Qualitative Data Analysis

1
Qualitative Data Analysis
2
Quantitative research

• Involves information or data in the form of
  numbers
• Allows us to measure or to quantify things
• Respondents dont necessarily give numbers as
  answers - answers are analysed as numbers
• Good example of quantitative research is the
  survey

3
Quantitative research

• Helps us flesh out the story and develop a deeper
  understanding of a topic
• Often contrasted to quantitative research
• Together they give us the bigger picture
• Good examples of qualitative research are
  face-to-face interviews, focus groups and site
  visits

4
Surveys Questionnaires

• Think clearly about questions (need to constrain
  answers as much as possible)
• Make sure results will answer your research
  question
• Can use Internet for conducting surveys if need
  to cover wide geographic reach

5
Face-to-face interviews

• Must prepare questions
• Good idea to record your interviews
• Interviews take up time, so plan for an hour or
  less (roughly 10 questions)
• Stick to your questions, but be flexible if
  relevant or interesting issues arise during the
  interview

6
Focus groups

• Take time to arrange, so prepare in advance (use
  an intermediary to help you if you can)
• Who will be in your focus group? (e.g. age,
  gender)
• Size of focus group (8-10 is typical)
• Consider whether or not to have separate focus
  groups for different ages or genders (e.g.
  discussing sex and sexuality)

7
Site visits and observation

• Site visits involve visiting an organization,
  community project etc
• Consider using a guide
• Observation is when you visit a location and
  observe what is going on, drawing your own
  conclusions
• Both facilitate making your research more
  relevant and concrete

8
Case studies

• Method of capturing and presenting concrete
  details of real or fictional situations in a
  structured way
• Good for comparative analysis

9
Participatory research

• Allows participation of community being
  researched in research process (e.g. developing
  research question choosing methodology
  analysing results)
• Good way to ensure research does not simply
  reinforce prejudices and presumptions of
  researcher
• Good for raising awareness in community and
  developing appropriate action plans

10
Interviews

11
Interviews

• Unstructured
• Semi-structured
• Structured

12
Interviews

• Establish a rapport
• Treat interviewees with respect
• Think about your appearance
• Think about body language
• Maintain firm eye contact
• Dont Invade their space

13
Interviews

• How are you going to record
• Tape recorder
• Pen and paper
• Video recorder

14
Questionnaires

15
Questionnaires

• Open-ended
• Close-ended
• Combination of both

16
Questionnaires

• Open-ended
• Slower to administer
• Harder to record responses
• Does not stifle response
• Answerer can raise new issues
• Answerer feels they can speak their mind
• What does a blank answer mean ????

17
Questionnaires

• Close-ended
• Faster to administer
• Easier to record responses
• Answerer can only give predefined answers
• Answerer cannot raise new issues
• Answerer feels constrained
• More likely to answer all questions (box tick)

18
Questionnaires

• Self-administered
• Interviewer administered

19
Questionnaires

• Keep questions short and simple
• Avoid questions with not
• Avoid questions with bias
• Avoid sensitive questions (ask indirectly)

20
Types of Input

• Analysing data from
• Interviews
• Open-ended questions
• Also (approaches you have seen previously)
• Laddering
• Card sorting
• Repertory grids

21
Action Research Participatory Action Research
22
Action Research versus Participatory Action
Research

• "If you want to know how things really are, just
  try to change them"

23
Action Research versus Participatory Action
Research

• Difference Or Extension?
• Context Developing world issues Vs Developed
  world issues?
• What do you need?

24
Mind Map
25
Conversational Analysis

26
Introduction

• Conversation analysis (commonly abbreviated as
  CA) is the study of talk in interaction. CA
  generally attempts to describe the orderliness,
  structure and sequential patterns of interaction,
  whether this is institutional (in the school,
  doctor's surgery, courts or elsewhere) or casual
  conversation.

27
MindMap
People Harvey Sacks Emanuel Schegloff
Conversational Analysis
Practical Examples Conversations between
friends Relationship counselling sessions Legal
hearings
Fields Ethnomethodology Discursive
Psychology Qualitative Research
28
Ethnography

29
Ethnography

• Do you mind if I just hang around here and take
  note of what youre doing?

