Just following Stephen's diversion down the narrative trail, quite by chance
but very topically - Graham Gibbs (Reader in Behavioural Sciences at
Huddersfield ) is doing an interesting paper on 'narrative' and CAQDAS, at
the Research Methods Festival, in the CAQDAS session which is happening
between 2 and 5.30pm on 1 July
http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/methods/festival/programme/
"Using CAQDAS in lexical searching and narrative analyses."
here is the abstract................
"I will distinguish those aspects of qualitative data analysis that are
concerned with the careful organisation and management of research and those
that are concerned with interpretation. The organisation and management of
research is an important aspect of analysis which contributes to the quality
of analytic work. Moreover, whilst interpretation is the preserve of the
human analyst, other aspects of analysis can be enhanced by the use of
CAQDAS.
I will examine the use of the search facility in CAQDAS both to get to know
your data and to find particular language use, such as metaphors, accounts
and narrative moves. There are some strategies that can be used to improve
the searching and to record what has been searched for. I will also consider
the use of coding for some of the aspects of a narrative analysis, and
explain how this coding can be used to promote the reading of transcripts
when developing a narrative analysis.
A benefit of the use of CAQDAS in this way is its contribution to the
quality of analysis. I will argue that this is because the activities
supported by CAQDAS contribute to the reliability and validity of narrative
analyses"
..just thought I'd mention it!
regards
Ann Lewins
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Gourlay" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, June 11, 2004 12:02 PM
Subject: Re: Methodologies and CAQDAS, was: Re: Freely available comparisons
of Atlas vs. NVivo
> 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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>
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