LU 4 Analysis and Presenting Qualitative Data

What are the four steps/ key features to analyse qualitative data ?

• reducing the raw data to something more manageable (requires reading and re-reading of the data)

• filtering the important ideas out from the less significant (noting which issues occur the most times within interviews)

• identifying important themes

• constructing a theory/ hypothesis or narrative account of the analysis

What are the different types of qualitative analysis methods ?

• thematic analysis

• template analysis

• content analysis

• document analysis

• discourse analysis

• narrative analysis

What is thematic analysis ?

• widely used in qualitative methods

• help researcher to identify patterns of meaning across dataset that provide answer to the research question

What is content analysis and what are its basic methods ?

• to determine the presence of certain words within texts or set of texts

• basic method : conceptual analysis and relational analysis

What is document analysis ?

• documents are interpreted by the researcher to give voice and meaning around an assessment topic

• primary types of documents : public records, personal documents, physical evidence

What is narrative analysis ?

• take the story as the investigative focus

What is template analysis (Nigel King’s)

• refers to a particularly way of thematically analysing qualitative data

What is discourse analysis ?

• the study of social life, understood through analysis of language in its widest sense

What are the methods of data analysis ?

• manual : very near to your data, know your data well, satisfying data

• software : Nvivo, MAXQDA

How should presentation of analysed qualitative data be done ?

the presentation should strike between descriptive and interpretive

What are the ways of organizing and presenting data analysis ?

1. by groups (themes, patterns and similarities)

2. individuals

3. issue or themes

4. research questions

5. instruments

6. writing up qualitative data by one or more

7. constructing a narrative that may be in the form of technology

How to ensure the trustworthiness of qualitative research ?

• the importance of fit ( the themes should fit the data)

• integration of theory

• reflexivity (the role of researcher in the process is accounted for in the paper)

• documentation

• theoretical sampling and negative case analysis

• sensitivity to negotiated realities (the researcher shows awareness of the context within the process)

• transferability (realistic suggestions about the application of the research findings)