'What's going on?' is from the Snakeskin Sketchbook series of artworks. It is inspired by the Illustration Friday topic 'Grounded'. This is an illustration about the research theory called Grounded Theory.
Grounded Theory is a general research method ; which guides a researcher on matters of data collection (where you can use quantitative data or qualitative data of any type e.g. video, images, text, observations, spoken word etc.); and details strict procedures for the data analysis. It is a research tool which enables you to seek out and conceptualise the latent social patterns and structures of an area of interest through the process of constant comparison. A bit like being the x-ray machine of the social world.
More info on Grounded Theory can be found here http://www.groundedtheoryonline.com/what-is-grounded-theory (Thanks to Helen Scott PHd)
How it relates to the above illustration is that it starts with listening, asking questions, and hearing what the little bird told you as data rather than hearing it as a story. Then you ask the bird another question getting further data, and again etc.
It's abstruse, I know, so please enjoy the image and interpret it as you wish.
From wikipedia: Grounded theory was developed by two sociologists,Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss. Their collaboration in research on dying hospital patients led them to write the book Awareness of Dying. In this research they developed the constant comparative method, later known as Grounded Theory.
