1.  SWK 707 Research Methods for Social Work Practice Nechama Sammet Moring Class 5 Zombie themed!

2. Tonight’s plan  6:00-6:10 Check in, logistics, assignment 2 questions  6:10-6:40 Bingo review  6:40-7:00 program evaluation lecture  6:50-7:10 operationalizing and understanding variables  7:10-7:30 zombie program evaluation and measurement activity  7:30-7:40 break  7:40-8:00 discussion of returned assignment 1  8:00-8:30 research writing lecture and activity  8:30-8:55 qualitative analysis  8:55 evals

3. Some announcements  We may or may not get to qualitative measurement tonight. We wil discuss next week if we don’t  You will get assignment 1 back right before the break  We are going to have a brief research writing workshop tonight  Next week, we are going to have another writing workshop.  Please bring a SINGLE write up of ONE study from your annotated bib to peer workshop next week  Quiz 2 will be week 7. It will be about study design and anything else on your bingo card  In order to address the boring-ness of research methods, we will be having theme nights more often. Please feel free to suggest themes

4. Assignment 2  You can double space!  For each article, you need 2 paragraphs  Paragraph 1 is descriptive (everything on the assignment guidance in the syllabus that DESCRIBES the study and it’s relationship to the big picture of your topic)  Paragraph 2 is analysis (everything in the assignment guidance that EVALUATES the study and its place in the big picture of your topic, including srengths, weaknesses, and ultimately how much weight YOU think we should give it)

5. Assignment 2  Piecing together the puzzle pieces of your topic  Due class 8  You will NOT be including every article you read  In general, articles should be no more than 10-15 years old. If there is a classic in the field, you may include it as long as the oher articles are newer

6. Oh NO!!!! The Zombie Apocalypse is here!!  And we gotta study it!! Cuz that should be your first reaction when the zombie apocalypse hits…

7. Zombie bingo  I notice that several of my neighbors are stumbling around looking like they had a really bad night last night. They are paler and more bloody than usual and keep mumbling stuff about brains. I sit down on my stoop and watch what happens. What am I doing?

8. Zombie bingo  Now one of my neighbors walks up to me and does something to my neck. I black out a little and when I wake up, I’m part of a group of neighbors stumbling through the neighborhood. I ask where we’re going, cuz I’m part of the group, and I write down what they say.

9. Zombie bingo  I stay with the hoard for a month and take lots of notes. I’m trying to understand the culture of zombies as a whole so I watch people and interview them as they eat brains and perform other usual activities of zombie life

10. Zombie bingo  After completing my project, I get really interested in the experience of being a zombie. I pick 3 subjects and spend a lot of time with them and interview them repeatedly. My goal is an in-depth understanding of their lives (un-lives?), perspectives and experiences eating brains.

11. Zombie bingo  My zombie crew and I notice that there is a shortage of brains for us to eat, and living people often make fun of us. I’m a qualified researcher, so I work collaboratively with my zombie crew to learn more together about why there are so few brains and why people hate us. Based on what we learn, we go to the state house to advocate for a statewide Zombie Acceptance Day and a new brain- supply program.

12. Zombie bingo  Now I decide to do more traditional qualitative research, and so I have a bunch of zombies get together and I ask them all questions about the brain shortage and their other food preferences.

13. Zombie bingo  I meet one on one with Zombie Steve and ask him to tell me all about being a zombie

14. Zombie bingo  When I let Zombie Steve direct the interview, all he did was mumble, so I decide to take a more standardized approach with more directed questions, like “what were the last 3 things you ate?” “what do you like about eating brains?” “is there anything you dislike about eating brains?”

15. Zombie bingo  I’ve been hanging around my own neighborhood for a while, which is becoming increasingly zombiefied (potentially as bad as gentrified!). I want to know if it’s the same all across the city, so I go to various neighborhoods and knock on 10 doors in each to ask people how many zombies they have seen that day. What kind of study design is this?

