A context chart is a network, mapping in graphic form the interrelationships among the roles and groups (and, if appropriate, organizations) that make up the contexts of individual actions (see Display 7.2).
Applications
One problem a qualitative researcher faces is how to map the social contexts of individual actions economically and reasonably accurately—without getting overwhelmed with detail. A context chart is one way to accomplish these goals. Context charts work particularly well when your case is an individual—they show you the real richness of a person’s life setting.
Most qualitative researchers believe that a person’s actions have to be understood in their specific contexts and that contexts cannot be ignored or held constant. Contexts can be seen as immediately relevant aspects of the situation (where the person is physically, who else is involved, what the
recent history of the contact is, etc.), as well as the relevant aspects of the social system in which the person appears (a classroom, a school, a department, a company, a family, a hospital ward, or a local community). Focusing solely on individual actions without attending to their contexts runs the risk of misunderstanding the meanings of events. Contexts drive the way we understand those meanings, or, as Mishler (1979) notes, meaning is always within context, and contexts incorporate meaning.
Most people do their daily work in organizations: They have superiors, peers, and subordinates;
their work is defined in a role-specialized way; and they have different relationships with different people in other roles in their social vicinity. But you are not simply drawing a standard organizational chart; you are mapping salient properties of the context. Also, your chart will not be exhaustive or complete. It is a collection of organizational fragments or excerpts. (In Display 7.2, e.g., custodians, secretaries, and the immediate subordinates of most of the school district office personnel are excluded.) Context charts also can be drawn for people in families or in informal groups or communities.
Example
Networks ought to reflect the core characteristics of organizations: authority/hierarchy and division of labor. So it ought to show who has formal authority over whom and what the role names are. But those things don’t tell us very much. We should also know about the quality of the working relationships between people in different roles.
Suppose you were interested, as we were, in organizations called schools and school districts—
and with the general problem of how innovations enter and are implemented in those organizations.
The display should show us who advocated the innovation, who is actually using the innovation, and people’s attitudes toward it (whether or not they are using it). The display should show us how the specific school we are studying is embedded in the larger district organization. Above all, we need a display that will not overload us with information but will give us a clear, relevantly simplified version of the immediate social environment.
Display 7.2 shows how these requirements were met after a field-worker made a first visit to Tindale East, a high school involved in implementing a new reading program. The analyst selected out the roles and groups that are most critical for understanding the context. District office roles are above, school roles below. The network is thus partially ordered by roles and by authority level.
For each individual, we have a name, the age (a feature the analyst thought was important in understanding working relationships and career aspirations), a job title, whether the individual was a user of the innovation or not, and whether his or her attitude toward the innovation was represented through magnitude codes:
+ = positive
± = ambivalent 0 = neutral
Special symbols (such as *) are applied when the individual was an innovation advocate or influenced implementation strongly. The relationships between individuals are also characterized (positive, ambivalent, and neutral). Once past the upper echelons, the display simply counts individuals without giving detail (a secondary context chart at the level of individual teachers was also developed but is not shown here).
To get the data, the analyst consults field notes and available organization charts and documents.
The decision rules look like this:
• For information such as job title, number of persons, and so on, assume accuracy for the moment, and enter it.
• A relationship rating (how X gets along with Y) should not be discounted by the other party to the relationship, though it need not be directly confirmed.
• The “innovation advocate” and “high influence” ratings should be given only if there is at least one confirmation and no disconfirmations.
• If there is ambiguous or unknown information, enter “DK.”
Analysis
After a context chart has been constructed, the researcher reviews the hierarchies, flows, and magnitudes entered, in combination with the field notes, to develop an analytic memo or narrative that tells the relationship story thus far. An analytic excerpt about Display 7.2 reads as follows:
Looking at lines of authority, we can see that only one central office person (Crowden) has direct authority over department chairs as they work on the innovation. Crowden is not only an advocate but also has high influence over implementation, and seems to have a license from the superintendent to do this.
The department chairs, it appears, have three other “masters,” depending on the immediate issue involved (discipline, teacher evaluation, scheduling). Because, in this case, the innovation does involve scheduling problems, it’s of interest that V. Havelock is not only an advocate, but has actually used the innovation and is positive toward it. We might draw the inference that Crowden serves as a general pusher, using central office authority, and V. Havelock aids directly with implementation issues;
the field notes support this.
Note, too, that Principal McCarthy (a) is not accountable to the superintendent for curriculum issues and (b) has a good relationship with V. Havelock. Perhaps McCarthy gets his main information about the innovation from Havelock and thus judges it positively.
So the chart shown in Display 7.2 helps us place the actions of individuals (e.g., Crowden, V.
Havelock) in context to understand their meaning. For example, when Crowden, discussing the innovation, says, “It is not to be violated; its implementation is not based on the whim of a teacher at any moment in class, and its success is not dependent on charismatic teachers,” the chart helps us understand that this prescriptive stance is backed up with direct authority over department chairs for curriculum issues—an authority that is accepted neutrally. In short, the analyst has been employing the tactic of seeing patterns or themes, as well as subsuming particulars into the general (see Chapter 11 for more on these tactics).
The symbols employed for Display 7.2 were Miles and Huberman’s original magnitude codes, but you are not bound to using them. Context charts can employ other visual devices to enhance analysis.
For example, dashed lines can be used to show informal influence, while thick lines suggest strong influence. Font size can be used to represent power relationships—for example, the names in a larger or bolded font have more authority than the names in a smaller font. Circles can be drawn enclosing informal groups and subcultures. Linkages to other affecting organizations in the environment can be added. Physical contexts (e.g., a classroom, the teacher’s desk, resource files, student tables and chairs, and entrances) can be mapped to help understand the ebb and flow of events in a setting. And for an organizational context that seems to change a lot over a short time, revised context charts can be drawn for comparison across time.
Notes
Use context charts early during fieldwork to summarize your first understandings and to locate
questions for next-step data collection. Keep the study’s main research questions in mind, and design the context chart to display the information most relevant to them. If you’re new to qualitative research, keep your first context charts simple. They can be embroidered as you continue the fieldwork.