 |
 |
> > I'm teaching a two-day interactive course on **handling** qualitative data, > next month, in Sydney. Not on any software, rather on why you would be > wanting to do this and what to do with qualitative data if you get some. > [SNIP]> > I'd be interested to hear from listmembers about this approach - and what > they'd look for, or try to fit in, such a course! > As a workshop leader, I find it frequently quite frustrating that those enrolled have very little idea of the process of qualitative research. They become very focussed on minutiae of the software rather than seeing it as just part of a big process. So one content item of the workshop might be a flow chart of some sort. People find it hard to understand that they may (if project is large) have trouble managing their documents and that a consistent, logical document naming system is essential. Ideally the system would be related to the research question. Again and again people bring me documents with real people's names embedded despite all those assurances of confidentiality they made to participants. A tiny part of the workshop might be the conversion of names *prior to* entering the data into N5/NVivo. I think participants should be given some idea of how complex and huge the field of qualitative methods and theory is. 'Qualitative' is hardly a sufficient description of method. An idea of what the activities of analysis might be is a hard one to address. However, perhaps the idea of reading over and over plus cogitation could be mentioned. It wouldn't hurt anyone and it might help! Also selectivity is good to mention -- since so many people collect huge amounts of data they become quite frightened at analysis time. It is usually better to sample from all the data rather than do an intensive analysis of a bit. Finally -- and I am going on too much I know -- the basics of cutting and pasting might be taught. Sounds trivial but I've met too many people who type out their quotations from printed NUD*IST reports. I guess that the idea of writing as involving use of more than one piece of software is a larger topic. Mind you, concept mapping while it may involve software may be done as well (I think) by hand on a piece of paper and is quite helpful while writing. Over and out--may the sun shine, Sue ********************************************************************* Susan Elgie, Research Consulting Service, OISE, University of Toronto, 252 Bloor St. West, Toronto, Canada, M5S 1V6 (voice) 416-923-6641, ext 2762 [log in to unmask] (FAX) 416-926-4744 *********************************************************************