1. A first-hand account of analysing second-hand qualitative data Sara Davies NCRM Research Methods Festival 8 th July 2014 1www.pfrc.bris.ac.uk/esrc

2. 2 Why analyse secondary qualitative data? Part of SDAI bid Effective use of resources Increase capacity for answering research questions

3. www.pfrc.bris.ac.uk/esrc3 Main considerations when analysing secondary qualitative data? “how contextual knowledge influences the interpretation and analysis of data” (Irwin & Winterton 2012) Relationship between researcher and data Are data collected or constructed? (Hammersley 2010) Connections between multiple data sets (Haynes & Jones 2012) Increased ‘generalizability’ of findings

4. www.pfrc.bris.ac.uk/esrc4 How did these considerations affect our approach? Semi structured interviews vs. ethnographic data Relevance of context to our specific research questions Avoided existing interpretations of data used

5. www.pfrc.bris.ac.uk/esrc5 What data was available and relevant? UK Data Service Limited choice Two datasets used: Boomers and Beyond Keele Uni 2005 – 2007 Adding Quality to Quantity UCL 2002 – 2007 One data set chosen unseen

6. www.pfrc.bris.ac.uk/esrc6 What problems did we encounter? Lack of relevant data Time consuming Age of data Distance from data

7. www.pfrc.bris.ac.uk/esrc7 Conclusions Analysing secondary qualitative data has limited, specific utility: better to fit research question to the data available Hard to “get to know” participants at a distance Could illustrate quantitative findings in this case

8. Questions and further discussion www.pfrc.bris.ac.uk/esrc8 http://www.bris.ac.uk/geography/research/pfrc/esrc/ sara.davies@bristol.ac.uk @PFRC_Sara