Analyzing and Coding Qualitative Research

Basics of Qualitative Research (3rd ed.)

Strauss, A. & Corbin, J. (2007)

ADLT 673, Session 10

Collection of tuition waivers

Update on assignments – All

work due by Friday, April 28

Remaining class schedule,

April 20 and 26 (Symposium)

Opportunity for individual

meetings

Discussion of interviews and

focus groups

Data coding and analysis

Review of Assignments

Worksheets, Engagement, and Participation (30%)

CITI Social Behavioral exam, print completion report (15%)

Outline of a SoTL Research Proposal for Medical Education (50%)

* Alternative to small group presentation of project (5%) – Medical Education Research Symposium

Before Data Collection

Setting the boundaries for the study

Purposefully select participants who

are best suited to provide insight into

the research question

Collecting information through

observations, interviews, / focus

groups, documents, and visual

materials

The Researcher’s Role

Researcher biases, background, steps taken re: reflexivity

Why this site? What was done at the site?

Will it be disruptive? How minimize? What effects might that have on the quality of the data?

How will results be reported? What will the “gatekeeper” gain from the study?

Thoughts on Interviewing

In-depth interviewing is a means to understand the experience of other people

What, how, and why questions

Use probes (follow-up questions)

Watch for markers and follow them up with a question to elicit additional information

Conducting Focus Groups

Requires a highly skilled facilitator to draw people out

Goal is to obtain in-depth, “rich, thick” description

Build rapport with group

“Can anyone else relate to that experience” or “Has anyone else had a different experience?”

Ask for examples, and keep asking for examples

Use digital recorder(s) – need 2 or 3 for a table of 12 participants

No more than 4-5 questions per hour/ 6 to 8 in 1.5 hours

Round robin number your participants

If you cannot conduct the interview, ask another (qualified) person to serve as your facilitator

Use a transcriptionist familiar with qualitative data

Always listen to your data; do not rely on transcripts alone

The detailed line-by-line

analysis necessary at the

beginning of a study to

generate initial categories

and to suggest

relationships among

categories

Participants’ recounting of actual

events and actions as they are

remembered and

Texts, observations, videos, or other

materials gathered by the

researcher, and field notes made by

the researcher

Researcher’s memos of

those events, objects, happenings,

and actions

Interplay between data and

researcher as the instrument of

interpretation

Qualitative analysis is a way of

thinking about data

Learn to listen, letting the

data speak to the researcher

Learn to relax, adopt a more

flexible, less preplanned, and

less controlled approach to

research

Major Points About Data Analysis

Must listen closely, taking into

account the interviewees’

interpretations

Conceptualize and classify

chunks of meaning

Enables researchers to examine

what assumptions about the

data they are taking for granted

Conceptualizing is the first step

in analysis or theory building

(in a grounded theory study).

A concept is a labeled

phenomenon.

Can label a word or groups of

words, such as a phrase

The researcher’s record of

analysis, thoughts,

interpretations, questions,

and directions for further

data collection.

Often called analytic memos

Categories are concepts,

derived from data, that stand

for phenomena.

Phenomena are important

analytic ideas that emerge from

the data.

They answer the question

“What is going on here?”

Once concepts begin to

accumulate, the researcher

should begin the process of

grouping them into explanatory

terms called categories.

Example: A researcher is

studying children at play and

notices acts that she labels

“grabbing,” “hiding,”

“avoiding,” and

“discounting.”

Then, on observing the

subsequent incident, it

suddenly dawns on the

researcher that what the

children are doing is trying to

avoid something through those

actions.

Thus, grabbing, hiding,

avoiding, and discounting are

grouped under the more

abstract heading of

“strategies.”

But strategies for what?

The most probable answer is

to avoid “toy sharing.”

In this manner, it emerges that

one of the important

phenomena to study in relation

to groups of children at play is

“toy sharing,” with “strategies”

for either sharing or not

sharing being a subcategory

How would we begin to code

these pages from an actual focus

group transcript of physicians in a

Master Teacher program?

What conceptual labels might you

assign to the passages you read?

Which concepts can be grouped

into categories?

What sense are you making of the

data?

Research Question: What did Master Teachers

learn?

Focus Group Questions:

Changes in methods used to teach?

Changes in clinical practice, and how relate to

patients?

Specific incident that had a significant impact on

teaching?

What organizational barriers encountered in

using what was learned?

The Task