S2-Week 1-Class

Semester 2 (Week 1)

Theses are the notes I took during the Tuesday afternoon workshop that took place from 14:00 to 17:00 on 6th February 2018.  The tutors were Dr Claire McAvinia and Dr Ita Kennelly.

Topic for today’s workshop

– Qualitative Data Analysis

How can you analyse your data?

Do
Get close to your data
Give it time
Keep writing
Choose a method
Be consistent – so you can defend what you have done

Don’t
Bypass analysis through summarising
Gloss over differences
Jump to conclusions

Rethinking some common issues

Triangulation

Can be from from quantitative to qualitative method or from one quantitative method to another (or one qualitative method to another).

Addresses validity concerns

Work Sequence

Numbering Questionnaires
Data Entry
Totals under each categories, demographics
Exploring the data
Designing queries

Check out Andy Fields YouTube videos on SPSS
Envivo – qualitative data analysis software

Qualitative Data Analysis

Interpretive – no one single result or truth
Getting data into a manageable shape

Read all the data at once
Divide it up into manageable chunks

Steps towards analysis

Become familiar with the data and identify potential themes
– Reading, memoing

Examine the data in depth to provide descriptions of the setting, participant …

Think about granularity

Strategies used to analyse qualitative data
1. Identify the themes
2. Code your data
3. Ask key questions
4. Do an organisational review
5. Do concept mapping
.
.

Some distinctions

Content Analysis
– Quantifies the occurrence of words, themes, topics
– Conceptual (occurrence of the concepts) analysis and relational (possible links, meanings and concepts) analysis

Thematic Analysis
– Braun and Clarke, 2006
– see steps on next slides

Grounded Theory
– Strictly speaking – a complete research method
– But many people draw on the constant comparative methods of GT inalalysing qualitative data
– No a priori themes or categories

Thematic Analysis

Thematic analysis shares many of the principles and procedures of content analysis.

Steps in Thematic Analysis – Braun & Clarke (2006, p.16-23 and their Table 1)

1. Familiarise yourself with the data
– immerse yourself, read it a lot, look for patterns, taken
2. Generate initial codes
– Pieces of the data that are interesting to you, they will be organised themes as the units of your analysis
3. Search for themes
– Focus on a broader level of themes and organise codes into potential themes
4. Review the themes
5. Define and name the themes
– say what is important and why.
6. Produce the report/written output

Curating! (Selecting the relevant themes/stories)

Binaries – opposing sides to a similar theme

Using software to help

Word and Excel are both good.

iAnnotate can be used for making notes and adding sound clips to documents.

Mind mapping software is useful
– MindManager
– FreeMind
– iMindMap
– Coggle

Transcription
– You could try Dragon available from http://www.software4students.ie

NVivo
– available from http://downloads.dit.ie

MaxQDA
– http://www.maxqda.com

NVivo and MaxQDA both have 30-day free trials

To consider:
– Technical demand on your computer
– Time demands in setting up your project.