Week 6 Qualitative Research Introduction to Analysis
What are inductive categories?
- Collect data without developing categories or making assumptions about results - Inductively create codes as the data are analyzed - Identify themes/relationships between the codes - Beware of the intensive time and resources required
How do you use the framework into descriptive analysis?
- Descriptive analysis - Range of responses in categories - Identify recurrent themes - Stop here if exploratory research
What is second order analysis?
- Identify recurrent themes -Notice patterns in the data - Identify respondents clusters, identify related themes - Search data to answer research questions - Develop hypotheses and test
What is a narrative analysis?
-Focuses on the ways in which people make and use stories to interpret the world -Extract and reflect on the narrative aspects of interviews -Reformulate stories presented by people in different contexts based on different experiences
What is discourse analysis?
-Method to analyze a spoken interaction and all written texts - Focuses on how language is used in everyday situations (simple and straightforward, vague and indirect, must refer to context: phenomenon can be described in a number of different ways)
What are coding approaches in qualitative research?
A Priori and inductive categories
What is a theory?
A set of interrelated concepts, definitions, and propositions that present a systematic view of events of situations by specifying relations among variables
What are characteristics?
A single item or event in a text similar to an individual response to a variable or indicator in a quantitative reserch
How is data analysis iterative?
Begins right away and continues through to writing phase, back and forth
How do you sort data into framework?
Code data and modify framework - Read and make comments - Create index - Read, re-read and then read again - Gather data, and code for meanings, feelings and actions - Look for processes and relationships between specific events and general processes - Enable coding to lead to new categories - Write memos about categories, processes, and ideas to document the analysis process - Move towards memos that are more conceptual and codes that are more abstract
What are coding sorts?
Compilation of similarly coded blocks o texts from different sources into a single file or reports
What are the types of qualitative analysis?
Content analysis Narrative analysis Discourse analysis .... no matter what, begin with content/thematic analysis (i.e. identifying recurring themes in the data)
What are A Priori categories?
Develop theoretical categories and the relationships between them based on existing knowledge or questions of interest - Begin data analysis after categories developed - Systematically record the categories as they occur in the data
When are questions generated?
During conceptual and design phase
What is content/thematic analysis?
Familiarization with the transcripts: read, listen, re-read, and make notes - Developing a coding framework (list of concepts and their labels) - Coding: all transcripts are "coded" with above framework, modifications made as analysis progresses, tags or labels for assigning units of meaning to the descriptive or inferential information compiled during a study. Usually attached to chunks of varying size-words, phrases, sentences or whole paragraphs - Cut and paste- explore codes between transcripts
What are themes?
Idea categories that emerge from grouping of lower level data points
How are codes organized?
Idea of data set vs individual participants - Raw data -> categories, concepts, themes - Each code is effectively a category or "bin" into which a piece of data is placed - Approach to coding is matter of preference (e.g. paper/highlighter, computer software- understand, sort, organize, make sense of) - Computer software can be helpful but it doesnt do the thinking for you
What emerges during data collection?
Insights and interpretations
Where does analytical process begin?
Interviews , focus groups, observations, research journal, reflexive journal, memos, sources for organization of analytical process
What does data analysis organize/interpret?
Mass of data collected and presents results in a way that communicates the most important features (in the context of your research objectives)
What does coding lead to?
New categories, collect more data on the developing categories - Go back and read earlier data for the new categories and to formulate new interview questions (iteration) - Write memos all the time about categories, processes, emerging ideas etc. - Move toward memos that are more conceptual and codes that are more abstract (interpretation: manifest vs. latent) - Coded data may then be organised into themes
What is indexing?
Process that generates a word list comprising the substantive words and their location within the texts entered into a program
How do you identify the framework?
Read, re-read, and read again Explanatory- guided by research questions Exploratory-guided by data Structures, labels, and defines data Plan for coding
What is coding?
The process of attaching labels to lines of text so that the researcher can group and compare similar or related pieces of information
What is data analysis informed by?
Theoretical assumptions of researcher nd goals of the study (same as all other research decisions)
How do you organize the data?
Transcribe, clean, anonymize text, label
What is the difference between descriptive and interpretive?
What is the data vs. what does the data mean?