16. Zombie bingo  Based on my survey, I learn that there are more zombies in Roxbury and JP than there are in Fenway and lower Allston. I theorize that proximity to Fenway Park might have a relationship between number of zombies per capita. What is this relationship called?

17. Zombie bingo  Then I notice that there is a relationship between undead status and eating brains. I do some research and learned that everyone in my sample was undead before they started to eat brains, that previous studies have shown a correlation between eating brains and being undead. I explore whether other factors (aside from being undead) could cause people to eat brains, and I don’t find any. What is the relationship between undead status and brain eating called?

18. Zombie bingo  More and more people in my neighborhood are becoming undead, and I want to understand the relationship between living in zombie town and becoming a zombie. I get informed consent from 100 neighbors and from 100 people in zombie-less Fenway and enroll them in a study to observe who becomes zombies. I contact each person every month and ask them if they are currently alive, dead or undead, and, if undead, when they became a zombie. What kind of research design is this?

19. Zombie bingo  The zombies are getting restless, and I’m worried. I decide to test whether teaching zombies meditation skills can reduce the number of zombie attacks on living humans. I gather 20 zombies in my living room and have them take a pre-test about how likely they are to attack. I teach a meditation class and then have them fill out the same survey again to determine if their self-rated attack likelihood has decreased. I also monitor the number of zombie attacks in my neighborhood for the next 3 months. Research design?

20. Zombie bingo  Unfortunately, my meditation class fails and zombie attacks are up. Furthermore, Revere has also developed a zombie problem, and the Revere zombies have learned how to swim, since they didn’t cancel the swimming lessons at Revere Beach in time of the zombie apocalypse. My friend in Revere and I are interested in how to best kill Zombies. She has a spear and I have a watergun. We each go out zombie hunting for 2 hours starting at 9 am and compare total kills in the spear group and the watergun group to determine if spears or water guns are most effective at zombie destruction. Research design?

21. Zombie bingo  Killing the zombies has failed miserably, and so I decide to befriend them but I don’t know how. Since my neighborhood is all zombies at this point, I randomly select every 5 th building as a zombie study site. Then, I go to each building and, in front of every apartment door, I flip a coin. If it’s heads, I leave a pre-written love letter on the doorstep with my phone number and address. If it’s tails, I just leave a card with my phone number and address. I track how many zombies call me and ask to be my friend in each group-the love letters and the plain cards. Experimental design?

22. Zombie bingo  I want to make sure that my sample of zombies for the friendship study accurately represents the entire population of zombies, so I randomly select zombies to participate-everyone has an equal chance of being picked? This is what?

23. Zombie bingo  It’s not convenient or practical to do random/probability sample in my unfunded zombie friendship study, so I just stand in front of the brain market and ask the first 100 zombies who walk by to participate in a survey about what they look for in living friends. Sampling method?

24. Zombie bingo  I’m not having much luck hanging out in front of the brain market, which is a thing apparently when your neighborhood zombiefies, so I decide to use a new strategy where I use my existing knowledge of the zombie community to more accurately target my sampling strategy. It turns out that zombies really love mini-golf and bowling and are pretty well organized into bowling leagues. I get permission to hang out at the league tournament and talk with teams as they wait for their matches. I also work with the mini-golf course to have their employees approach all mini-golfing zombies and give them my card. I don’t spend as much time at the library (hard to read when you’re undead) or the movie theater (horror movies make zombies nervous), though there are some zombies there, but not as many as bowling alleys or mini-golf courses. Sampling strategy?

25. Zombie bingo  I’m actually friends already with a zombie community leader who was one of the first participants in my study. After I interview her, I ask her to share materials about my study with several of her zombie friends. What sampling strategy is this?

