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| A RESEARCH ORIENTATION AND METHODS OF DATA COLLECTION AND DISPLAY IN WESTERN CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY——A Content Analysis Based on Papers Published in Social & Cultural Geography |
| ZHU Hong1,2, LIU Bo1,3, QIAN Li-yun1 |
1. School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275;
2. Center for Cultural Industry and Cultural Geography, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631;
3. Guangzhou Open University, Guangzhou 510091 |
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Abstract Researches in human geography have three trends which are positivism thoughts, humanistic trend and structuralism trend. However, it is still uncertainty what kind of thoughts is most appropriate to a specific study. This paper attempts to take Social & Cultural Geography (SCG) as a sample to discuss the research orientation and specific methods which are most frequently utilized in Western cultural geography studies. This paper adopts content analysis method to study the 81 papers published in SCG during 2008 and 2009. In the analysis process, the authors' focus mainly on data collection methods, analytical methods and the type of supporting materials in those papers. The authors find that:in the research orientation, Western scholars of cultural geography tend to take the qualitative research orientation, emphasizing the researchers' wisdom and objectivity in excavating and interpretation of the social materials. As for the data collection and display, the Western scholars pay more attention to field research, using participant observation and interviews to obtain large amount of data and using evidence as written materials and photographs to prove the reliability and validity. In short, this paper opens a window of the Western cultural geography for the domestic geography researchers by content analyzing classic literatures in SCG, bringing in fresh air of qualitative researches and usage of the text data & photos for Chinese researches in Culture Geography.
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Received: 10 August 2010
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2011, Vol. 26 
