Call for Proposals

When we are struck with wonder, we often think “how did they do that?” and then ask, “how can I do that?” It happens when we hear about innovative research approaches, exciting classroom tales, and new ideas that make us rethink our positions. For SIGDOC 2023, we invite researchers and practitioners to share “how it’s done”—to discuss the methodologies and methods for their innovations, research, and experiments. Discussing methods helps us innovate; it also gives others a view into how we think and makes a personal process social.

Research integrity is built on trust and confidence in the methodologies used to design and conduct research and reliably report findings. Designing, conducting, reporting, and reading research requires understanding the exigency and context of the research, including research questions and how they are answered. Such critical intellectual work also requires heeding  advice from Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate scholar Kim TallBear (2014), whose approach to research is to “ponder the politics that run through knowledge production at every stage—how authors and researchers begin where they do, which audiences they imagine will receive their knowledge production, and what leads them to assume that they should research a subject or object.” Doing so makes apparent tensions between methodological standard knowledge and practice. SIGDOC 2023 is a space to articulate and examine research methodologies and methods; their ethics across designing and conducting research, credibly reporting results, and offering sensible findings.

The methods section is argued as the “conceptual epicenter” of a manuscript where scholars tell us “how it’s done” (Smagorinsky, 2008). Methods and methodologies include intersectional dimensions across race, gender, sex, class, disability, environments and ecologies, decolonization, multilingualism, and more, whether such dimensions are named and taken up explicitly or not. When adjusting and refining our ways of knowing, we must continue interrogating power and how it operates in our field (Walton, Moore & Jones, 2019). For instance, McKinley Green (2021) notes “traditional usability and UX methods often fail to account for the complex material circumstances” that impact communication design. Natasha Jones (2016) and Emma J. Rose (2016) remind us our methods and designs are important forms of advocacy. Furthermore, Walton, Zraly, and Mugengana (2015) describe how such research is messy work, where values and validity always intertwine. Such concerns necessitate timely discussions about methods and methodologies. We encourage proposals discussing methods and methodologies of all sorts that center those on the margins and imagine new realities for building more inclusive, accessible, equitable spaces.

Guiding questions

As you write your proposals, we invite you to consider the following questions. The question list is not exhaustive, yet it represents ongoing and emerging challenges posed by methodologies and methods in our field. We also invite submissions that do not adhere to the conference theme, or that extend beyond these questions.

• What research methodologies and data collection methods are used to answer our research questions? To what end?
• What do research methodologies and data collection methods do, what can they do, what can’t they do, and what should they do?
• How do we negotiate the ways methods and methodologies reify, reinforce, or combat unbalanced power dynamics?
• How do we write up thorough descriptions of methods and methodologies? What information is most pertinent to different audiences?

Applied questions

• How do we determine the “appropriateness” of one method over another?
• What do we do when our methods and methodologies fail?
• How do we reconfigure our methodologies to address varieties of users?
• How do we dialogue with non-specialist stakeholders about adopting novel methods and methodologies?

Technological questions

• How do our technologies influence our methods and vice versa?
• How should our methods and methodologies adapt (or not) for mainstay and emerging technologies, such as AI?
• How do we take well-established methods and tools and scale them for time or budget constraints?
• How do technologies impact our choices of methods and methodologies?

Pedagogical questions

• bell hooks writes, “ideally education should be a place where the need for diverse teaching methods and styles would be valued, encouraged, seen as essential to learning.” How do we make this approach to methods a reality in our own classrooms?
• What sort of research methodologies are taught to graduate students and how should they be taught?
• What deficiencies come from how graduate students are taught research methodologies and data collection methods?
• How are quantitative and statistical methods taught? How are they used in our research? How can they be used? How should they be used?

Logistical questions

• Where are our research sites? Who are our research participants? What are our sources of data or information?
• How do we conceptualize and locate “users” when we design research?
• How do we deal with contexts that pose challenges to adopting particular research methods?
• What sampling methods do we use? What sampling methods should we use?
  

Ethical questions

• How can we practice more sustainable and ethical empirical research practices?
• What biases exist in technical and professional communication methodologies?
• How can we decolonize our research methodologies and practices?
• What untraditional or unusual methods do you ethically use in your research?

Important Dates

Questions

Program co-chairs Joseph Bartolotta and Kristin Marie Bivens invite questions related to the CFP at sigdocconference@gmail.com.

As you consider your proposal, be sure to read about the types of proposals and submission process.