1. Analysing qualitative data: meeting challenges and developing strategies
Diane Reay

2. Miles and Huberman (1994) define data analysis as 3 linked subprocesses:
data reduction
data display
conclusion drawing and verification

3. Wolcott (1995)
3 levels of qualitative data analysis:
Description
Analysis
Interpretation

4. What to looking for in data analysis:
Any interesting patterns
2) Anything that stands out as surprising or puzzling  
3) How the data relates to one's expectations based on common-sense knowledge, official accounts or previous theory
4) Whether there are inconsistencies or contradictions among the views of different groups or individuals or between people's expressed beliefs or attitudes and their actions.

5. Starting points for coding:
A simple framework based on researcher's interests.
2. Particular events, key words, processes or characters that capture the essence of a piece.
3. A code list created prior to reading the data or even prior to the fieldwork.

6. Coding represents the decisive link between the original 'raw data', that is, the textual material such as interview transcripts or fieldnotes, on the one hand and the researcher's theoretical concepts on the other.
(Seidel and Kelle 1995)

7. The move from coding to interpretation has a number of discrete moves:
1) The coded data needs to be retrieved.
2) The move from coding to interpretation involves playing with and exploring the codes and categories you have created.
3) The next stage is the transformation of coded data into meaningful data with the emphasis on what to look for in the codes and categories.

8. Different ways of coding
1. Line-by-line analysis
2. Coding by sentence/paragraph
3. Perusing the whole document

9. If we decide to define a large number of categories, with fairly exclusive meaning, coding will be more detailed and intricate and there will be greater differentiation of segments accordingly. However, if the segmentation of text is too intricate, in that specific categories are attached to very small segments of text, important contextual information may be lost, and thereby some of the segments meanings (Weaver and Atkinson 1994)

10. If we decide to delineate a number of general, inclusive categories, much of the text will be coded with a single code(or conjunction of codes).The advantage of this strategy is that it should maximize the usefulness of the codes; they are likely to be applied to enough segments to justify the purpose of recontextualisation. However, it may also have several disadvantages. First, since so much of the text will be coded with the same category, there might be difficulty in locating particular episodes significant to analysis; a likely scenario is that the researcher will have to siphon through reams of irrelevant data, despite recontextualisation. Second, coding may be too crude, and this might make the analysis seem rather vague, lacking detail. (Weaver and Atkinson 1994)

11. Where do the names of categories come from?
A broader, more comprehensive label for classes of objects of actions that share some similar characteristics
An insight that seems to explain what is going on.
The literature
4. In vivo codes

12. John Rosecrance's (2000) study of men who gamble on horses at race tracks. found 5 types:
1. Pros
2. Serious players
3. Bustouts
4. Regulars
5. Part-time players

13. Researchers usually follow 3 guidelines when creating typologies.
The classification scheme often is:
1. mutually exclusive
2. exhaustive
3. theoretically meaningful

14. Typology construction can easily become a sterile exercise
Typology construction can easily become a sterile exercise. Unless you perform it within the context of full and extensive knowledge of, and sensitivity to, the actual setting, it will reveal little or nothing. Arbitrary box building is not a substitute for a close feel for the actual circumstances. Typologising is simply a tool to aid in systematic understanding. (Lofland and Lofland)

15. We only come to look at things in certain ways because we have adapted, either tacitly or explicitly, certain ways of seeing. This means that, in observational research, data collection, hypothesis construction and theory building are not three separate things but are interwoven with each other. (Silverman 1993)

16. Theory is overrated in terms of what most of us actually accomplish through our research. In theory-driven descriptive accounts, theory is more apt to get in the way rather than point the way, to tell rather than to ask what we have seen (Wolcott 1995: 186)

17. 1.Theory offers the convenience of labels that help researchers identify and link up with prior work. 2.Theory offers a way to get a broader perspective. 3. Theory offers a way out of the dilemma of generalisation. 4. Theory offers a critical perspective by calling up previous dialogues. 5. Theory offers a useful way to harness the powers of disproof.