Qualitative Data Analysis-elmo wiratama 15407103

Qualitative data is subjective, rich, and in-depth information normally presented in the form of words. In undergraduate dissertations, the most common form of qualitative data is derived from semi-structured or unstructured interviews, although other sources can include observations, life histories and journals and documents of all kinds including newspapers.
Qualitative data from interviews can be analysed for content (content analysis) or for the language used (discourse analysis). Qualitative data is difficult to analyse and often opportunities to achieve high marks are lost because the data is treated casually and without rigour. Here we concentrate on the content analysis of data from interviews.
Theory
When using a quantitative methodology, you are normally testing theory through the testing of a hypothesis. In qualitative research, you are either exploring the application of a theory or model in a different context or are hoping for a theory or a model to emerge from the data. In other words, although you may have some ideas about your topic, you are also looking for ideas, concepts and attitudes often from experts or practitioners in the field.
Collecting and organising data
The means of collecting and recording data through interviews and the possible pitfalls are well documented elsewhere but in terms of subsequent analysis, it is essential that you have a complete and accurate record of what was said. Do not rely on your memory (it can be very selective!) and either tape record the conversation (preferably) or take copious notes. If you are taking notes, write them up straight after the interview so that you can elaborate and clarify. If you are using a tape recorder, transcribe the exact words onto paper.
However you record the data, you should end up with a hard copy of either exactly what was said (transcript of tape recording) or nearly exactly what was said (comprehensive notes). It may be that parts of the interview are irrelevant or are more in the nature of background material, in which case you need not put these into your transcript but do make sure that they are indeed unnecessary. You should indicate omissions in the text with short statements.
You should transcribe exactly what is said, with grammatical errors and so on. It does not look very authentic if all your respondents speak with perfect grammar and BBC English! You may also want to indicate other things that happen such as laughter.
Each transcript or set of notes should be clearly marked with the name of the interviewee, the date and place and any other relevant details and, where appropriate, cross-referenced to clearly labelled tapes. These transcripts and notes are not normally required to be included in your dissertation but they should be available to show your supervisor and the second marker if required.
You may wonder why you should go to all the bother of transcribing your audiotapes. It is certainly a time-consuming business, although much easier if you can get access to a transcription machine that enables you to start and stop the tape with your feet while carrying on typing. It is even easier if you have access to an audio-typist who will do this labour intensive part for you. The advantage of having the interviews etc in hard copy is that you can refer to them very quickly, make notes in the margins, re-organise them for analysis, make coding notations in the margins and so on. It is much slower in the long run to have to continually listen to the tapes. You can read much faster than the tape will play! It also has the advantage, especially if you do the transcription yourself, of ensuring that you are very familiar with the material.
Content analysis
Analysis of qualitative data is not simple, and although it does not require complicated statistical techniques of quantitative analysis, it is nonetheless difficult to handle the usually large amounts of data in a thorough, systematic and relevant manner. Marshall and Rossman offer this graphic description:
"Data analysis is the process of bringing order, structure and meaning to the mass of collected data. It is a messy, ambiguous, time-consuming, creative, and fascinating process. It does not proceed in a linear fashion; it is not neat. Qualitative data analysis is a search for general statements about relationships among categories of data."
Marshall and Rossman, 1990:111
Hitchcock and Hughes take this one step further:
"…the ways in which the researcher moves from a description of what is the case to an explanation of why what is the case is the case."
Hitchcock and Hughes 1995:295
Content analysis consists of reading and re-reading the transcripts looking for similarities and differences in order to find themes and to develop categories. Having the full transcript is essential to make sure that you do not leave out anything of importance by only selecting material that fits your own ideas. There are various ways that you can mark the text:
Coding paragraphs – This is where you mark each paragraph with a topic/theme/category with an appropriate word in the margin.
Highlighting paragraphs/sentences/phrases – This is where you use highlighter pens of different colours or different coloured pens to mark bits about the different themes. Using the example above, you could mark the bits relating to childcare and those relating to pay in a different colour, and so on. The use of coloured pens will help you find the relevant bits you need when you are writing up.
With both the above methods you may find that your categories change and develop as you do the analysis. What is important is that you can see that by analysing the text in such a way, you pick up all the references to a given topic and don’t leave anything out. This increases the objectivity and reduces the risk of you only selecting bits that conform to your own preconceptions.
You then need to arrange the data so that all the pieces on one theme are together. There are several ways of doing this:
• Cut and put in folders approach
Make several copies of each transcript (keeping the master safe) and cut up each one according to what is being discussed (your themes or categories). Then sort them into folders, one for each category, so that you have all together what each interviewee said about a given theme. You can then compare and look for similarities/differences/conclusions etc. Do not forget to mark each slip of paper with the respondent’s name, initials or some sort of code or you won’t be able to remember who said what. Several copies may be needed in case one paragraph contains more than one theme or category. This is time consuming and messy at first, but easier in the long run especially if you have a lot of data and categories.
• Card index system
Each transcript must be marked with line numbers for cross-referencing purposes. You have a card for each theme or category and cross-reference each card with each transcript so that you can find what everyone has said about a certain topic. This is quicker initially but involves a lot of referring back to the original transcripts when you write up your results and is usually only suitable for small amounts of data.
• Computer analysis
If you have access to a computer package that analyses qualitative data (e.g. NUDIST) then you can use this. These vary in the way they work but these are some of the basic common principles. You can upload your transcripts created in a compatible word-processing package and then the software allows you to mark different sections with various headings/themes. It will then sort all those sections marked with a particular heading and print them off together. This is the electronic version of the folders approach! It is also possible to use a word-processing package to cut and paste comments and to search for particular words.
There is a great danger of subjective interpretation. You must accurately reflect the views of the interviewees and be thorough and methodical. You need to become familiar with your data. You may find this a daunting and stressful task or you may really enjoy it – sometimes so much that you can delay getting down to the next stage which is interpreting and writing up!
Presenting qualitative data in your dissertation
This would normally follow the topics, themes and categories that you have developed in the analysis and these, in turn, are likely to have been themes that came out in the literature and may have formed the basis for your interview questions. It is usually a mistake to go through each interviewee in turn and what they said on each topic. This is cumbersome and does not give the scope to compare and contrast their ideas with the ideas of others.
Do not analyse the data on a question-by-question basis. You should summarise the key themes that emerge from the data and may give selected quotes if these are particularly appropriate.
Note how a point is made and then illustrated with an appropriate quote. The quotes make the whole text much more interesting and enjoyable to read but be wary of including too many. Please note also the reference to literature (this one is an imaginary piece of literature) – you should evaluate your own findings in this way and refer to the literature where appropriate. Remember the two concepts of presenting and discussing your findings. By presenting we mean a factual description/summary of what you found. The discussion element is your interpretation of what these findings mean and how they confirm or contradict what you wrote about in your literature section.
If you are trying to test a model then this will have been explored in your literature review and your methodology section will explain how you intend to test it. Your methodology should include who was interviewed with a clear rationale for your choices to explain how this fits into your research questions, how you ensured that the data was unbiased and as accurate as possible, and how the data was analysed. If you have been able to present an adapted model appropriate to your particular context then this should come towards the end of your findings section.
It may be desirable to put a small number of transcripts in the appendices but discuss this with your supervisor. Remember you have to present accurately what was said and what you think it means.
In order to write up your methodology section, you are strongly recommended to do some reading in research textbooks on interview techniques and the analysis of qualitative data. There are some suggested texts in the Further Reading section at the end of this pack.