ABSTRACT
Research perspectives and methodologies are required that challenge universals, normality, and truths while avoiding oversimplifications and generalizations. Power is complex, intersecting, and always/already everywhere. We have come to realize that we may need to eliminate beliefs about research that have labeled individuals and groups and resulted in power/control/intervention by one group over others. Emerging from the field of medicine, Situational Analysis (SA) is a feminist, postmodern research method rooted in conceptualizations of grounded theory. Situational maps allow the researcher to broadly articulate the elements emerging from the context that are associated with a particular issue. Since SA allows for and facilitates the continual revisiting and revisioning of maps throughout the research project, data collection and analysis can begin with maps created during initial design of the research questions, like the situational maps that we constructed to provide focus to our research questions for the New Orleans early childhood study.
