From ethnographic descriptions of a single office to a longitudinal survey of activists across hundreds of organizations, there are a wide range of options for investigating questions like the ones posed in this book. Before settling on the mixed-methods approach described in this appendix, I initially considered an especially detailed case study of one or two organizations, perhaps using ethnographic methods. While such an ethnographic study would have a great deal of value, I quickly rejected this possibility as it seemed incapable of thoroughly examining the linkages and fractures between the many organizations serving the disparate constituencies under the Middle Eastern identity umbrella.
The initial sample of interview respondents was obtained by simply calling, writing, or visiting the organizations’ offices. After meeting with the first wave of contacts, I pursued a purposive snowball sampling method (that is, I asked to be introduced to other respondents at the end of each interview). In a very short time, this provided an extensive list of further interview contacts. I did not limit the pool of potential interview respondents according to their institutional affiliation, but instead took an approach where I would speak to anyone affiliated with any advocacy organization. This led to a sample that spans many more organizations than the six specified for focused analysis. This technique allowed for a more complete picture of connections (and disconnections) between organizations across the field, while also developing a very adequate picture of the history of the six largest organizations that were the original focus of my research. A full list of interview subjects appears in table A.1.
In preparation for each interview, I constructed a customized list of topics to bring up during the course of the conversation based on what I already knew about the individual and her or his organization. These in-depth and qualitative semi-structured interviews gave respondents the ability to direct the course of the conversation. Even though these interviews involved a basic level of trust, it is possible that some respondents withheld information or misremembered events. There are ongoing debates among qualitative methodologists over how interview data can best be used as a source for empirical data. To support each of the conclusions I make in this book, I have more than one source of data. I attempted, where possible, to cross-reference between an interview and my content analysis. I note in the text when I rely on only one source.
Four of my respondents worked with the government (working directly on Middle Eastern American civil rights issues). In addition to the advocates, two were members of the clergy (one was a Christian priest and one was a Muslim imam). Eight interviews were with volunteers and community organizers who did not want to be affiliated with any one advocacy organization. Most interviews were conducted in person, either in the respondent’s office or at a restaurant, café, or other similar location. Several interviews were conducted by telephone. Most of the interviews were audio recorded and later transcribed. For the interviews where audio recording was not possible, I took notes during, or immediately after, the interview. After collecting notes and creating transcripts, I looked for common themes in the interviews through a systematic qualitative analysis process.
I was aware of my role as an outsider to the communities directly served by these advocates. I worried about being perceived as not only naïve and untrustworthy, but maybe even dangerous as well. Fortunately, these concerns proved to be unfounded. The vast majority of my respondents were quite eager to share their insights and opinions. Many, especially leading advocates and those who had worked in the advocacy field for a long time, were accustomed to giving interviews to researchers and journalists. A few had even met with American presidents and other heads of state, so they were hardly intimidated by my friendly (if persistent) requests to take up some of their time. In fact, two of my respondents revealed that they had been under active law enforcement surveillance in the past (one had actually seen his FBI dossier, years after it had been created). Both of them told me that they were knowledgeable about government espionage and knew right away that I was not an imposter. On a few occasions, the advocate asked to see my academic bona fides before agreeing to speak with me. I was once asked to provide proof of my academic status, and a bit of conversation and the presentation of my business card sufficed. Some respondents asked me about my personal beliefs, my political views, and my motivations for this research before I began asking questions of them. In all cases, I introduced myself with my academic affiliation to assure my respondents that I was a legitimate researcher, and I gave everyone my contact information in case of any concerns or questions after our meeting. This project, which involved human subjects, obtained an exemption from the University of California, Santa Barbara Institutional Review Board. The proposal number for this project was 20080322. At Dickinson College, this project received an expedited review from the Institutional Review Board, and it was approved. The protocol ID number was 97.
The sample of documents in the analysis was obtained in three ways. First, I downloaded all information from several organizations’ publicly available websites including all linked documents in several electronic formats multiple times between 2008 and 2015 using desktop web archival software. The software package, WinHTTTrack, followed hyperlinks from the organizations’ homepages and downloaded all linked documents to my computer. Second, I visited the headquarters of several organizations between 2007 and 2010, and I made digital copies of documents with a portable electronic scanner. Finally, I registered for the email newsletters of several organizations at various points between 2005 and 2013, and some of the newsletters delivered to me were added to the sample of documents. In a few instances, specific collections of documents were sent to me by officials at the organizations. In all, I obtained more than ten thousand documents. Even this number is not a representative sample of all of the work done by the organizations in the study, but they nevertheless provide a relevant sample describing the public-facing efforts of these advocacy organizations.
To analyze the documents, I used optical character recognition software to enable computer-assisted keyword searches. Each keyword search produced a series of sentences containing my search terms. I read through these sentences, coding relevant “hits” into several different categories. These coded sentences became a pool of information describing organizational activity. When discussing the results of my analysis in the book, I provide a citation to each document as published by the organizations. The process of compiling the documents informs my analysis in other ways as well.
My goal was to construct a database that contained information about all active Middle Eastern American advocacy organizations operating at any point between 1980 and 2010. To obtain data for this project, I first developed a list of keywords to use to search the index of the Encyclopedia of Associations. This list of keywords was developed over several iterations, after I discovered archaic words (e.g., “Moslem” for “Muslim”) in use during the 1980 edition. The final list of keywords, used to search both the 1980 and 2004 editions, is found in the list below.
After searching the index, and obtaining a list of organizations and the location of their entries, I then copied the data from each entry into a Microsoft Access database. I did not code or otherwise alter the information as it was presented in the Encyclopedia for this initial step. This process produced information on 159 organizations surveyed in the 1980 edition of the Encyclopedia and 382 organizations in the 2004 edition. Later, additional data on organizational finances was added from the Guidestar service to supplement the 2004 database.