30
Ethnography - background

• What is Anthropology?
• It is the comparative study of the physical and
  social characteristics of humanity through the
  examination of historical and present
  geographical distribution, cultural history,
  acculturation, and cultural relationships.

31
Ethnography - background

• What is Cultural Anthropology?
• It is one of four fields of anthropology which
  has developed and promoted "culture" as a
  meaningful scientific concept it is also the
  branch of anthropology that studies cultural
  variation among humans.

32
Ethnography

• It is two things
• The fundamental research method of cultural
  anthropology.
• It is the genre of writing that presents
  descriptions of human social phenomena, based on
  fieldwork or, the written text produced to
  report ethnographic research results.

33
Ethnography

• Whilst living among the people, ethnographers
  engage in participant observation.
• This means that they participate, as much as
  possible, in local daily life (everything from
  important ceremonies and rituals to ordinary
  things like meal preparation and consumption)
  while also carefully observing everything they
  can about it.

34
Ethnography

• Through this, ethnographers seek to gain what is
  called an emic perspective, or the native's
  point(s) of view without imposing their own
  conceptual frameworks.
• The emic perspective is quite different from the
  etic perspective which is the outsider's view on
  local life.

35
Ethnography

• Through the participant observation method,
  ethnographers record detailed fieldnotes, conduct
  interviews based on open-ended questions, and
  gather whatever site documents might be available
  in the setting as data.
• This data is then recorded in the database.

36
Ethnomethodology
37
Ethnomethodology

• The study of how people use commonsense
  understandings to get through everyday life
• These understandings shape our assumptions about
  social Interactions
• In a conversation between two people there are
  many things that are understood than are actually
  mentioned.

38
Ethnomethodology

• What are social problems?
• Damaging conditions resulting in harm to people
  or society.
• Things are seen, judged, and defined to be
  problems, i.e. What people THINK they are.

39
Ethnomethodology

• Tacit interpretation culture, teaching,
  understanding, experiences.
• Explicit Truth misinterpretations,
  misunderstanding.

40
Ethnomethodology

• Example Girl called Anna, unplanned pregnancy,
  21 years old, still in school.
• Good or Bad?

41
Ethnomethodology

• What if .?
• Anna is an outstanding student, is the sole
  heiress to a multi-billion dollar business, has
  the full support of her parents, and will be
  finished school early into the pregnancy?

42
Ethnomethodology

• Anna Anisimova
• Daughter of Russian metals magnate Vassily
  Anisimov
• Worth 1.3 billion

43
Ethnomethodology

• We make assumptions based on our tacit
  interpretation of the world around us.
• We can apply methods to research in order to
  apply a neutral analysis to the subject.
• This has been done in HCI to study descriptions
  of how the users interact with systems, rather
  than what the system needed to do?

44
Ethnomethodology (Varieties)

• 1. The organization of practical actions and
  practical reasoning. Including
• 2. The organization of conversation analysis.
• 3. Talk-in-interaction within institutional or
  organizational settings. Identify interactional
  structures that are specific to particular
  settings.
• 4. The study of social activity. The analytic
  interest is in how that work is accomplished
  within the setting in which it is performed.
• 5. The haecceity of work. Just what makes an
  activity what it is? E.g. what makes a test a
  test, a competition a competition, or a
  definition a definition?

45
MindMap
46
Grounded Theory

47
What is Grounded theory?

• "Grounded theory methods are a set of flexible
  analytic guidelines that enable researchers to
  focus their data collection and to build
  inductive middle-range theories through
  successive levels of data analysis and conceptual
  development" Charmaz, K. (2005)

48
What is Grounded theory?

• The phrase "grounded theory" refers to theory
  that is developed inductively from a corpus of
  data. If done well, this means that the resulting
  theory at least fits one dataset perfectly. This
  contrasts with theory derived deductively from
  grand theory, without the help of data, and which
  could therefore turn out to fit no data at all -
  Steve Borgatti

