2016 American Psychological Association Presentation

1. Situational Analysis:
An Emerging Tool for
Uncovering Theoretical Complexity
American Psychological Association
Christopher Beasley, PhD, MA
2016
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT RESEARCH TEAM

2. • Grounded Theory
– Understand the action
• Situational Analysis
– Understand the situation of the action
Goals
Clarke, 2005; Clarke, 2015

3. • Grounded theory analysis
• Situational maps
• Social worlds/arenas maps
• Positional maps
SA Process Overview
Clarke, 2005; Clarke et al., 2015

4. Situational Maps
Clarke, 2005

5. • Most important human & nonhuman elements of
the situation
– People & things in the situation
– Which seem to make a difference in the situation
– Which of these matter most in the situation
– What facilitates action
– What hinders action
• Used for relational analysis
Situational Maps
Clarke, 2005

6. Messy Situational Map
Clarke, 2005

7. Ordered Situational Map
Clarke, 2005

8. • Describing relationships between elements
– Range of elements related to
– Specific elements related to
– Strength of relationship between elements
– Prominent relationships
• Absence of expected relationships
Relational Analysis
Clarke, 2005

9. Relational Map
Shostak, S, 2003

10. • Examines collective entities
– Naming
– Describing
– Relationships between
– Discourse w/i & b/t
Social Worlds/Arena
Clarke, 2005; Clark et al., 2015

11. • Collective entities in worlds
• Commitments of each world
• How commitments are fulfilled
• Work done by each world
• Past actions & expected future actions
• Specific sites of action and what they’re like
• How work furthers world’s agenda
• How world describes itself in discourse
• How world describes other worlds
• Technologies used, implicated, or produced
• How technology moves w/i & between worlds
Social Worlds
Clarke, 2005

12. • Focus of the arena
• Social worlds present & active
• Expected but absent worlds
• Boundaries between worlds
• Discourse produced by worlds within an arena
• Controversies in discourse
• Arena-wide discourses
• Surprising silences in discourse
Social Arenas
Clarke, 2005

13. Social Worlds/Arenas Map
Clarke, 2005

14. Social Worlds/Arena Map
Shostak, 2003

15. • Positions in the situation
• Missing positions
• Site-specific positions
Positional Map
Clarke, 2005; Clarke et al., 2015

16. Positional Map
Clarke, 2005

17. Positional Map
Shostak, S, 2003

18. • Situational Maps
– Elements in the situation
– Relationship between elements
• Social Worlds/Arenas Maps
– Collective entities
– Nature of collective entities
– Relationships between collective entities
– Discourse in worlds/arenas
• Positional Maps
– Various positions taken in discourse
– Missing positions
Summary

19. • Developing complex situation-specific theories
• Combining situation-specific theories into
complex universal theories
• Developing complex adaptive systems models
for communities
Future Directions

20. Clarke, A. (2005). Situational analysis: Grounded
theory after the postmodern turn. Sage.
Clarke, A. E., Friese, C., & Washburn, R.
(2015). Situational analysis in practice: Mapping
research with grounded theory. Left Coast Press.
Bone, D. (2002). Dilemmas of emotion work in nursing
under market-driven health care. International
Journal of Public Sector Management, 15(2), 140-
150.
Shostak, S. (2003). Locating gene–environment
interaction: at the intersections of genetics and
public health. Social Science & Medicine,56(11),
2327-2342.
References