Qualitative analysis

Not much gets written on how to do qualitative analysis, though there's plenty of people who write on the topic. Doing it is hard to explain. Miles and Guberman's text is helpful for its tables and overview of a lot of techniques, but as you get further into analysis, you need to know more. This web page explains something of content analysis. Braun and Clarke explain thematic analysis. Miles and Guberman touch on template analysis but you have to read King to know more about it.

Hence, not appreciating my explanation of my qualitative data analysis, supervisor #1 has pointed me at Dey's Qualitative Analysis for a discussion on linking, and connecting coded textual data. It would have been useful to have read it earlier, in my second year!

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Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006) 'Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology', Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3 (2), pp. 77-101.
Dey, I. (1993) Qualitative Data Analysis : A User-Friendly Guide for Social Scientists, Routledge, London.
King, N. (2004) 'Using Templates in the Thematic Analysis of Text'. In Cassell, C. and Symon, G. (Eds.), Essential Guide to Qualitative Methods in Organizational Research, Sage, London, pp. 256-270.
King, N. (2008) What Is Template Analysis?, University of Huddersfield, School of Human & Health Sciences Available from: http://www.hud.ac.uk/hhs/research/template_analysis/whatis.htm [Accessed 18 December 2010].
Miles, M. B. and Huberman, A. M. (1994) Qualitative Data Analysis : An Expanded Sourcebook, (2nd Edn), Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks.

More Nvivo

We covered today:

• relationships
• hyperlinks
• models
• find
• queries

I've created a journal and I've restructured my database to catalogue my cases as cases. I'm all analysed out. My head is like an overfull sponge that needs some of its water wringing out before it can absorb any more.

Qualitative analysis & NVivo

We have a two day work shop on NVivo, and not how to use, but why to use it. It's proving very useful and interesting, and would have saved me three days of coding back in January if I'd known then what I learned today.

Next time I get a case study, my process will be:

• Transcribe - delegate
• Add time stamps
• Style. e.g. different styles for interviewer, interviewee, and questions related to my framework. Then autocode.
  
• Font - use a big font that's easy to read on a screen
• Anonymise so I can share with supervisors (will they want to look?)
• Import to NVivo
• Code

Coding will include importing as cases, which I couldn't get my head round earlier - I hope I can now. I will import cases, assign attributes and perhaps analyse relationships using the relationship node.

NVivo course

Have just attended first half day of Nvivo course. It's a big piece of software that takes time and space on your computer. No wonder when I first tried it, it was so slow. But the software might allow more efficient analysis of data.

Despite efficient software the thinking work is still essential, what codes to use, and then how to write it up. Supervisors yesterday were asking if I'd given a fair account of the first two case studies - well yes - but only in that it is my account and only on the data that I picked out as important. And I didn't use Nvivo on the data - that's yet to be done.

There's another day of training next week and some homework to do. The course has helped because now I understand what the nodes are about.

Isn't second year busy compared to first?! Cases to collect, transcription, courses, conferences, papers to write and the literature still to search!