I am a culturally responsive inquiry methodologist with 25 years of experience across social science disciplines. Born to American parents, I spent my first 18 years in southern Africa. I have studied wide variations in structure from microculture to comparisons and syntheses of macro culture. I hold a PhD in quantitative, qualitative, & psychometric methods with a dissertation titled Tacit Cultural Knowledge: An Instrumental Qualitative Case Study of Mixed Methods Research in South Africa. I also hold an M.S. degree in survey methodology with a minor in cultural anthropology.
In the classroom, I have taught introductions to research, qualitative methods, mixed methods, statistics, survey methodology, and dissertation writing through face-to-face or distance media. I have taught at the U of Illinois, the U of Nebraska-Lincoln, Xi’an U in China, and the U of Pretoria in South Africa. I continue to serve as an adjunct instructor of research methods in Doane U's Doctor of Education program.
As a consultant, my clients have included Harvard U, the U of Ghana, Stellenbosch U, the U of Michigan, the Nebraska U system, the World Bank, and Community Action, with African-based work in Ghana, Lesotho, South Africa, and Tanzania. I have also presented a workshop at Cambridge University, consulted on large multilateral projects, and completed internships at the U.S. Census Bureau & the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture.
Relative to research life cycles, I guide study design, instrument development, data collection, data management & processing, data analysis, interpretation, the integrity of meaning, and articulation of methodology. In addition to actively collaborating with clients concerning inquiry methodology for ethnocultural, gender, and neurological diversity, I particularly enjoy mentoring dissertation writers on qualitative methods, mixed methods, & integrative inquiry and have done so for over 60 such authors.
Supervisors: John W. Creswell, Advisor, Jenn Rutt, Supervisor, and Alian Kasabian
In the classroom, I have taught introductions to research, qualitative methods, mixed methods, statistics, survey methodology, and dissertation writing through face-to-face or distance media. I have taught at the U of Illinois, the U of Nebraska-Lincoln, Xi’an U in China, and the U of Pretoria in South Africa. I continue to serve as an adjunct instructor of research methods in Doane U's Doctor of Education program.
As a consultant, my clients have included Harvard U, the U of Ghana, Stellenbosch U, the U of Michigan, the Nebraska U system, the World Bank, and Community Action, with African-based work in Ghana, Lesotho, South Africa, and Tanzania. I have also presented a workshop at Cambridge University, consulted on large multilateral projects, and completed internships at the U.S. Census Bureau & the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture.
Relative to research life cycles, I guide study design, instrument development, data collection, data management & processing, data analysis, interpretation, the integrity of meaning, and articulation of methodology. In addition to actively collaborating with clients concerning inquiry methodology for ethnocultural, gender, and neurological diversity, I particularly enjoy mentoring dissertation writers on qualitative methods, mixed methods, & integrative inquiry and have done so for over 60 such authors.
Supervisors: John W. Creswell, Advisor, Jenn Rutt, Supervisor, and Alian Kasabian
less
Related Authors
InterestsView All (39)
Uploads
Papers by Debbie Miller
In-person interviews among South African professors as well as a corpus of books, sections, journal articles, and theses informed the study. Narrative, thematic, and discursive analysis served to naturalistically generalize themes of the case and to approach an integrated crystallization of findings across data sources. Findings showed that research methodology in South Africa serves as a means to an end and requires relational ethics. Relational aspects of life require communicatively embedded collaborative approaches with time for minimally structured talk and storytelling in and across data collection events. Mixed methods studies face challenges of hybrid languages and styles with even educated participants displaying multiple forms of literacies. To deal with these realities, qualitative approaches dominate across studies of all approaches and in applications of mixed methods research. Whether asked by South African researchers or by external funders, research questions need to be contextually sensitive. Sensitive contexts require researchers to connect with both heart and mind in attempting to walk in participants’ shoes. Tacit cultural knowledge involves methodologies as political identities that lead to economically based knowledge.
Recommendations for research in South Africa and beyond include allowing plans to flexibly change, basing approaches to ethics on unregimented trust, considering cultural expressions of doubt when probing, and implementing fewer studies to result in more meaningful data. Ultimately, this study contributes an overview of mixed methods research conducted in South Africa for researchers on the subcontinent, and contributes an understanding of how to handle extreme cultural contrasts within a given study for audiences in the global north and south.
and ethnorelative views.
We used their definitions of ourselves
To disconnect our consciousness
For several hundred years, Europeans dominated the world outside their own areas, which led to unrelenting “cultural and psychological rape” (p. 11). A “compulsive drive
distinguishes cultures that ... unidirectional[ly] ... consume others” (p. 566) in the absence of “human meaning” (p. 567). Those crippled by this onslaught have been unable to think in ways that could lead to authentic self-definition. Marimba admonishes Africans not to focus on the “otherness” of those who differ from themselves. Because I lived in South Africa during apartheid years, I relate to a critique of Euro-American thought, which stifled my own perspective of the world. This essay promotes a return to the essence of human life in an African sense.
recommendations for the future use of mixed methods research. I then define both comparative and mixed methods research, before providing criteria for evaluating articles. Then I discuss the results of eight articles that comprise the corpus before ending with a discussion of challenges, recommendations, and considerations for future research."
Talks by Debbie Miller
Research Methods Samples by Debbie Miller
Conference Presentations by Debbie Miller
Book Reviews by Debbie Miller
In-person interviews among South African professors as well as a corpus of books, sections, journal articles, and theses informed the study. Narrative, thematic, and discursive analysis served to naturalistically generalize themes of the case and to approach an integrated crystallization of findings across data sources. Findings showed that research methodology in South Africa serves as a means to an end and requires relational ethics. Relational aspects of life require communicatively embedded collaborative approaches with time for minimally structured talk and storytelling in and across data collection events. Mixed methods studies face challenges of hybrid languages and styles with even educated participants displaying multiple forms of literacies. To deal with these realities, qualitative approaches dominate across studies of all approaches and in applications of mixed methods research. Whether asked by South African researchers or by external funders, research questions need to be contextually sensitive. Sensitive contexts require researchers to connect with both heart and mind in attempting to walk in participants’ shoes. Tacit cultural knowledge involves methodologies as political identities that lead to economically based knowledge.
Recommendations for research in South Africa and beyond include allowing plans to flexibly change, basing approaches to ethics on unregimented trust, considering cultural expressions of doubt when probing, and implementing fewer studies to result in more meaningful data. Ultimately, this study contributes an overview of mixed methods research conducted in South Africa for researchers on the subcontinent, and contributes an understanding of how to handle extreme cultural contrasts within a given study for audiences in the global north and south.
and ethnorelative views.
We used their definitions of ourselves
To disconnect our consciousness
For several hundred years, Europeans dominated the world outside their own areas, which led to unrelenting “cultural and psychological rape” (p. 11). A “compulsive drive
distinguishes cultures that ... unidirectional[ly] ... consume others” (p. 566) in the absence of “human meaning” (p. 567). Those crippled by this onslaught have been unable to think in ways that could lead to authentic self-definition. Marimba admonishes Africans not to focus on the “otherness” of those who differ from themselves. Because I lived in South Africa during apartheid years, I relate to a critique of Euro-American thought, which stifled my own perspective of the world. This essay promotes a return to the essence of human life in an African sense.
recommendations for the future use of mixed methods research. I then define both comparative and mixed methods research, before providing criteria for evaluating articles. Then I discuss the results of eight articles that comprise the corpus before ending with a discussion of challenges, recommendations, and considerations for future research."