26. Zombie bingo  My friendship study showed that zombies really just want acceptance and long for romance, and they really like love letters. Therefore, I start a zombie-human friendship and dating program, Z-Harmony. Z-Harmony home visitors do home visits to collect information and help clients complete dating profiles, then match compatible humans and zombies. We also provide social skill coaching classes for zombies and zombie basics classes for humans. About 6 months in, I want to know how my program is working, so I audit how many profiles per day each home visitor is assisting with, and I ask the home visitors and teachers to describe what is and isn’t working in their activities.

27. Zombie bingo  Now it’s been a year, and I want to know if Z-Harmony has met it’s goals of improving trust between humans and zombies and of successfully matching compatible inter- undead status couples. I send out a survey to all past and current Z-Harmony users, human and zombie, and ask them to rate their trust levels of each other and I conduct qualitative interviews to better understand Z-Harmony’s impact on zombie-human relationships. I also document the number of zombie-human relationships and marriages. What kind of program evaluation is this?

28. Challenge round  I’m a social worker at the Hyde Square Task Force, a youth empowerment program and I’m concerned about the chlamydia cluster. I work with a group of teenage co-researchers to interview their peers to figure out why chlamydia rates are up, and then lobby the city council to renew funding for the recently closed teen health center at English High School.

29. Challenge round  I want to know how having a child with autism impacts parents financially. I decide to visit 2 parent support groups and 1 early intervention program to recruit study participants for interviews about the financial costs of autism. This sampling strategy is called ___________

30. Challenge round  I want to know understand the relationship between Sam rolling in dead things she finds on walks and Sam smelling bad. I smell Sam first thing in the morning and give her a pre-walk smell score, and then note how many dead thing rolls she completes on her morning walk. I assign another smell score after the walk. I also note any other occurrences that could make her smell bad, like skunk battles, dead thing eating etc

31. Challenge round  I’m running a program for elementary-aged children who are having trouble with reading. To motivate them, a dog comes to class and the child reads to the dog. I evaluate my program by looking at the number of kids enrolled vs the number of kids who attend the dog- reading sessions, the process used to match kids with dogs and if the classroom teachers feel that the kids who need the help are getting it, and whether the volunteer dogs actually show up for their stories. I also ask about unexpected problems that might have come up, and whether people like the program

32. Challenge round

33.  My program where dogs come to school and kids read them stories to improve their reading has been running to a year. I survey the classroom teachers to evaluate how satisfied they are with the program, and I look at whether kids’ reading scores have improved and by how much. I also ask kids, parents and dogs if they feel they have improved their reading, and whether reading to dogs is helpful.

34. Challenge round  I’m doing a study about the connection between being a parent and being tired. I stand in front of the DMV and ask everyone going inside if 1. they have children and 2. how tired they are on a scale from 1-10. This kind of sampling is called: ____

35. Challenge round  I’m interested in the connection between people and animals and I interview 20 people who have pets and 20 people who don’t. I ask them to describe their relationships with and feelings about animals, and then I compare the pet owners to the non-pet owners. As I analyze my data, I start developing a theory, based on what people said, that having a pet themselves makes people more interested in other people’s pets.

36. Challenge round  I want to prove that people who eat Doritos are happier. I call every 5 th person in the phone book and bring 1000 people into my lab. When each person comes in, they go into a private room, and I flip a coin to decide if they are in cohort A or cohort B. People in Cohort A get Doritos and people in Cohort B get kale chips. Everyone takes a survey when they first come in and another survey after their snack. The survey collects data about their happiness level.  What study design is this? What sampling strategy

37. Challenge Round  I want to know if there is a relationship between disgusting jokes about wrecking toilets and how much my students respect me as a professor. I have everyone fill out a survey about how much you respect me. Then I say something gross to everyone, since it wouldn’t be ethical or feasible to have half of you leave the room for my toilet humor (you’re paying students!) and I don’t teach any other classes right now. Afterwards, you fill out the same respect survey.

