Thomas
I think this is getting very interesting - you have given a good
concrete example to anchor the discussion:
...
> - They also do not elaborate on the fact that /kapos/ were
prisoners themselves and not even necessarily ethnic Germans.
>
>
> How would I code something that is precisely *not* to be found in the data
> (or so I hope, because, otherwise I will heve to adjust my theory)? For
> sure, it would make no sense to code each and every story with "concept of
> kapo has not been elaboated." In fact, why should I even make such a code,
> after all, there are hundreds of other things that go unreported, so why
> would I expect that the papers should explain, what a kapo is?
>
I'm not sure that this is a unique problem to do with discourse
analysis. Much analysis is concerned with things not in the data, but
brought into the analysis, by the researcher, for some purpose
connected with their objectives. (I.e. I presume you have some
reason to bring the specific fact about ethnicity of kapos in, and not
e.g. some other facts about them). So in such cases forgive me but
it seems to me obvious that you would not code for them, because
they are not in the data! Instead, these are concepts, terms etc. you
would introduce in the analysis.
So I'm still waiting for an example of why CAQDAS is 'not' suitable
for discourse analysis!
>
> If you really "only" want a data management tool, I still hope you already
> have an idea *how* to manage your data. Sometimes, for ordering data, it
> might be much easier to use a non-CAQDAS management tool. Even the Windows
> Explorer might do, or more sophisticated replacement like Cardfile. Or a
> spreadsheet program. Or a database program. It all despends on your type of
> data and your approach. For much of International Comparative work, I would
> avoid CAQDAS, because even with recent advances, they don't swallow as many
> file formats as does Windows Explorer or Cardfile, and for most purposes, a
> spreadsheet would do the job much more efficiently than any CAQDAS. If I
> want to compare, say media systems across countries, I might get
> information from all sorts of different sources and would store these
> information in a database. That is much more efficient than using even the
> most versatile CAQDAS. I can even take the relevant information, say,
> number of local/national papers, readership figures, degree of state
> involvement in the media, etc., from hardcopies and type them into my
> database. For further analysis, fs/QCA would beat any CAQDAS hands down.
Does Explorer allow you to retrieve segments of data etc? I think
not. Ann will know far more than I do, but there is a huge range of
software for analysing text (lets forget about visuals for now) only a
fraction of which comes under the CAQDAS heading, and much of
which has been developed for specialist purpose in a variety of
disciplines such as linguistics etc. as your website shows you are
aware. But what this means is that if when analysing text we have
some more specific interests, such as content analysis, then most
CAQDAS programs, since they are generalist programs, will not
meet the researcher's needs, and they would have to use a more
dedicated program.
You suggest fs/QCA as an interesting tool - no doubt. But the kinds
of manipulation that are described on the fs/QCA site can be done
with SPSS! I recall doing things like that (though a laborious
recoding process) some years ago - effectively recoding fuzzy sets
into various categories in SPSS so that I could analyse them with
contingency tables. A quantitatively oriented collegue recently
suggested correspondence analysis which I have not looked into.
These of course are all down the 'quantitative' end of data analysis!
Stephen
Stephen Gourlay, PhD; Principal Lecturer, Director of Doctoral Training,
Kingston Business School, Kingston University, Kingston Hill, Kingston upon Thames, KT2 7LB, UK
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