Qualitative methods

Data analysis

• Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis IPA
• Grounded Theory – GT
• Narative Analysis
• Discurisive Methods
• Conversation Analysis
• Rhetorical Analysis
• Thematic Analysis

Interpretative phenomenological analysis – IPA

• The researcher explores experience of one single person (or an unit)
• Lived experience – is a key term in this type of analysis
• The most important is to stick with the perspective of the informant
• Double hermeneutics – means to merge the informant’s experience with the reseracher’s personality added during an analysis

IPA – goals

• The main goal of IPA is to formulate topics which define the essence of the explored phenomenon
• A process of analysis starts with the first case (interview)
• Develooping of insider’s perspective
• Coding fieldnotes: semantic, similarities vs differencies, summarizing, paraphrasing, associations

IPA – developing a topic

• During the analysis are rising new topics
• Searching for coincidences across the topics
• Some topics work as a magnet, they attract similar topics
• Some topics are superior to each other and the others become one
• Creating a structure of topics and naming these classes

IPA what to notice

• A degree of abstraction
• Integration – related topics under one umbrella
• Polarization – differences between topics
• Contextualization -identifying narrative elements
• Frequence of occurences
• Functions -finding piositive or negative conotations
• Restructuralisation of topics

Grounded theory

• Is a research method which is grounded in data that has been systematically collected and analysed (Glaser & Strauss)
• Features
  • Data collection and analysis occur sumultaneously
  • Categories and codes developed from data
  • Abstract categories constructed inductively
  • Social processes discovered in the data
  • Analytical memos used between coding and writing
  • Categories integrated into a theoretical framework
• The foundation is clearly defining a question
• This is focused on a process or stges of a phenomenon
• The aim is to describe rules of this process
• Glaser – claims that the question should be stated after a contact with the terrain
• It means to talk about the topic with future participants before the research design is done

Theoretical sensitivity

• Researcher is able to develop a theory that is grounded theoretically dense and cohesive
• It concerns the resarcher being able to give meaning to data, understand what the data says
• And researcher is able to separate out what is relevant and what is not

GT – research process

• Step 1 – research question
• Step 2 – collecting data
• Step 3 creating concepts
• Step 4 – searching for theoretical relationships between concepts
• Step 5 . a choice of the central concepts and formulation a theory

GT Analysis – coding

• “open coding” – the aim is to conceptualize dat – creating essential terms
• concepts and key phares as identified and highligheted moved into subcategories
• this breaks the data down into conceptual components
• the researcher can start to theorise or reflect on the content and understanding sense of the data
• the data form each participant will be constantly compared for similarities
• axial coding – at this stage relationships are identified between the categories and connections identified
• selective coding: this involves identifying the core category and methodically relating it to other categories. Categories are then integrated together and GT identified

GT – Core Category

• Is the chief pheonomena around which the categories are built.
• Theory is generated around a core category
• The core category should account for the variation found in the data, the categories will relato to it in some way.

Narrative analysis

• Refers to a cluster of analytic methods for interpreting texts or visual data that have a storied form
• A common assumption of narrative method is:
  • People tell stories to help organize information and make sense of their lives
  • Their storied accounts are functional and purposeful
• Differemt approaches of NA are categorized whether they focus on structure or content of narratives.

Discursive Methods

• Usually called discourse analysis
• The key of the different method is the recognition of the vital role of discourse in social life
• An approach to language as social practice instead of a pathway to inner cognitive entities (social constructionism)
• The term discourse is used to refer to virtually any language use and considered interpreattive repertoires (recurrently used units of content)

Conversational analysis

• CA refers to a specific approach to the analysis of interaction (Harvey Sacks)
• CA is interested to understand social order by focusing analytically on the sequence of talk in interaction
• And on the ways how participants organize mundane conversation

Thematic analysis

• A definition what thematic analysis means is quite inconsistent
• Mainly, it involves coding of qualitative data into clusters of similar entities or conceptual categories
• Identifiacation of consistent patterns and relationships between themes

Rhetorical analysis

• Interest in rhetoric also arose as part of discursive turn
• Key text constitutes Arguing and Thinking (Billig 1987)
• This helps deeper understanding of how to approach analytically context and content in qualitative research by advocating the need to consider the rhetorical relation between topics (as units of analysis)