38. Challenge round  I want to know if eating kale makes people gassy. I teach in an all girl’s school and I bring in kale for the school picnic, then ask kids to track their total farts per day. My colleague teaches in an all boys school and she offers to have her students serve as a control group who don’t get kale, but do track their farts. The next day, my colleague and I compare fart diaries to see if the kale kids were gassier than the non-kale kids.

39. Types of research projects Research Quali- tative Quanti- itative Program evaluation Process/formativeOutcome/summative

40. Formative and summative Formative  While program is running, make changes as needed  Collect and analyze data at various intervals  Make program improvements along the way Summative  Use at end of the program  Summarize outcomes and results  Justify continued use of program

41. Outcomes  Can be measured qualitatively, quantitatively or both  Need to be measurable, observable, specific, time- framed (MOST)  Important to evaluate the right outcomes (you don’t know what you don’t know)  Outcomes of importance might be different for different stakeholders (i.e. is what clients want the same as what their parole officers want?)

42. Zombie example:  Measurable: zombies enrolled on the human social interaction class will improve their scores on the human behavior interpretation scale by 10% or more over their pre-class score  Observable: Test scores are easily observed  Specific: By 10%  Timed: After the class

43. Multi-level  Identify stakeholders  Collect data from different stakeholder groups (i.e. clients, staff, funders, families, management)  Compare and contrast perspectives  Can be really telling!

44. Process for Formative evaluation  Program description (what are the goals? Who is served? What’s happening? What’s intended to happen?)  Program monitoring (we meant to do X, we are actually doing Y because there was a squirrel and we got distracted)  Quality assurance (can we reliably tell our clients and other stakeholders that we are doing what we said we would?)

45. Vocab word: Fidelity  For programs based on an existing model or framework, how close the original are you?  For example, Alcoholics Anonymous always has 12 steps, implemented in a very specific way  If I run my AA groups with 10 steps or 14 steps, it might be the right choice for my clients but I’m not maintaining fidelity to the original AA model  Balance fidelity with cultural appropriate-ness, gender-specific needs, community-specific needs etc  Tailoring programs while maintaining fidelity (ie church-based AA vs atheist community club AA but both have the 12 steps)

46. Ethics, bias, power dynamics  How honest can people be?/ What are the consequences of being honest?  Who is the program evaluation for? Yourself? Clients? Staff? Funders? (i.e. who’s interests are being served?)  Confidentiality and privacy-i.e. the single Vietnamese speaker/single qenderqueer person/only parent in the rehab program felt that they were discriminated against- what retaliation do they face for the next 60 days for sharing it with the evaluator? Whistleblower phenomenon

47. 1. Identify stakeholders, learn about them 2. Involve all in planning the evaluation (obtain buy-in) 3. Develop logic model 4. Assure all of feedback build-in 5. Determine format of report needed 6. Present negative data thoughtfully 7. Make realistic recommendations, positive spin Best practices in program evaluation

48.  Graphic portrayal depicting essential elements of program  How goals/objectives link to elements  Link to short-term process measures  Measurable indicators of success  Link to longer-term outcome measures  Measurable indicators of success Logic models

49. Example logic model: Sam training InputsActivitiesOutputsShort- term outcomes mid-term outcomes Long term outcomes SamSam practices looking at N Eye contact Sam maintains eye contact for 30 sec Sam looks at N for 1 min while squirrel passes Sam looks at N for 9 out of 10 squirrels NechamaLong leash recall Running towards N 50% recall75% recall90% recall treatsSit staysCue word develops Sit for.5 sec Sit for 1 minute Maintain sit around squirrels Long leash park

50. Sam break

51. REVIEW: Population vs. Sample  Population  (a.k.a. Universe)  complete listing of a set of elements having a given characteristic(s) of interest  Sample  Infers population characteristics from a subset of the population  Saves money  Saves time  Can be more accurate – don’t need whole pop

52.  Moving from concepts to observations  It’s about operationalization  Moving from ideas to reality  It’s about objectivity  Working to objectively measure things the same way  Does everyone agree on “know it when you see it?”  As objective as possible vs. subjective personal judgment 52 Quantitative measurement of concepts

