1. Qualitative Data Analysis

2. Qualitative data analysis
An attempt to interpret the data that has been gathered and make meaning from it
The focus is on meaning not reduction
The aim is to reflect social complexity
There are many ways and approaches to analysis

3. Activity 1:Interpreting meaning
Read the extract from Fever Pitch
List the content paragraph by paragraph
Summarise the content in a single sentence
What are the main themes of the text?
Find a sentence/section that seems to communicate something significant
Is there something going on here that isn’t actually said?
How do you respond to the text?
How might you analyse this text?

4. Some common principles
It is subjective and reflexive
Subjective because the researcher is key
Reflexive because the researcher revisits, re-examines and reconsiders emerging themes
It is transparent
the process of the analysis should be visible
It is a systematic and rigorous process
It is an inductive and data led activity
It Involves a process of segmenting data and ordering it into meaningful units called codes

5. Coding Deductive Coding
Determining in advance the themes to look for in the data
Inductive Coding
The codes are determined as part of the analysis process and emerge from the analysis
In practice the two are often combined with some themes having been identified through reading research literature or through the data collection process and some identified at the point of analysis

6. The Grounded Approach
This is the most common form of inductive coding and is influenced by The Grounded Theory Approach (Glaser, Strauss and Corbin)
Meaning emerges from the data (inductive)
It is rigorous and time consuming
Creation of codes that classify the data for minute details (open coding)
This is iterative, emergent and in the initial stages highly fluid
Through analysis codes will be merged, split, clustered and refined (axial coding)
Memo writing facilitates emerging ideas and concepts abut the data to be captured
When no new codes emerge and all new data can be classified using existing codes the coding frame is said to be saturated

7. Some common concerns
Most concerns stem from concerns about the subjectivity of the researcher, who
determines what is interesting in the data
may be being reductive
may over emphasise some themes while ignoring others
may ignore messiness in the data such as participant inconsistency or contradictions within the data

8. Activity 2: Interpreting meaning
Read the coded version of the Fever Pitch extract
Do these codes reflect your earlier conclusions about the text?
What codes might you have created?
Can you see any links between codes?
What questions do they prompt in you about the meaning in the data?

9. An alternative approach
The most common forms of qualitative data are
Interview transcripts
Transcripts from focus groups
Open-ended questions from questionnaires
The most common pattern to these is the question and answer format whereby the responses are shaped by the questions the researcher asks and these questions can shape the analysis. An alternative approach is to illicit a narrative response

10. Why collect narrative data?
To help us think creatively about the sort of data we collect
To consider how an actor orders and tells their experiences
To consider meanings and motives
To hand over control and direction to the participant
They can occur naturally – for example as part of a reply to a question or prompt
They can be prepared for – asking participants to come with their story prepared
They can be part of an interview schedule – tell me about a time when…..

11. Narrative analysis
The most influential analytical approach to narrative data has come from the field of socio-linguistics: Labov’s Evaluation Model
Narratives have formal structural properties that can be identified and used to analyse the data:
Structure
Question
Abstract
What was this about?
Orientation
Who? What? Where? When?
Complication
Then what happened?
Evaluation
So what?
Result
What finally happened?
Coda
Finishing the narrative

12. Narrative analysis
Structure isn’t the only aspect that narrative analysts may look
at, some also explore them in terms of function:
A moral tale?
A warning tale?
A tale of identity?
Entertainment?
News?
A tale with a lesson attached?
To help make sense of traumatic events?
What is its function for the teller?
Why is it being told this way?
What does the teller want us to hear?

13. Activity 3: Looking at narratives
Read the extract describing a student’s experience of anthropological fieldwork.
Analyse using different analytical techniques
Inductive coding
Narrative structure
Narrative function
How useful is it to look at data in this way?
How might these methods of analysis help a researcher to make sense of the data and share the meaning with others?

14. Discourse Analysis
Discourse: ‘a particular way of talking about and understanding the world’
Involves the examination of all types of verbal and textual materials spoken and written accounts, letters, journals, newspaper reports
Language is structured according to different patterns that people’s utterances follow when they take part in social life
Academic discourse
Advertising
Your own discourse patterns in social and work settings
Discourse analysis explores these patterns in language and their social meaning

15. Activity 4: Discourse Analysis
Read through the two examples of texts and consider the following features:
The text: For each text identify and describe the key textual features: the grammar, the vocabulary, the presentational features. Who is the imagined reader? how is the institution represented?
The discourse: For each text identity different discourse patterns, does each text have a consistent pattern or are there different patterns in the text – what does the voice reveal about the speaker
Social practice: What conclusions could you draw about the discourses being drawn on in these texts? What do they tell us about the two universities? How could they be related to wider social theory to make more sense?

16. Critical Discourse Analysis
Is concerned with how social and political inequalities are reproduced in discursive practices – discourse is viewed as functioning ideologically
It is a critical approach and so has overt political aims to effect social change
Language should be empirically analysed within its social context
Language use consists of three dimensions all of which need to be covered in discourse analysis:
The linguistic feature of the text
The processes relating to the production and consumption of the text
The wider social practice within which discourses exist
Text
Discursive practice
Social practice

17. Qualitative analysis is not a final stage
It informs the design of the study
It is being shaped during data collection and data transcription
Throughout the analysis phase codes will be amended, redefined and new connections will be made
Analysis continues in the writing phase as you shape the meaning that has emerged in the coding and clustering