> The metaphor I use is painting... if you watch a class of painters, they
> work close to see detail, stand back to see pattern. But in a beginning
> class, the instructor will almost have to peel the student away from their
> paintings to force them to stand back and LOOK, because they get so caught
> up in the detail of the work. More experienced painters know that the
> looking time is as important as the painting time. Just so, I think
> qualitative researchers need to work "in and out," balancing close and
> distant perspectives, and the use of software changes what used to be an
> natural balance to one that may need to be more consciously managed.
>
The method that I use is my variant of the "grounded theory" methodology of
Glaser and Strauss. I think that my way of standing back and looking at
data involves what G & S call memoing. Memoing helps me to keep a
chronological record of my conceptual struggles with the data. Of course, a
lot of this is implicitly buried in the coding record itself but not really
in a way that helps you to step back and look at the big picture.
Furthermore (as G & S point out), memoing helps you to see when it would be
helpful to go out and collect more data to check out hunches from coding of
previously collected data. And I've found that memoing can be a nice form
of "pre-writing" for a subsequent report. So, without regard to software, I
really keep three records - the transcripts (or images etc.), the record of
the codes (in which qualitative software can be really useful), and a
chronological record of my memos. I am not always as systematic about
connecting all these records together as I might be. But I've found that
having parallel chronological records by itself is very helpful. But there
are lots of different kinds of tools available and I think that it is a
matter of finding the tools that allow you to get the "in and out" of the
data feeling. (BTW, I suspect that the need to get into and out of the data
is something that quantitative/statistical researchers face as well but
their tools/methods allow them to deal with the problems somewhat
differently.)
Bill Kaghan
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