53.  Process of making distinctions  Where variables come from (process of concept operationalization in quantitative research)  Putting value labels on variables  Importance of consistency with the literature (i.e. what other people do) 53 Quantitative: More on measurement

54. Dependent and Independent Variables  Quant research is about demonstrating relationships between variables  Independent variable just exists. (I am either undead or not)  Dependent variable is influenced by the independent variable (whether or not I’m undead has a relationship to if I eat brains or not)  A change in the independent variable leads to a change in the dependent variable

55. Examples of IV and DV  Intervention studies: the intervention is the IV (you just give your how to not eat brains class) and the outcome is the DV (do zombies stop eating brains after your class)  Predictive variable is a kind of IV-it comes first and it makes the DV more likely. Note it is not a guarantee, or causative, but ups your statistical odds

56. Confounding variables  Confounder is something that impacts both the IV and the DV  Muddies the waters

57. Kinds of variables, for your operationalizing fun!  Dichotomous-one of 2 options (i.e. yes/no)  Nominal-mutually exclusive categories (zombie, human, sheep, elephant)  Ordinal-mutually exclusive categories that go in order (1 st, 2 nd, 3 rd )  Continuos (interval)-rank ordered, mutally exclusive and there is the same amount of difference between each variable, like height, 5, 5’1, 5’2 etc)  Ratio-continuous but with a fixed 0 (number of kids, 0-19)

58. Putting variables to use-measures  Instruments  Can be standardized or not

59. 59 Quantitative: Types of measurement  Standardized  Existing research has come to a conclusion about how to measure a concept  Accepted screening or assessment tools  Accepted measurement tools or approaches  Unstandardized  A measurement approach that has not been accepted in the literature  Often a new concept – or a new-to-research concept that is in process towards a standardized measurement approach  Only used as a last resort

60. Quantitative: Translation: Standardized measurement approaches  Uniform administration  Uniform scoring  Measured/observed the same way  Defined the same way  Tests measure in a given population 60

61. 1) "Have you ever felt you should Cut down on drinking (drug use)?" 2) "Have people Annoyed you by criticizing your drinking (drug use)?" 3) "Have you ever felt Guilty about your drinking (drug use)?" 4) "Have you ever taken a drink (used drugs) in the morning to steady your nerves or get rid of a hangover (“Eye opener”)?  Scoring :  Answering YES to 2 questions provides strong indication for substance abuse or dependency  Answering YES to 3 questions confirms the likelihood of substance abuse or dependency 61 Quantitative: Example: CAGE Screener

62. 62 Quantitative: Example: Defining intellectual disability  Clinical definition  Functional  Cognitive  ICD-9-CM definition  DSM-IV definition  Observation  Standardized testing  Use the best option you can – consistently  Caveat: Some research tests/explores how people define something (e.g. resiliency, success)

63.  Are you satisfied with our services?  How it is asked matters  Who asks it matters  Asking the big question might not get the real picture  What do we intuitively know about what causes someone to be satisfied?  Measures usually are an estimate of or “proxy” for satisfaction 63 Quantitative: Example: Defining Social service satisfaction

64. How do we know a measure is good?  Validity: does it measure what it’s supposed to measure?  Reliability: stability and consistency of the measure (does it always measure the same thing?)

65. 65 Quantitative: Translation: Validity  To what degree does this measurement measure what it is supposed to measure?  Does it measure it accurately?  How do we know a measure is good?  Content – enough measurement of sub- dimensions  Face - on it’s face, valid?  Criterion – score on this measure predicts a known result  Construct – measures what it says it does?

66. Validity types zombie example  Face validity: on the surface, does it “look right?”  Content: how well do the variables I selected to determine if you’re a zombie actually measure if you are a zombie? (represent the concept of zombie-hood)  Criterion: does scoring highly on my zombie scale mean you are more likely to actually be a zombie? (does it accurately “predict” zombie- hood?)  Concurrent: does scoring highly on my zombie measure correlate with scoring highly on other zombie measures?  Construct: Am I measuring the right things? Do these concepts represent zombiehood?

