Data Analysis, Coding, and CAQDAS

prepared by Jane M. Gangi, Ph.D.April 28, 2011

As you begin data analysis, you can review my February 17 powerpoint on data analysis

You can also review Bogdan and Biklen’s chapter on data analysis

And, some of the profiles also referred to data analysis

A reminder:

Why do data analysis?

“A young man walked along a country road and met an older man. They quarreled and the young man killed the other. The young man went on to a city, where he met an older woman and married her. Then the young man put his eyes out and left the city” (Erickson, as cited in Dyson and Genishi, 2005, p. 84)

What do you make of this text?

Email me: gangij@wcsu.edu if you need help with analyzing the text on slide 3

“Data analysis involves organizing what you have seen, heard, and read so that you can figure out what you have learned and makes sense of what you have experienced. Working with the data, you describe, compare, create explanations, link your story to other stories, and possibly pose hypotheses or develop theories” (p. 184)

What is data analysis? Glesne’s (2011) definition:

ConversationNarrativeSemiotic Thematic (Glesne, 2011, p. 185)And,GroundedDiscourse (and others)

Kinds of data analysis

“A theme is a pattern found in the information that at the minimum describes and organizes possible observations or at the maximum interprets aspects of the phenomenon” (Boyatzis, 1990, p. vii).

What is a theme?

A search for themes and patterns Constant case comparison: A search for

variation in the data Memo writing

All which lead to………..coding (Glesne, 2011)

Thematic analysis

“Projection is one our ego defense mechanisms….[that] can also become an obstacle to effective and insightful thematic analysis. It is simply ‘reading into’ or ‘attributing to’ another person something that is your own characteristic, emotion, value, attitude, or such” (Boyatzis, 1990, p. 13).

Obstacles to thematic analysis:

If you tend to see the glass half-empty, you may unconsciously see the glass-half empty in your research.

If you tend to see the glass half-full, you may unconsciously see the glass half-full in your research.

Half-empty or half-full:

What is a code? Saldaña’s (2009) definition:

“A code in qualitative inquiry is most often a word or short phrase that symbolically assigns a summative, salient, essence-capturing, and/or evocative attribute for a portion of language-based or visual data.….Just as a title represents and captures a book or film or poem’s primary content and essence, so does a code represent and capture a datum’s primary content and essence”(p. 3, emphasis added).

“Coding can be thought about as a way of relating our data to our ideas about these data” (as cited in Boyatzis, 1990, p. 5)

A second definition of code--Coffey and Atkinson’s (1996)

“Qualitative coding is the process by which segments of data are identified as relating to, or being an example, of a more general idea, instance, theme or category” (p. 81)

A third definition of code: Lewins and Silver’s (2007)

Includes

A label Description or definition Indicators Examples Exclusions, or special conditions (Boyatzis,

1990, p. 49)

What contributes to a quality code?

Codes: Bogdan and Biklen (2007, pp. 174-180)

Setting and Context •Description of setting, contexts, and subjects (p. 174)

Situation •How participants “see themselves in relation to the setting” or topic (p. 174)

Perspectives •“Ways of thinking” about “particular aspects of a setting” (p. 175)

People and Objects •The “understandings” participants have of each other, outsiders, and objects (p. 175). (Mentions Graue’s study.)

Codes: Bogdan and Biklen (2007, pp. 174-180), continued

Process •Changes over time, passages (p. 176)

Activity •“Regularly occurring kinds of behavior” (p. 176)

Event •“The firing of a teacher,” “a teacher strike,” “the riot” (p. 177)

Strategy •“Tactics, methods, techniques…and other conscious ways people accomplish various things” (p. 177)

Codes: Bogdan and Biklen (2007, pp. 174-180), continued

Relationship and Social Structure •“Regular patterns of behavior….cliques, friendships, romances, coalitions…” (p. 177)

Narrative •How people tell their stories (pp. 178-179)

Methods •“Research procedures, problems, joys, dilemmas…” (p. 179)

may be inductive (from the data)or deductive (from theory or from previous

research)

Coding

…conceptualizes 30 codes.

