John Kessler wrote:
> May I ask what are the largest qualitative data projects each of you
> have been involved with? I am new to the research world and have
> been responsible for the data for a quite large qualitative
> research project. To prepare for future projects, I am developing
> procedures and automation to handle the data. I am finding out
> that the data size I am dealing with is unusual, so I am
> determining what the rest of the research world considers a large
> data set.
Ich you have a few MB of data, you must decide what the goal of your
analysis is. If you already decide to do a qualitative study, coding o
few MB of data consumes a lot of time, maybe years. If you are not sure,
decide whether you want to be able to draw statistical inferences from
your data, or if your goal is to find differences and regularities in
the data? If the first is the case, a QDA methdology is inadaequate, you
better do a content analysis (which is selective), otherwise chose a QDA
approach. Nowadays the technology and the software are no problem, but
some humans have to code these amounts of data, this is the bottleneck.
HTH
Harald Klein
-------------------------
Social Science Consulting
Brueckengasse 12
07407 Rudolstadt
Germany
Tel/Fax: +49 3672 488494
|