49
Grounded Theory

• Emphasis on empirical material as basis for
  conceptualization.
• Gathering reach empirical material from a variety
  of sources.
• Open data collection
• Recording data systematically
• the emphasis is on exploring the nuances of the
  data by constantly asking, 'of what is this an
  example?'
• Develop dense and grouded concepts and categories

50
Example - Data Analysis

• Identify critical instances -highlight key
  passages of transcripts.
• Open coding - assign passages to categories
  (i.e. abstract conceptual labels). Work through
  all transcripts and collect numerous illustrative
  quotes to saturate categories.
• Axial coding - refine initial list of
  categories. Delete and amalgamate some. Make
  connections between the categories and define
  their properties e.g. context, pre-conditions.
  These are sub-categories.
• Selective coding - identify a core category and
  themes from which theory will derive.

51
Research Design

• Five components of research design
• A study's questions
• Its propositions, if any
• Its unit(s) of analysis
• The logic linking the data to the propositions
• The criteria for interpreting the findings

52
Strengths and Weaknesses

• Suitable for diagrammatic representation?
• Complex terminology.
• Time-consuming, requires concentration but can
  adapt a quick-and-dirty version.
• Reductionist - complexity of raw data overcome by
  reducing it to the status of variables.
• Does not lead to any surprising findings. Theory
  is inductively built up from data collected so
  cannot contain anything new. Uncovers a
  pre-existing reality similar to positivism /
  realism.
• Idea that there is a core category which
  explains all.
• Issues of generalisation

53
Narrative Inquiry

54

Narrative Inquiry

• A narrative is the description of a sequence of
  events a story. It is generally natural for
  people to remember things as a sequence of
  events, and to provide a cause.
• It can be used as a method of investigation as
  follows
• While interviewing a person with relevant
  information, let the interviewee provide their
  information as a narrative a story. Then
  analyse the story using the components of a story
  such as a movie screenplay- identify the
  scenario -,setting, complicating action,
  resolution

55

Narrative Inquiry

• The resulting analysis moves towards a reduction
  of the narration to answer the question "what is
  the point of this story?" and how does this fit
  into the context of the research. (Richmond,
  2002)

56

Narrative Inquiry

• An advantage of narrative is that it provides the
  information along with its context it provides
  a more detailed answer to a question.

57

Narrative Inquiry

• A narrative may be more effective than
  questionnaires. Using a questionnaire means that
  the investigator has predetermined the nature of
  what they expect to find before starting the
  enquiry process. Questionnaires constrain an
  interviewee narrative allows them to express
  the story as they see it. (Snowden, 2003)

58

Narrative Inquiry

• On the other hand ,there are dangers in relying
  on narrative. By assigning causes and connection
  events , people make sense of the world . The
  cause and connection may not be correct.

59
Phenomenography

60
JA, ich liebe Logical Investigations 1900
Da Fan Club
Martin Heidegger
Jean-Paul Sartre
Edmund Husserl


Appearance
Description
Phenomenography
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Graphein
Phainomenon
Das ist Phenomenography 1954
Plato or Bust
Ulrich Sonnemann
61
In other words

• Phenomenography, a descriptive recording of
  immediate subjective experience as reported, for
  example, by a person under psychiatric
  examination, without questioning the share in
  such a communication of the ego. (Sonnemann, 1954
  )

62
What's it all About?

• Empirical research Based on observation and
  experience
• Applied factors Intelligence, Motivation,
  Effort, past and present surroundings,
  experiences, experiences and individual character
  traits

63
Nothing taken for granted?

• What does it mean, that some people are better at
  learning than others?
• Why are some people better at learning than
  others?

64
Content Analysis
65
Content Analysis

• Content analysis is a standard methodology in the
  social sciences on the subject of communication
  content. Earl Babbie defines it as "the study of
  recorded human communications, such as books, web
  sites, paintings and laws".

