Dr Leo Appleton

The 13th Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries International Conference (QQML2021) takes place this week from Tuesday 25th until Friday 28th May. At the conference, Dr Leo Appleton, who completed his doctoral study within the Centre for Social Informatics last year, is presenting a paper that he and I have co-authored.

Entitled ‘Using a multi-location, longitudinal focus group method to conduct qualitative research into the role of public libraries‘, the theme of our paper is the novel multi–location longitudinal focus group method that Leo adopted for the empirical phase of his PhD research on the role of UK public libraries. In his presentation slot on Tuesday, Leo will discuss the value of data collection from fifty–three participants in three rounds of focus group meetings in eight UK public library authorities. He will explain that this approach generated a rich data set for qualitative analysis. In particular, he will draw attention to the increasing level of sophistication and depth of discussion amongst the study participants over the course of the three rounds of focus group meetings. Leo will also acknowledge participant attrition as the main drawback of this approach.

The full-text version of the conference paper is available from the Edinburgh Napier repository. The slides for this week’s QQML presentation are available on SlideShare and below.

Leo’s full PhD thesis The 21st century public library in England and Scotland: epistemic, community and political roles in the public sphere can also be downloaded as a full-text PDF from the Edinburgh Napier University repository.