I was recently asked to work on a review of the existing Canadian literature on missing persons. In theory, this should be an easy task: there isn’t much.

That’s the problem: there isn’t much and, what is there, is a tad … not good.

What’s a girl to do?

I decided to deal...

The other week I was engaged in a discussion with a frontline officer on the interminable question of how do you get research project ideas up from the shop floor into the Executive suite. My response was simple: unless your organization has a built-in mechanism for do...

A while back I read a report that was released with some fan fare. It was a study offering public policy recommendations on the criminal justice system based on 13 interviews with a highly biased sample. There was lots of discussion of research methods – from sampling...

It’s time to revisit one of my favourite topics: improving rigor in qualitative research. What is this, you say?

Anyone who has ever taken a class or training session with me has heard me rip a new one – metaphorically speaking – into examples of junky research. I’ve pi...

Yesterday I was out walking the pups, when the neighbors called me over. "Why", they keenly inquired, "were there two police cars parked in the park nearby?" Having just come out of the park, this was easy to answer: LPS was running some kind of a cops-kids sports day....

We here at CAN-SEBP Headquarters remain as busy as ever. As you know, we're currently working on projects in London and Victoria. What you might not know is, counter to the perception we only ever work in Ontario (like Victoria, Ontario), we also have projects going in...

One of the relative advantages of traveling so much is that I end up spending a lot of time looking at books at the airport. On my most recent trip, I bought several interesting books.

Let’s start with This Idea is Brilliant and Richard Thaler’s discussion of the prem...

Let me begin with a confession: I'm not only a qualitative researcher, I'm actually an ethnographer. That means I'm one of those nutter Profs who forsakes the Ivory Tower for the field, and my research field has largely been marginalized communities colloquially or oth...

In evaluations for programs aimed at improving client outcomes it is not uncommon for evaluators to interview those administering the "treatment" - that is, they ask they ask those individuals who deliver the program what they think of the program they run. It is also...

One of the most abused words in the English language must certainly be theory. Here are some common examples:

1. "I have a theory ..."

2. "Astrological theory explains how your birth date reveals the pattern of your life"

3. "It's just a theory"

All three of the ab...