Week 7 Reading: Liamputtong et al. (2013) Qualitative Data Analysis Flashcards
What is data analysis?
A transformative process, turning voluminous data into clear, understandable, insightful, trustworthy analysis
Approaches in qualitative data analysis (5)
Content analysis
Narrative analysis
Discourse analysis
Thematic analysis
Semiotic analysis
Coding
4
- starting point for most forms of data analysis
- defining what the data are about
- label chunks of data (that summarises, categorises, accounts for each piece of data)
- first step for researchers is to ask basic questions ie who, what, how long, where
Examples of stuff that can be coded
13
- setting and context
- definition of a situation
- perspectives
- ways of thinking
- processes
- activities
- actions
- events
- conditions
- strategies
- consequences
- relationship
- meanings
However, it is argued that researchers should create their own codes and code segment categories
Coding strategies
7 kinda
- commence coding asap
- read through transcripts multiple times - first to read it, then to interpret it
- generate an index of terms
- review codes
- consider general theoretical understandings
- you don’t need that many codes
- how else can you code your data?
Content analysis
attempts to quantify content in terms of pre-determined categories in a systematic and replicable matter
steps:
1 develop categories
2 choose the sample to categorise
3 count the times the categories occur
ie “how many times does the newspaper mention “women’s health”
Critiques of content analysis
- too close to positivist orientation (empiricism)
- no room for detailed interpretation
- atheoretical, with minimal interpretation
Thematic analysis
searching across a dataset to find repeated patterns of meaning; needs initial and axial coding to deconstruct data and code it
steps
1 read through every transcript and try to make sense of interview data
2 examine transcript to make sense of what is being written as a group
Narrative analysis
aims to unfold the ways individuals make sense of their lived experience and how its telling enables them to interpret the social world and their agency within it
steps
1 analyse participant narratives
2 retell them in a framework that makes sense to readers (ie framework of chronology)
Discourse analysis
discourse in this context is defined as:
interrelated set of texts and their practices of production, dissemination, reception, that bring them into being
so discourse analysis being the analysis of discourse and how they relate to the social context (or how it creates the social context)
- rhetorical functions of discourse are emphasised as they promote one side of a conflict
- requires more effort, attentativeness, and understanding
Semiotic analysis
Semiotics - study of signs, sign systems, and their associated meanings
Semiotic analysis: production of understanding of data’s content, structure, and omissions
- deconstruction of implicit meanings
- adopt a critical standpoint
- look for contradictions and inconsistencies
- deconstruct arguments (points) made
- simplify ‘the complexities of’ hierarchies and dichotomies
Aim - to find themes that have been overlayed or repressed by other themes or omitted
ie. researchers ask:
- what is missing
- what is not being said or written
- why may it happen
- why are specific phrases used and not others
- what may be the possible importance of these choices and perfections
Computer assisted qualitative data analysis (CADQAS)
- still have to manually read transcripts
- includes systems like NVivo, NUDIST, QSR NUDIST Vivo, MAXqda