A select few:

In Vivo—select phrases from participants’ language

Emotion Simultaneous—”multiple meanings” (p. 62)

Saldaña (2009)

1. themes or topics—initially from an interview or identified within the data

2. ideas or concepts—derived from existing literature in the research area or developed from close reading and thinking about data

3. language or terminology used in the data—whether that be words or phrases used by respondents or documentary evidence (Lewins & Silver, 2007, pp. 83-84)

Coding can be generated from

“What are people trying to do and through what means and strategies? How do people characterize others or their own situation? What sorts of assumptions about…student-teacher relationships, institutional expectations, normal childhoods, or good families undergird their actions?” (Dyson & Genishi, 2005, pp. 84-85).

To develop codes, ask:

First phase: Open (which may lead to fragmentation)

Second phase: Axial—compare, contrast, possibly merge codes from the first phase

Third phase: Selective—make decisions about what seems most relevant, and support your conclusions from your data

(Lewins & Silver, 2007)

Phases of coding:

HyperRESEARCH 3.02: http://www.researchware.com/products/hyperresearch.html

See two handouts on HyperRESEARCH

Nvivo7

Atlas.ti5

Ethnograph

MAXqda2

QDA Miner 2.0

Qualrus

Transana2

CAQDAS (computer assisted qualitative data analysis)

The ethnographer who lived in a group home for a year, Edmond (2005):

“In terms of my own research, I decided to transcribe all the tape-recordings and to incorporate them into my diary. While highly time-consuming, this approach allowed me to gain a real sense of the emerging themes, the structures and patterns of interactions and the characters involved” (p. 135)

To use, or not to use, CAQDAS?

Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis: http://caqdas.soc.surrey.ac.uk/

Ethnograph: http://www.qualisresearch.com/

HyperRESEARCH Teaching videos: http://faculty.education.ufl.edu/tsadler/hyperr/index.html

Resources for CAQDAS

Bogdan, R. C., & Biklen, S. K. (2007). Qualitative research for education: An introduction to theories and methods (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Boyatzis, R. E. (1990). Transforming qualitative information: Thematic analysis and code development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Dyson, A. H., & Genishi, C. (2005). On the case: Approaches to language and literacy research. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Edmond, R. (2005). Ethnographic research methods with children and young people. In S. Greene & D. Hogan (Eds.), Researching children’s experiences: Approaches and methods (pp. 123-139). London, U.K.: Sage.

References

Glesne, C. (2011). Becoming qualitative researchers: An introduction (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Lewins, A., & Silver, C. (2007). Using software in qualitative research: A step-by-step guide. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.

 Saldaña, J. (2009). The coding manual for

qualitative researchers. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

References, continued

Supplementary:Powerpoint slides I would share if we had more time

Lichtman (2010):

"Although many researchers choose a particular orientation or combination of approaches, others do not make such a choice; rather, they take a generic approach. Chenail discusses this idea in an interview (Lichtman, 2004). While many may have operated this way, only fairly recently has it been articulated as a generic approach....“ (p. 88).

Add to last week’s rubric….Generic Approach

Open, axial, and selective coding (Strauss and Corbin, 1998)

Descriptive, topic and analytic coding (Richards, 2005)

Provisional, core and satellite codes (Layder, 1998)

Literal, interpretive and reflexive indexing (Mason, 2002)

Descriptive, interpretive and pattern coding (Miles and Huberman, 1994)

Objectivist and heuristic codes (Seidel, 1998) (p. 82)

Lewins and Silver (2007): Approaches to coding

Open coding—first coding stage “in which small segments of data…are considered in detail and compared with one another”

Axial coding—second coding stage: “Code labels and the data linked to them are rethought in terms of similarity and difference. Similar codes may be grouped together, merged…, subdivided…”

Selective coding—third stage: “Instances in the data which most pertinently illustrate themes, concepts, relationships, etc. are identified. Conclusions are validated by illustrating instances represented by and grounded in the data” (Lewins & Silver, 2007, pp. 84-85)

Inductive approaches to coding

Descriptive codes—the data is organized by descriptions found in the data, and emerge from “predefined areas of interest”—factual or theoretical

Interpretive codes—codes are “revisited….Similar aspects may be recodes where they exemplify a meaningful concept or relationship”

Pattern codes—”move to a more inferential and explanatory level.” For example, “respondents with certain similar characteristics”; the goal is to “identify meaningful and illustrative patterns in the data” (Lewins & Silver (2007), summarizing Miles & Huberman (1994), p. 86)

Deductive approaches to coding