I don't!! - Well, sort of - mainly agree with Susanne that using software
saves you sooo much time and energy BUT don't forget the manual bits like
reading them - I know it sounds obvious but sometimes especially when under
time pressure the temptation is to code like a mad thing and forget to read
them as a whole. Sometimes, if I'm feeling a bit fragmented, or I feel that
my understanding of the data is fragmented, I just sit and read the
interviews and sketch out codes on a sample of them, i.e. just write
possible codes at the side of the text - put the picture back together, so
to speak....
I always feel a bit fragmented!
specially at the minute!!!
Sarah Delaney
Research Officer
Health Services Research Centre
Department of Psychology
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
The Mercer Building
Mercer Street Lower
Dublin 2
00-353-1-4022121
[log in to unmask]
> ----------
> From: Susanne Friese
> Reply To: qual-software
> Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2001 12:24 pm
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: choice of software
>
> > Essentially is it worthwhile to expend that time and
> > effort in learning new software functions (and money
> > on its purchase)? And is a manual approach (however
> > modified) grossly antiquated in the 21st century!
>
> I would say - yes, in any case. I have sometimes been tempted to NOT go
> through the effort of coding the data up in an CAQDAS package, if it was
> just a small data set (oh yeah, this I can easily handle without
> software).
> Then I only found myself anoid, if I could not find text segments (or only
> after a lenghty search through the pages of text and my coding) that I
> knew
> that they were there somewhere. You need to spend the time coding anyway
> (an
> in your case another week or so on top to learn the software) - but
> software
> makes it so much easier later to retrieve that data. And that starts
> already
> when you just have simple queries. Asking more complex questions (in your
> case testing your hypothesis or research questions) is sometimes very
> difficult to achieve using the old 'by hand' method. Software will
> facilitate that by a great deal.
>
> I would also think that it is quite antiquated to use a manual approach in
> the 21st century (as you posed this question) - but then again, I am one
> of
> those persons that likes to play with new technologies....
>
> Susanne
>
>
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