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Who’s Afraid of Qualitative Analysis?

Brigitte Scott, Ph.D.Evaluation and Research

SpecialistMilitary Families Learning

Network

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4Approaching Qualitative

5Doing Qualitative

6Issues in Qualitative

7Photo by d_pham - Creative Commons Attribution License https://www.flickr.com/photos/69004005@N02 Created with Haiku Deck

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Approaching Qualitative

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Approaching Qualitative

Pattern recognition

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Approaching Qualitative

Pattern recognition

Organization

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Approaching Qualitative

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Approaching Qualitative

13Photo by Matt. Create. - Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License https://www.flickr.com/photos/76583692@N00 Created with Haiku Deck

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Basic Text Analysis: Inductive

Use data to discover concepts, themes, or models

Doing Qualitative

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Basic Text Analysis: Inductive

Use data to discover concepts, themes, or models Evaluator as interpreter; highly involved

Doing Qualitative

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Basic Text Analysis: Inductive

Use data to discover concepts, themes, or models Evaluator as interpreter; highly involvedEmergent, “bottom up”

Doing Qualitative

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Basic Text Analysis: Inductive

Use data to discover concepts, themes, or models Evaluator as interpreter; highly involvedEmergent, “bottom up”Qualitative outcome: key themes or categories relevant to evaluation/research questions

Doing Qualitative

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Application: Inductive Analysis

• Focus groups• Text-entry survey questions• Interviews• Documents• Social media

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Basic Inductive Analysis: 6 Steps

Doing Qualitative

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Step. 1. Collect and organize your raw data

Doing Qualitative

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Step. 1. Collect and organize your raw data

Doing Qualitative

Considerations:• Number of collection points

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Step. 1. Collect and organize your raw data

Doing Qualitative

Considerations:• Number of collection points• Transcription

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Doing Qualitative

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Doing Qualitative

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Doing Qualitative

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Step. 1. Collect and organize your raw data

Doing Qualitative

Considerations:• Number of collection points• Transcription• Audit trail

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Step. 1. Collect and organize your raw data

Doing Qualitative

Considerations:• Number of collection points• Transcription• Audit trail• Research journal

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Step. 1. Collect and organize your raw data

Doing Qualitative

Considerations:• Number of collection points• Transcription• Audit trail• Research journal• Participant key/aliases/anonymity

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Step. 1. Collect and organize your raw data

Doing Qualitative

End results:• Clean, anonymized data files

• Transcription files• Audit trail• Participant key• Research journal (including protocols

for all of the above)

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Step 2. Read. And Read Again.

Doing Qualitative

Step 3. Create and Apply Codes (Repeat.)

Doing Qualitative

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Step 4. Refine Codes to Reduce Overlap

Doing Qualitative

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Step 5. Create Categories Doing Qualitative

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Step 6. Narrative Analysis

Doing Qualitative

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Basic Text Analysis: Deductive

Data is analyzed according to prior assumptions

Doing Qualitative

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Basic Text Analysis: Deductive

Data is analyzed according to prior assumptionsEvaluator is “independent” from data

Doing Qualitative

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Basic Text Analysis: Deductive

Data is analyzed according to prior assumptionsEvaluator is “independent” from data A-priori; “top down”

Doing Qualitative

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Basic Text Analysis: Deductive

Data is analyzed according to prior assumptionsEvaluator is “independent” from data A-priori; “top down”Quantitative outcome: metrics relevant to evaluation/research objectives

Doing Qualitative

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Application: Deductive Analysis• Category comparison, comparison over time

• Answers to survey questions across participants

• Answers to interview questions across participants

• Analyzing webinar chat pods• Social media: hashtag use in Twitter,

Facebook/LinkedIn audience engagement

Doing Qualitative

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Basic Deductive Analysis: 5 Steps

1.Develop data categories.2.Clearly define those categories.3.Read through all raw data and apply

categories.4.Count. 5.Narrative and visual analysis.

Doing Qualitative

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Chat Pod Engagement Metrics

Unique chat pod participants

Resources shared by participants

Resources shared by MFLN

Participant questions

Unique participant to participant exchanges

0 5 10 15 20 25

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Doing Qualitative

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The fine print….Only DCO viewers can participate in the chat pod; percentage of chat pod participants based on total number of DCO viewers and total number of unique participants.

Resources shared by participants include shared links, authors, studies, books, etc.; demonstrates high-level engagement because participants are contributing to the co-construction of knowledge during webinar.

Resources shared by MFLN include links, peer-reviewed studies and books, etc., from both MFLN and non-MFLN authors; demonstrates direct CA engagement with participants by further supporting and contextualizing knowledge construction by situating webinar presentation within the larger disciplinary area.

Participant questions are those listed in the chat pod; demonstrates intent to pursue two-way engagement in webinar and therefore high-level engagement.

Unique participant to participant exchanges are those in which chat pod participants respond directly to one another’s comments; demonstrates high-level engagement through realized reactive (two-way) and interactive (dependent) discourse patterns.

Chat pod text related to webinar content is not captured as an engagement measure due to its discursive category as declarative (one-way) communication. (It is noted, however, that declarative text is still understood to indicate webinar engagement, and MFLN encourages and values such participant engagement.)

Chat pod text related to technical issues and/or CEUs is not included in MFLN evaluation.

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Issues in Qualitative

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Issues in Qualitative

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Issues in Qualitative

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ReferencesDavies, C. A. (2008). Reflexive ethnography: A guide to researching selves and others (2nd Ed.). New York and London: Routledge.

Denzin, N. K., and Lincoln, Y. S. (2011). The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (4th Ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage.

Patton, M. Q. (2014). Qualitative research & evaluation methods (4th Ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage.

Richardson, L., and St. Pierre, E. A. (2005). Writing: A method of inquiry. In Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (3rd ed.) (pp. 959–97). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage.

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Icons made by Freepik: http://www.flaticon.com. Flaticon is licensed by Creative Commons 3.0.

Photographs by Haiku Deck: http://www.haikudeck.com. Haiku Deck is licensed by Creative Commons 3.0.

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