In an interdependent qualitative research paradigm, the progress of the research relies on the participants and researchers to continually seek the feedback of the participants on the research.

Interdependent Qualitative Research Paradigm

To code interviews for the Disabled Academics Study (DAS), the research team used grounded theory, discourse analysis, and category construction.

Interview Coding in Disabled Academics Study

Price notes that to achieve the values of accessibility and interdependence, Price and the research team drew on a research method Price conceived during her work on the book Mad at School which she called an interdependent qualitative research paradigm and the team drew on principles that Price outlined in her article "Disability Studies Methodology."

Price notes that throughout the survey and interview process that the team strove to make their research methodology accessible and interdependent.

Values of the Research Team

Price notes that multiple shifts occurred during the designing and conducting of the Disabled Academic Study: mainly widening the types of disabilities included and the types of academics included. 

Shifts in Designing the Study

Price, M. (2024). Crip Spacetime. Duke University Press.

Crip Spacetime

Price, Margaret. 2012. "Disability Studies Methodology: Explaining Ourselves to Ourselves." In Practicing Research in Writing Studies: Reflexive and Ethically Responsible Research, edited by Katrina Powell and Pamela Takayoshi, 159-186. New York: Hampton.

Disability Studies Methodology

Foundations of Research Methods

Interviews were transcribed and quotations from interviews throughout the book are shared in what price calls a "near-verbatim" fromat, in this format markers for short pauses, occasional stumbles over words, and vocalizations like "um", and "uh" are omitted, however speech patterns including pauses longer than two seconds, words that were started then interuppted (for example "nev-well almost never"), repeated utterances including "um" and "like", and moments where the interviewer and speaker are simultaneously communicating.

Near-Verbatim Format

Price and Kerschbaum are both disabled, Price notes that the dynamic of having both disabled researchers and disabled research participants had effects on the data collection methodologies and analysis including that interviews were conducted in various combinations of in-person, remote, telephone, email, instant messaging, signing, and oral speech with additions of interpreting and captioning. Additionally, participants had assistants, personal interpreters, and service animals present.

Researcher Identity and Study Creation

Price and Salzer decided to include a content warning at the beginning of the survey out of an understanding that questions within the topic of mental health, including but not limited to questions about institutionalization or discrimination at work, may be triggering for specific individuals. The content warning informed participants that they would encounter questions related to diagnoses, medication (while also informing participants they would not be asked to disclose what medication they take), hospitalizations, experiences of disclosing mental health diagnosis status and relationships with co-workers. The content warning also encouraged participants to skip questions and that they could stop the survey at any time.

Content Warnings in DAS (Disabled Academics Study)

Price notes that in thinking about access the research team used the theory of access as process.Titchkosky theorizes access as procress as the idea that access is not a set goal that we meet but instead an unfolding process that happens between specific bodyminds and in specific places and depends on the interaction between bodies. 


Access as a Process

Price points out that researchers sometimes treat non-oral modes of conducting interviews, for instance sign languages, email, or typed chat, as less than oral interviews. Some believe that non-oral modes make it harder for an interviewer to connect with and maintain the interviewee's interest. But, this belief ignores not only access needs but also that digitally mediated and non-oral modes might be the most natural and usable for disabled researchers and research participants. 

Research and non-oral modes

The initial survey for the Disabled Academics Study (DAS) only included participants with what Price classifies as "mental disabilities," whereas the interviews included participants with a wide range of disabilities.

Including Multiple Types of Disabilities in DAS

Initially the Disabled Academics Study (DAS) only focused on disabled faculty but, the study expanded to later include graduate students. While the study initially did not have the resources to tailor the study to some of the unique considerations of graduate students' interactions with academia Price later decided to include graduate students since many graduate student simulanteously hold faculty, staff, or administrator roles - since 70 percent of postsecondary instruction is carried out by non-tenure-track instructors.

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