John,
I've been fascinated by your experience trying to find effective links between the quantitative and qualitative data associated with comprehensive development "wealth." I'm afraid I can't contribute in any significant way to your knowledge of merge tools (I'm a Nudist user but a neophyte compared to some on this list). However, I think your investigation and experience will be of great interest to a few of my colleagues, and wonder if you (and others who might contribute to this discussion) would mind if I shared your background pieces and any pertinent discussion that might follow your enquiry with them.
My company is about to embark on a major study in which we will be implementing and evaluating the effect of an experimental economic intervention in a major Canadian community. We will not only be looking at impacts resulting from the experimental treatment itself (experimental:control group differences), but also the observed effects and implications of this treatment for community economic development.
The work you've been doing developing parameters for assessing wealth in an international development context would seem very relevant for our project AND, as we are also dealing with the issue of linking quantitative and qualitative data in a much more comprensive way than in our previous studies, I will be following this discussion with great interest. I look forward to more.
If anyone contributing to this discussion would prefer that I not share their comments outside this list, please let me know.
Wendy Bancroft
Senior Research Associate
Social Research and Demonstration Corporation
Vancouver, BC, Canada
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Is anyone else working on a merger of quantitative and qualitative data
analysis tools? I am new to these discussion fora and have only been able to
'lurk' through the last several months--without finding anything of this sort.
Since leaving I have been learning about the qualitative side and have a
prototype merger, with QSR's NUD-IST at the nexus, which I call the First
Integrating Navigator for Development (FIND). My purpose is to promote the use
of objective yet comprehensive criteria in choosing solution to international
development concerns without expecting all to be reduced to precise numbers.
I have adequate contact with leading-edge efforts on quantitative analysis
techniques but need contacts on the qualitative side. In October I will be
doing a presentation on FIND at a conference on business applications of
multidimensional decision support systems (cutting edge tools like OLAP). I
hope by then to have sparked a dialogue between some of you with real
expertise on the qualitative side and those expert on the other side--or be
able to refer to ongoing work unknown to me today.
To focus responses, I am also sending two background notes explaining (1) how
I have backed into CAQDAS and (2) how far I have gotten with the FIND
prototype. Please respond to this note concerning other initiatives I should
study and the background notes concerning my views on the substance and
information technology, respectively, of a merger.
Thanks in advance to those who read and comment.
John C. O'Connor
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