INF5220 13. oktober 2005 1

Analysis, interpretations and writing

INF5220 13. October 2005

INF5220 13. oktober 2005 2

Plan for today

Description, analysis and interpretationConcepts and codingAnalysing narratives and storiesWriting

Today’s lecture is mainly based on:Amanda Coffey and Paul Atkinson: ”Making Sense of Qualitative Data. Complementary Research Strategies”. Sage, 1996.

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Some terms..

Description: ”What’s going on?” The account should be descriptive and stay as closely as possible to data as they were recorded.

Analysis: Extend/expand data beyond a descriptive account. Identify key factors and key relationships. Analysis is cautious and controlled, structured, systematic, grounded and carefully documented. The emphasis is on searching for themes, patterns, features and relationships from the data.

Interpretation: The researcher’s own interpreatation of what’s going on. Understanding and explanations are sought. You should transcend factual data and cautious analysis and begin to probe into what is made of them.

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Coding of data

Group together fragments (instances) of data

(e.g. words, phrases, sentences, sections)

that has some common property or element

(relating to a topic, theme, idea or concept)

(commonalities, differences, patterns, structures)

The data Your ideas about the data

Coding: creating categories and generating concepts

CODING:

Using softwareUsing differently coloured

marker pensUsing keywords or symbolsOrganise data in matrix

or diagram

Practically:

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Coding..

Display the ’bits’ within one coding category together (use e.g. diagrams, matrices, maps). Play with and explore codes and categories (change, rename, re-sort, abandon them, split them into sub-categories, splice them, or link them together)

Don’t eliminate exceptions, misfits, negative findings, constrasts, paradoxes and irregularities (important analytical resource).

This work should be cyclic and iterative (ref. PT’s presentation)

Grounded theory: Open coding versus axial coding (e.g. consequences, prerequisites, conditions, antedecents etc.)

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Coding..

Concepts are related to each other, and thinking about the concepts and their linkages are more difficult and important than the coding (labelling) itself.

Using codes as heuristic devices of discovery, not simple and deterministic labels

..”coding is much more than simply giving categories to data; it is also about conceptualizing the data, raising questions, providing provisional answers about the relationships among and within the data, and discovering the data.” (Coffey and Atkinson, 1996, p. 31)

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Analysing narratives and stories

How to do research with first person accounts of experience

A story: Is a sequence of events that has significance for the narrator

and her audience. Has a beginning, a middle and an end. Has a logic that (at least) makes sense to the narrator

You can look for: Recurrent structures (see next slide) Characteristic uses or functions of the story (what purpose

does it serve?) Success stories and moral tales Narratives as chronicles (how are key events and social actors

represented)

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Structures of narratives

Elementary units of narrative structures (based on Labov, 1982):

What was this about? AbstractWho, what, where, when? OrientationThen what happened? ComplicationSo what? EvaluationWhat finally happened? Result(Finish narrative) Coda

The implicit questions from the audience:

The corresponding elements of the narrative

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Writing and representations

Most fundamentally, analysis is about the representationa or reconstruction of phenomena.

We create account and construct versions – analysis implies representations

Relation between analysis and theory: a recurrent movement

Forms of representations, genres etc. link to their content – writing is also an analytic activity!

Generalisation: develop concepts, generate theory, draw specific implications or contribute with rich insights?

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+ on writing papers:

A helpful piece: Carsten Sørensen: ”This is not an article. Just

some food for thought on how to write one”. Available at: http://is.lse.ac.uk/staff/sorensen/downloads/not/

notart.html