Lecture 7 Flashcards
Primary data
- data that you collect yourself for the specific purpose of your study
- Generated:- interviews
- focus groups
- Naturally occurring: - observations
- documents and other products
Secondary data
data that have been collected by other researchers or research agencies for their own purpose: existing statistical data, existing interviews for research purposes…
How to use documents?
- Documents as sources of information, ‘evidence’ (realist/historical approach)
- Documents as interesting in themselves - object of study (interpretivist/constructionist approach)
⇒ what do they communicate?
Criteria to evaluate documents:
- Authenticity
- Credibility
- Representativeness
- Meaning
Authenticity
- Is it genuine and of unquestionable origin (source)?
- Is it original or a (distorted) copy?
- Is the purported author the real author?
Credibility
- 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?
Representativeness
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.
Meaning
- 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?
Using documents for research:
- Changing representations of fatherhood
- 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?
Whistleblowing
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
Sources:
- whistleblower autobiographies
- whistleblower websites
- interviews with whistleblowers
- published interviews
- public videos (e.g., interviews, presentations at universities, conferences)
Online research
- Technology
- Forerunners: marketing and research agencies
- Circumstances: Covid-19
Internet in qualitative research
- 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).
Focus groups (online)
Two ways:
- In real time (‘chat room’)
- Over an extended period of time (‘bulletin board’)
Focus groups (online): advantage
people who are geographically dispersed
Focus groups (online): issues
- 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’
Observations & ethnography
- Observations of forums, blogs, Facebook, Instagram….
- Internet is part of people’s lives: when studying people, internet cannot be ignored.
Observations & ethnography: advantage
access to communities that are geographically dispersed.
Observations & ethnography: issues
- 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?
Documents (online): issues
- 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?
Qualitative Data Analysis
- Focus on understanding and meaning – answers cannot be foreseen or only partly foreseen
- Usually large amount of data
(more on notes)
Postpositivism
theory building and testing, inter- rater reliability, variables, quantification. Origins of grounded theory
Interpretivism
substantive orientation, thematic analysis, also narrative analysis
Constructionism
structural orientation: analysis of language and performance. Narrative analysis and critical discourse analysis.
Coding process
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.
Master list or codebook
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)
Different kinds of codes
- 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’)
Patterns in qualitative data
- 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)
Memos
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.