67. Construct vs content validity ContentConstruct  How well the instrument actually reflects the concept?  Both are a way to evaluate if we are measuring what we think we are measuring  How well the variables selected “match” the concept being measured, and reflect the whole range of the concept

68. Reliability  How much the measure stays the same, the stability and consistency of the measure (Faulkners)  Test-retest-do I score the same tomorrow as I did yesterday (if I havent changed and become undead!)  Equivalent form-my measure gets the same results as an existing measure (but existing might not be appropriate for my population)  Internal: questions measuring the same concept get the same answers  Interobserver: we’d get the same results if we each administered the measure to the same person

69.  To what degree does this measure consistently function to measure the concept?  Internal consistency: Enjoy riding bikes  Like riding bikes – yes  Have enjoyed riding bikes in past – yes  Hate riding bikes - no 69 Quantitative: Translation: Reliability

70.  Chronbach’s alpha: α  Rule of thumb:  Alpha score of.6-.7 is acceptable  Alpha score of.8 or higher is good 70 Quantitative: A test of reliability

71.  Why will measurement occur?  What will be measured?  How will the measure be operationalized?  What are the pros and cons of any given measurement?  Justification for measurement choice 71 Quantitative: Why do we have to think about this?

72.  Thinking about measurement in quantitative research  Rodriguez & Murphy  Parenting stress – standardized/un-standardized?  Validity?  Reliability?  Original sample on which measure was “normed” 72 Application to our reading:

73. Program Evaluation group work  Pick a SINGLE program from a group member’s experience, either one you work for or have participated in. Let me know if you need a program  Identify 2-4 outcomes of importance. Make sure they are measurable, observable, specific and timed  Develop 1-3 formative evaluation questions (can be qualitative or quantitative)  Develop 1-3 summative evaluation questions (can be qualitative or quantitative)  How would you answer these questions? (evaluation plan)

74. Assignment 1  Overall, great! And I learned a lot  Some common issues (note that if I’m talking about it, you were not the only one! If you were the only 1, I just wrote you a note!)  This time, I didn’t take off any points for writing but I do want everyone to be aware

75. Pick a specific population  Geography (specific place or geographic type like urba, rural, suburban)  Age  Gender  Socioeconomic status  Common diagnosis  Common experience  Common need  Language  Religions, culture

76. Pick a specific intervention  Operationalize!  Which support? Which education?  Method, style

77. Problem area/statment  Should be a social problem, not an individual problem or a physical problem  Who’s problem is it?  Should be solvable (ie people with autism will never not have autism, so autism itself isn’t a social problem)  People are never problems.

78. Research Writing  Different from academic writing!  Focus is on clarity, translation of research findings to human beings  Concise  Fact focused, not feeling-focused  Focused on analysis and summary, not details  ALWAYS ends with recommendations or findings  Think Stanley

79. First some minor issues: Plural  Zombies=multiple zombies, lots of zombies  Zombie’s=belonging to the zombie  Zombies’=belonging to multiple zombies, or to zombies as a group, i.e. the zombies’ perspectives varies

80. capitalizing  Only proper nouns (names), not common nouns  The No More Brain Eating Center for Zombie Fighting is a name of a specific center  We provide services such as zombie fighting, case management and the Meyers Method for Brain Regrowth ™

81. “Extra” words  I ran away from the zombies.  Vs  The thing I was doing was running away from the zombies who were also running.  The service we provide is to serve zombies who need services (think about what’s implied)  -ing tends to up your word count

82. Don’t be misconstrued!  People are always “who” not “that”  People are served, cars are serviced  Attend to power relationships in your writing  Avoid generalizations and if you must make them at all, cite cite cite (and let’s talk about privilege!)  contextualize  Avoid “judgey” statements, especially about groups as a whole.  Usually being specific will help avoid judging

