10: Analyzing and Reporting Qualitative Research

1. 10: Analyzing and Reporting Qualitative Research

2. Characteristics of Qualitative Data Analysis • Data is textual (or visual) • Goal is understanding • Analyses are on-going and iterative • Member checking (confirmation with respondents) is sometimes used • Approach is inductive

3. Data Reduction Data reduction is a data “sorting” process useful in developing theories and conclusions about the data.

4. Data Reduction • Categorization • Coding • Comparison • Integration and theory building • Iteration and negative case analysis • Tabulation Initial Code Sheet

5. Coding in the Margins

6. Tabulation

7. Relationships between Categories

8. Emic Validity Emic validity is an attribute of qualitative research that affirms that the key members within a culture or subculture agree with the findings of a research report

9. Cross-researcher reliability Cross-researcher reliability is the degree of similarity in the coding of the same data by different researchers (assessed through “Triangulation”)

10. Triangulation Methods • Multiple methods of data collection and analysis • Multiple data sets • Multiple researchers analyzing data (test for “Inter-judge Agreement”) • Data collection in multiple time periods • Selective breadth (i.e. diversity) in informants

11. Research Credibility Issues • Salience of first impressions (primacy effects) or of observations of highly concrete or dramatic incidents (“availability”) • Confirmation Bias leads to overconfidence in confirming data and discounting / non-consideration of disconfirming data • Co-occurrences taken as correlations or even as causal relationships • Improperly generalizing the rate of occurrencefrom unrepresentative sample to the population (base-rate fallacy) • Not considering that some sources may be unreliable