66
Content Analysis

• Harold Lasswell formulated the core questions of
  content analysis "Who says what, to whom, why,
  to what extent and with what effect?". Ole Holsti
  (1969) offers a broad definition of content
  analysis as "any technique for making inferences
  by objectively and systematically identifying
  specified characteristics of messages"

67
Content Analysis
68
Q Methodology
69
Q Methodology

• The name "Q" comes from the form of factor
  analysis that is used to analyze the data. Normal
  factor analysis, called "R method," involves
  finding correlations between variables (say,
  height and age) across a sample of subjects. Q,
  on the other hand, looks for correlations between
  subjects across a sample of variables. Q factor
  analysis reduces the many individual viewpoints
  of the subjects down to a few "factors," which
  represent shared ways of thinking.

70
Knowledge Elicitation
71
Card Sorting

• KA technique in which a collection of concepts
  (or other knowledge objects) are written on
  separate cards and sorted into piles by an expert
  in order to elicit classes based on attributes.
• Also enables significant elicitation of
  properties and dimensions
• Used to capture concept knowledge and tacit
  knowledge
• Use in conjunction with triadic method
• Can also sort objects or pictures instead of cards

72
Repertory Grid technique

• KA technique used for a number of purposes
• to elicit attributes for a set of concepts
• to rate concepts against attributes using a
  numerical scale
• uses statistical analysis to arrange and group
  similar concepts and attributes
• A useful way of capturing concept knowledge and
  tacit knowledge
• Requires special software (PC-PACK)

73
Repertory Grid Example
74
Laddering

• KA technique that involves the construction,
  modification and validation of trees.
• A valuable method for acquiring concept knowledge
  and, to a lesser extent, process knowledge.
• Can make use of various trees
• concept tree
• composition tree
• attribute tree
• process tree
• decision tree
• cause tree

75
Triadic Elicitation Method

• KA technique used to capture the way in which an
  expert views the concepts in a domain.
• Involves presenting three random concepts and
  asking in what way two of them are similar but
  different from the other one.
• Answer will give an attribute.
• A good way of acquiring tacit knowledge.

76
Analysing Text
77
Analysing Text

• Faced with the lack of organisation of data and
  the sheer amount of rambling can be somewhat
  overwhelming
• With the best will in the world about trying to
  avoid bias, when there is multiple
  interpretations of data, selecting the one that
  best matches your research question becomes very
  tempting.

78
Simple Tabulation
Subject Money Fame Power Social Fulfilment Other
1 15 6 4 0 1 38
2 5 3 6 5 4 27
3 1 0 3 12 21 46
..
Total
Reasons for Choosing a career
79
Choosing categories

• Use ones from the literature
• Blame someone else / comparison
• Use categories connected with your research
  question
• Derive categories from data

80
Deriving Categories

• Verbatim Analysis
• Knowledge management ltgt Knowledge engineering ltgt
  Knowledge representation ltgt Knowledge reasoning
• Compatible with Windows ltgt Windows-Compatible
• Gist Analysis
• Compatible with Windows Windows-Compatible
• Superordinate Analysis
• Derive superclasses
• Windows-Compatible Linux-Compatible gt category
  of Compatibility

81
Knowledge Representation
82
Knowledge Representation

• Scripts
• Sets
• Schemata

83
Knowledge Representation

• Script Theory

84
Knowledge Representation

• Script Theory
• Schank states that memory is in the form of
  meaningful 'stories' (not merely inert
  decontextualized information) and that problem
  solving progressed by using 'cases' or examples
  stored in memory.
• So for example, in the 'classical' view, when we
  walk to the store, we accomplish this because we
  have access to a stored algorithm that tells us
  'step one, open door, step two, step into street'
  and so on.
• In Schank's view on the other hand, we accomplish
  this because we have access to a stored 'schema'
  based on previous experience of what it is like
  to walk to the store, and we don't need rules to
  describe this.

85
Knowledge Representation

• Set Theory
• Do we categorise based on similarities or
  differences ?
• Category Bird
• Robin ? obvious
• Ostriches and penguins ? less features

86
Knowledge Representation

• Schema Theory
• Bartlett arrived at the concept from studies of
  memory he conducted in which subjects recalled
  details of stories that were not actually there.
  He suggested that memory takes the form of schema
  which provide a mental framework for
  understanding and remembering information.