical information letters about the Muir family, which primary focused on Bob

Muir's contributions to Canada and the Moral Rearmament team that was back then the team of

IofC. That way Elaine had also assigned me to begin working on Bob Muir's timeline. Since

the seventh shift took place during the Memorial Day celebration, our archive watched the

screening of the Memorial Day celebrations on a laptop from CBC's website, which followed up

by a lengthy discussion of the significance of the Memorial Day to Canadian politics, farmers,

and international relations. I had drafted down a plan for organizing my final CSL paper at work

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that day as well. The day continued with me working chronologically on files about the Muirs'

family. I studied one of IofC's presentation for the past in order to get, familiar with the

requirements regarding a famers' timeline that Elaine wanted me to make for IofC that served me

as good timeline examples. I had also inquired into getting more primary resources from Elaine

on Bob Muir's contributions to Canada and around the world. I also did some reading and

summarizing of the content of the magazines, university publications, information newsletters,

and brochures on Bob Muir's biography. The day finished with me sketching out a brief timeline

of Bob Muir's involvement in community work in Alberta.

Mixed Methods

In her PowerPoint on mixed methods (2014), Mullen argues that mixed methods usually

contain the use of three methods. In my research, I blended content analysis with oral histories,

and field notes, where content analysis was the primary method and the other two were

supportive and which were conducted sequentially one after another with content analysis always

being first, while the order of the other two interchanged on the regular basis. The mixed method

approach was useful to find more information and analyze farmers from different angles, where

one approach was not enough to find a missing link in the historical consequence of events in

Canadian history.

During the eighth shift, I was working on Bob Muir's timeline by performing content

analysis of textual artifacts on Bob Muir and his children, as well as analyzing the anecdotal data

from a phone conversation with Wilma, the daughter of Bob Muir. In essence, I was using

mixed methods of research for compiling physical database on Bob Muir and his family. I had to

quickly read a number of books on Muir's and his fellow farmer neighbour Bobcock's

involvement in the IofC's Moral Rearmament program, and the both of the farmers' trips to

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Quebec and India. I had also reviewed magazines and brochures, and worked on a PowerPoint

timeline on Bob Muir. Furthermore, I had once again reviewed the oral history file of Bob

Muir's daughters one more time to make sure I have not missed important information or details

for the timeline from the oral histories. Elaine and I had compiled a large box with information

on the Muirs with historical documents that we organized for the archives thematically and put

my nametag on it.

During the ninth shift, I continued working on the PowerPoint timeline, where I added

two more farmers, besides Muir, who were Bobcock, and Wake. My timeline included

chronological events of the biography of the three farmers as well as their contributions to the

Moral Rearmament team, and the development of farmer community in Canada. I was using

primary sources, such as books and magazine articles, but also anecdotal evidence, including a

phone conversations with Bob Muir's daughter Wilma, and the IofC presentation timelines as

my reference materials. During the day, I continued thematically organizing my personal

information box on the Muirs, Bobcocks, and Wales.

Finishing the Research Process with Content Analysis

As final step, I preformed more content analysis on during my tenth and final shift. I had

reviewed some more primary sources, including university publications, journal publications,

newsfeeds, books, print-outs, and newsletters about Bob Muir, Geoff Bobcock, and William

Wake. I finished working on the timeline, and did performed final editing, proof-reading, and

spell-checking. The tenth day completed my work at IofC where I made a timeline and worked

with numerous primary sources in a form of historical documents.

Field Notes

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In her PowerPoint on field notes (2014), Mullen argues that field notes simply mean a

note-taking style, whether it is fuller jotting, mental notes, or jotted notes.

During my work at IofC, I had often been making bullet point notes in the middle or

close to the end of the work shift of the things I had accomplished and what needs to be done at

work. My supervisor, Elaine, had often dictated me her expectations for the following work shift

of the goals we both needed to reach in my research. Furthermore, we both often brainstormed

on a piece of paper lists of documents we had for me in order to continue my research because

the information on Alberta farmers was scattered all of over the archives without a particular

order. My work as the archives required me constantly be in a sharp state of mind because I

worked with the content analysis of documents; hence, I needed to understand what I was

reading and be mentally alert to see historical patterns in the documents. Therefore, I had to

make multiple mental notes, ranging from a to-do list to how to save documents in specific

folders in the archives or keep looking for a particular document, or remember a biography of a

particular farmer. The work in the archives was highly mentally stimulating in terms of both

mental and paper notes.

Data Analysis

Challenges with Using Methods at Work

I found that it was incredibly challenging to go from classroom straight to the workplace

because I was scared to make mistakes in my qualitative research at work, which would show

my supervisor my incompetency and spoil the archival work of IofC. My worries, however,

were baseless because Elaine liked my work and gave me excellent evaluations upon my

completion of the work term. She said I helped her tremendously with organizing archives

thematically, especially with the material on eastern Canada.

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Some of the documents were written in a very unreadable font that made it hard to

understand the message the author of a letter was trying to convey purely because of the

distracting font. Elaine was also dissatisfied with the font of some of the letters because it was

visually overwhelming.

There was an issue with the handwritten documents written in cursive. Back in the

beginning of the 19th and 20th centuries, people's handwriting was very different from modern

print handwriting; hence, I had a difficulty reading those letters and had to ask the assistance of

Elaine.