83. Example:  Many times, unfortunately, zombies don’t have proper hygiene and often lack parenting skills for teaching their kids to look acceptable for school, which leads to social problems at school.  Vs, more specifically  Glerg and colleagues found that approximately 70% of zombie households with school-aged children could not afford the strong soaps needed to remove blood stains (Glerg, Blerg and Cooper, 2016). Another study by Gronk found that zombie children who went to school with bloody faces reported 3.5 times more bullying than their less bloody peers (Gronk, 2015). We postulate that zombie parents lack knowledge and supplies needed to instruct their children in blood removal, though this theory is based on our clinical practice and has not yet been tested.

84. Exercise 1:  Write a few sentences about a zombie problem that your program was designed to address. Describe the problem in context, using specific, non- judgmental language.  Workshop your sentences with your neighbor

85. Let’s talk about “high risk” and Dorothy Roberts  ALWAYS operationalize high risk! High risk of what?

86.  Research  Tone is definitive  Focus on analysis  You tell your reader the conclusion  Big picture  Never quote (except actual qualitative quotes), just cite  Academic  Tone is exploratory  Focus on process  You and the reader arrive at conclusions together  Details  Always quote-so much richness

87. Academic vs research writing

88. Research writing  Summarize, summarize, summarize!  Consider your audience and go for clarity

89. Exercise 2:  Write 2-3 sentences describing your zombie program as if you were talking to a fellow social worker  Now write 2-3 sentences describing your zombie program as if you are talking to an intelligent but uninformed friend or family member. What do you do and why is it important?  Workshop your sentences with your neighbor. How are they different?

90.  Importance of distinguishing between qualitative and quantitative  Theme identification vs. concept measurement  Beyond counting…  Letting the themes “rise up” from the data  Letting the collective voice of study respondents define what the themes are in answer to questions  Can be confusing – demographic data sometimes included as qualitative 90 Theme identification in qualitative research

91. Coding process Codes: Identifying anchors - key points of the data gathered Concepts: Collections of codes of similar content – allows data to be grouped Categories: Broad groups of similar concepts used to generate a theory or relate back

92. On inductive, deductive research Deductive Inductive

93. Inductive vs deductive coding  Deductive-starts with theory, code book already built from the literature, your theory; content analysis  Inductive:-starts with observation, code book and theory is built from the transcripts, grounded theory

94. Interpreting qualitative data 1. Become saturated 2. Look for patterns – constant comparison 3. Corroborate/legitimate themes 4. Represent the accounts accurately via checking back 1. Self 2. Team 3. Member checking

95. Pure qualitative data analysis Become grounded in the data Allow understanding to emerge from close study of the data Discover patterns, themes “Open coding” Express data/phenomenon in concept form Categorize concepts that are relevant to question “Axial coding” for sub- categories or larger themeing “In-vivo” coding

96. How to begin the coding process 1. Read memos, interviews, other (no notes) 2. Read memos, interviews, other (make notes) 3. Re-read (look for themes within transcript)  Re-read (look for themes across transcripts)  In grounded theory: Sensitizing concepts 4. Review your thoughts with your team  Do you agree on themes in transcripts?  Do you agree on themes across transcripts  How do these themes connect?

97. Use of software programs  Nvivo, Atlas-ti  Document loading, linkage  Open coding, axial coding, In vivo coding  What is different with the software?  Assign categories to transcripts – comparisons  Word count, auto-code features (slippery slope)  Pull documents together by theme/filter  Drop-down codebook  Code by recording location  Mapping of code relationships

98. Next week  http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/introval. php  Bernard, H. (2000). Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. New York: Sage Publications. 48-52; 108-112  Padgett, D. (2008) Chapter 8: Strategies for Rigor. Qualitative Methods in Social Work Research, Second Edition. Sage Publications, Inc.: New York.