Dear all,
My name is Renske Emmelkamp, a new list-member. As a PhD student I am
currently working on a research into the subject of parent's fears about
teenagers' use of public space at the University of Amsterdam. In my study I
used a range of research methods to explore the relationship between
parental concerns and teenager's use of space. The research project has a
qualitative research design and consists of two stages. In the first stage a
self completion questionnaire was distributed to parents and their children.
For the analyses of the questionnaires I used SPSS. In the second stage 50
parent-child couples (100 interviews) were selected to take part in in-depth
interviews. At this moment I am wondering which qualitative software program
I can use which helps me analysing the data. (All interviews are
transcribed). Please, can anyone help me in sharing with me your own
experiences; telling me the advantages and disadvantages of the different
software packages?
Best wishes,
Renske Emmelkamp
Amsterdam Study Centre for the Metropolitan Environment
University of Amsterdam
Nieuwe Prinsengracht 130
1018 VZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
tel. 31 20 5254003
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-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Harriet W.
Meek
Sent: zaterdag 15 juli 2000 12:37
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: Research teams in QDA software (Was: Re: 2 personcoding on
N vivo)
All,
I am a little puzzled by something about the two-person coding discussion.
It seem to me that one advantage of working in teams is because two people
do not think, will not ever think, in exactly the same ways. However, we
tend to become worried over the differences, seem to be comfortable only
when we can agree. So we go, sometimes to extraordinary means, to see to
it that we will agree. This often has the result of removing the
differences. (You will see that I don't think this is necessarily good.)
But what to do with the difference? It seems to me that areas of
difference point out the existence of something interesting, something that
needs further examination, something to be celebrated rather than dreaded.
But we tend to dread it because the appearance of differences mean we are
going to have to take more time.
When there has been disagreement, I think an assumption can (should?) be
made that this is a different kettle of fish than the areas about which
there has been agreement. These items need to be "taken out of the pot"
(so to speak) and examined in more detail. The software lets us do that,
but people have to do the work.
The areas where there was difference in coding have to be selected out and
examined again, by both (all) people on the team. In some instances it
might even be necessary to set up a separate team to deal with differences.
This "difference" team will need to work a little differently with the
material than just coding it. It will be necessary to talk about the
passages, the various meanings embedded in them, and why each coder saw it
differently. Methods which make use of concensus-style decision making are
probably required. This may well need to become a separate study, one
which looks more deeply into the area of difference and uses different
methods than those in the first part of the study where agreement was
easier.
The evaluation of areas of difference will result in i) agreement on an
existing code, ii) persistent disagreement, iii) agreement on the need for
a new code, iv) maybe other possibilities? Each of these will require
separate treatment -- a new layer. The first group (i) agreement on an
existing code) can probably be put back into the pot (though it should be
remembered that there was something different about those "fish" which
caused them to be selected out in the first place. Group ii) require
further evaluation, maybe several layers of evaluation and examination and
maybe they will need to be set aside for this current study. Group iii) --
is there a problem about adding a new code? And so on. . .
To change metaphors, at some point the group will decide to stop peeling
the onion. .
Harriet Meek
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