Furthermore, since I was helping organize the archives thematically, Elaine and I had

been constantly encountering difficulties with lost, misplaced, or missing documents. A

considerable amount of time was required to trace those missing documents, be they lost or

misallocated or never bought into the achieves at all. It was crucial, however, to find those

documents because they helped me contract a chronological continuum of events on farmers in

Alberta.

Experience in Working with Stuff and Positive Experience

My experience in working with Elaine, Viola, and occasional IofC workers was very

pleasant. When I came to work, I always had a coffee and cookies or brownies waiting for me.

The office environment was very positive and the employees and volunteers had always

maintained very friendly interactions with me while I was doing my research at the archives.

Elaine was very patient with me, and taught me a lot about Canadian and Irish history while we

are talking. Viola invited me to her newly formed university club of IofC in uOttawa, which I

am looking forward to be attending next semester. The stuff was always smiling and highly

punctual; both Elaine and Viola were always either on-time or early to work.

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I had maintained constant phone and email communication with both Elaine and Viola

about work. Viola and I are friends on Facebook and we have very good teammate relationship

when it comes to IofC or the IofC club.

I became friends with Jessie, another CSL girl from our class who worked with me at the

archives. We always talked about national and local news, as well as discussed course work

during spare time from work.

It was a highly mentally stimulating environment to work in: I had learned a great deal

about prominent Canadian farmers and the formation of Canada from the historical and political

points of view. I read many old newsletters, brochures, magazines, books, as well as

contemporary university publications, journals, and newspaper articles on Canadian farming in

the Praries. It was fun learning so much material in a non-classroom environment and apply my

methods skills to that new material (for the list of documents I have read, please see Appendix

1).

Publication

Timeline

The IofC archives plan to publish my timeline on prominent Canadian farmers after

adding more information to it. The timeline will become a property of IofC and will be stored

among other documents in the archives. At the moment, the timeline is in a PowerPoint format,

but Elaine wants to transform it into PDF, with a possibility of adding more information into the

timeline and forming a small database of historical dates and events.

Excel Summaries

The Excel summaries of informal information newsletters on historical events in Canada

in the UK from 1700s to 1900s, with my descriptions ,will be stored in the IofC's database and

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will be used by other volunteers to continue my work and make possible modifications to my

summaries, if needed.

The Biography of Wilma Muir

The Biography of Wilma Muir, the daughter of Bob Muir will be saved in IofC's archives

as an original document that is a biographical reference of main contributions made by Wilma

during her life time and her connection to her father's change-making efforts.

Conclusion

Working at Initiatives of Change as a historical archivist assistant had been a tremendous

experience for me. I enquired many different skills, among which are valuable applied practice

of working with oral histories, content analysis, field notes, and mixed methods. I learned a lot

about the history of Canadian farming and the challenges Canada faced during the 1700s to

1900s. I had met many wonderful hard-working people, including Viola, Elaine, and Jessie.

I was able to obtain valuable working experience in operating with a multitude of

qualitative research methods outside of classroom, which I can now proudly display on my

resume. I had a chance to handle historical documents and be part of Iof C international peace-

building movement.

While archives can be a challenging place because documents get lost and fonts make

them impossible to read, the process of tracing new historical connections between seemingly

unrelated events though content analysis is priceless. I will remember my experience at IofC as

precious and educational for the rest of my life.

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Maria Gurina

Works Cited

Mullen, S. (2014). Content Analysis: The Use of Documentary Research. [PowerPoint slides].

Retrieved from ttps://uottawa.blackboard.com/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?

tab_group=courses&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Fcontent%2Ffile%3Fcmd

%3Dview%26content_id%3D_663760_1%26course_id%3D_28164_1%26framesetWrapped

%3Dtrue

Mullen, S. (2014). Field Notes. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from

https://uottawa.blackboard.com/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_group=courses&url=

%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Fcontent%2Ffile%3Fcmd%3Dview%26content_id

%3D_663760_1%26course_id%3D_28164_1%26framesetWrapped%3Dtrue

Mullen, S. (2014). Mixed Methods. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from

https://uottawa.blackboard.com/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_group=courses&url=

%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Fcontent%2Ffile%3Fcmd%3Dview%26content_id

%3D_663760_1%26course_id%3D_28164_1%26framesetWrapped%3Dtrue

Mullen, S. (2014). Oral History. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from

https://uottawa.blackboard.com/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_group=courses&url=

%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Fcontent%2Ffile%3Fcmd%3Dview%26content_id

%3D_663760_1%26course_id%3D_28164_1%26framesetWrapped%3Dtrue

Mullen, S. (2014). Qualitative Research and Field Ethics. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from

https://uottawa.blackboard.com/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_group=courses&url=

%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Fcontent%2Ffile%3Fcmd%3Dview%26content_id

%3D_663760_1%26course_id%3D_28164_1%26framesetWrapped%3Dtrue

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Appendix 1

Bocock Family references

For a change magazine, Volume 12 Number 3 01 June 1999 “Averting a Flare-Up on the Farm”

www.ales.ualberta.ca:82/en/Alumni/~/media/.../PreservingtheFuture.pdf

http://www.cornerstonemagazine.ca/john-and-bill-bocock/

A tale for the telling by Geoff Bocock

Farmers union of Alberta

http://www.glenbow.org/collections/search/findingAids/archhtm/conrich.cfmAnecdotal

Evidence

Wake, William O. Life! food for life and heart and mind Saskatchewan: Wake 1950

Muir Family references

Rising Tide Magazine (1937)

New World News. (Nob, 1947). Vol. Three Number 8 November 1947

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