Lecture 7

Question 1

Primary data

Answer 1

1. data that you collect yourself for the specific purpose of your study
   - Generated:
   
   • interviews
   • focus groups
     - Naturally occurring:
   • observations
   • documents and other products

Question 2

Secondary data

Answer 2

data that have been collected by other researchers or research agencies for their own purpose: existing statistical data, existing interviews for research purposes…

Question 3

How to use documents?

Answer 3

• Documents as sources of information, ‘evidence’ (realist/historical approach)
• Documents as interesting in themselves - object of study (interpretivist/constructionist approach)

⇒ what do they communicate?

Question 4

Criteria to evaluate documents:

Answer 4

1. Authenticity
2. Credibility
3. Representativeness
4. Meaning

Question 5

Authenticity

Answer 5

• Is it genuine and of unquestionable origin (source)?
• Is it original or a (distorted) copy?
• Is the purported author the real author?

Question 6

Credibility

Answer 6

• Is it free from error and distortion (e.g. interpretation)?
• Does the document represent the author’s true feelings, is it sincere? (For personal documents)
• Does the document present true facts, is it accurate? Or does it maybe reflect the interest of the author?

Question 7

Representativeness

Answer 7

is the evidence typical of its kind?

Issues:

• Selective ‘survival’ of documents (documents can be destroyed, for example)
• Not everything is documented (only literate people would write diaries)
• Internet documents: Search engines acting as a filter.

Question 8

Meaning

Answer 8

• Is it clear and comprehensible? (Language, dialect/slang, handwriting)
• Importance of context: is insider knowledge necessary to understand what is said? Is there irony that we misunderstand?

Question 9

Using documents for research:

Answer 9

1. Changing representations of fatherhood
2. WhistleblowingImages and judgments of whistleblowing are influenced by stories in the press.
   -> how are these stories presented in the press? How do they compare to autobiographies?

Question 10

Whistleblowing

Answer 10

You’re a whistleblower if you’re a worker and you report certain types of wrongdoingYou’re a whistleblower if you’re a worker and you report certain types of wrongdoing

Question 11

Sources:

Answer 11

• whistleblower autobiographies
• whistleblower websites
• interviews with whistleblowers
• published interviews
• public videos (e.g., interviews, presentations at universities, conferences)

Question 12

Online research

Answer 12

• Technology
• Forerunners: marketing and research agencies
• Circumstances: Covid-19

Question 13

Internet in qualitative research

Answer 13

• The internet can be used as a tool to interact with people and generate data (interviews, focus groups)
• The internet can be used as a place where observations can be made and naturally occurring data can be collected (in the form of observations or documents).

Question 14

Focus groups (online)

Answer 14

Two ways:

• In real time (‘chat room’)
• Over an extended period of time (‘bulletin board’)

Question 15

Focus groups (online): advantage

Answer 15

people who are geographically dispersed

Question 16

Focus groups (online): issues

Answer 16

• Access to internet: People who are online may not be representative for the parent population – not everybody has access
• Computer literacy: People possess different levels of digital skills (affecting participation in focus groups and interviews)
• People may act differently online than offline
• Group dynamics in online focus group is different – posing challenges to the moderator
• Online focus groups will be more superficial Motivating people to stay connected, especially in ‘bulletin boards’

Question 17

Observations & ethnography

Answer 17

• Observations of forums, blogs, Facebook, Instagram….
• Internet is part of people’s lives: when studying people, internet cannot be ignored.

Question 18

Observations & ethnography: advantage

Answer 18

access to communities that are geographically dispersed.

Question 19

Observations & ethnography: issues

Answer 19

• Similar issues as offline issues: degree of participation, overt/covert research, gaining access, etcetera.
• Issues of representativeness:
  
  • People who are found online may not be representative for the parent population
  • People may act differently online than offline – is online behaviour representative for offline behaviour?
  • Identity – is the person who (s)he says (s)he is? People can have several nicknames as well
• Issues of privacy and anonymity:
  
  • Is the internet public which means that everything can be observed and reported?
  • Even when nicknames are anonymized, quotes can always be traced back
• Data issues:
  
  • Limits of data for observational studies: where to observe?
  • Data management: internet is a fluid medium, things change and disappear
  • Dependence on search machine: what do search engines return, what do they NOT return?

Question 20

Documents (online): issues

Answer 20

• Authenticity: who uploaded the document? Was it copied? Was it changed?
• Credibility: is the document sincere (for personal
  documents), accurate (for factual information)
• Representativeness: what is the entire ‘population’ of documents?
  
  • Uploaded documents: what about documents that were not uploaded?
  • Online documents such as blogs: how typical is a given blog?
  • What about algorithm of search machines?

Question 21

Qualitative Data Analysis

Answer 21

• Focus on understanding and meaning – answers cannot be foreseen or only partly foreseen
• Usually large amount of data

(more on notes)

Question 22

Postpositivism

Answer 22

theory building and testing, inter- rater reliability, variables, quantification. Origins of grounded theory

Question 23

Interpretivism

Answer 23

substantive orientation, thematic analysis, also narrative analysis

Question 24

Constructionism

Answer 24

structural orientation: analysis of language and performance. Narrative analysis and critical discourse analysis.

Question 25

Coding process

Answer 25

From: indexing and sorting (being able to find and retrieve data)
To: categorizing and theming (attributing meaning to the data)

💡 Coding is an iterative process. The ultimate goal is to get at the meaning of data.

Question 26

Master list or codebook

Answer 26

During coding, a master list must be kept (i.e., a list of all the codes that are being used)

• The master list can derive from theory – theory-driven
• The master list can be developed (and continuously revised) on the basis of the data analysis – data-driven

(more on notes)

Question 27

Different kinds of codes

Answer 27

• In vivo codes: they actually are the data (“no place”)
• Descriptive codes, or topic codes: describe the data (‘immigration issues’)
• Axial codes: a code for a family of codes
• Coding framework: codes are pre-existing
• Theory-driven codes: codes are derived from theory
• Different researchers use different names for similar types of codes.

Commonalities:
- In the process of analysis, codes become increasingly abstract (‘analytical’)

Question 28

Patterns in qualitative data

Answer 28

• similarity (things happen the same way)
• difference (they happen in predictably different ways)
• frequency (they happen often or seldom)
• sequence (they happen in a certain order)
• correspondence (they happen in relation to other activities or events)
• causation (one appears to cause another)

Question 29

Memos

Answer 29

When collecting and analysing data, all sorts of ideas occur. These are recorded in memos.

Interviewer: Tell me about teens and drug use.
Respondent: I think teens use drugs as a release from their parents
Memo: The first thing that strikes me in this sentence is the work “use”. This is a strange term because, when taken out of the context of drug taking, the work means that an object or a person is being employed for some purpose. It implies a willful and directed act. In making a comparison, when I think about a computer, I think about employing it to accomplish a task. I think of it as being at my disposal.