process - Quirkos Qualitative Research Blog (Page 2)

Archaeologies of coding qualitative data

In the last blog post I referenced a workshop session at the International Conference of Qualitative Inquiry entitled the ‘Archaeology of Coding’. Personally I interpreted archaeology of qualitative analysis as being a process of revisiting and examining an older project

process

Teaching Qualitative Methods via Social Media

his blog now has nearly 120 posts about all different kinds of qualitative methods, and has grown to hosting thousands of visitors a month. There are lots of other great qualitative blogs around, including Margaret Roller’s Research Design Review and the Digital Tools for Qualitative Research group

process

Writing qualitative research papers

We’ve actually talked about communicating qualitative research and data to the public before, but never covered writing journal articles based on qualitative research. This can often seem daunting, as the prospect of converting dense, information rich studies

methods

Making the most of bad qualitative data

A cardinal rule of most research projects is things don’t always go to plan. Qualitative data collection is no difference, and the variability in approaches and respondents means that there is always the potential for things to go awry. However, the typical small sample sizes can make even

analysis

Practice projects and learning qualitative data analysis software

Coding and analysing qualitative data is not only a time consuming, it’s a difficult interpretive exercise which, like learning a musical instrument, gets much better with practice. However, lots of students starting their first major qualitative or mixed method research project will benefit from

analysis

Archiving qualitative data: will secondary analysis become the norm?

Last month, Quirkos was invited to a one day workshop in New York on archiving qualitative data. The event was hosted by Syracuse University, and you can read a short summary of the event here. This links neatly into the KWALON led initiative to create a common standard

analysis

Stepping back from coding software and reading qualitative data

There is a lot of concern that qualitative analysis software distances people from their data. Some say that it encourages reductive behaviour, prevents deep reading of the data, and leads to a very quantified type of qualitative analysis

methods

Problems with quantitative polling, and answers from qualitative data

The results of the US elections this week show a surprising trend: modern quantitative polling keeps failing to predict the outcome of major elections. In the UK this is nothing new, in both the 2015 general election and the EU referendum polling failed to predict the outcome

analysis

Triangulation in qualitative research

Qualitative methods are sometimes criticised as being subjective, based on single, unreliable sources of data. But with the exception of some case study research, most qualitative research will be designed to integrate insights from a variety of data sources

process

100 blog articles on qualitative research!

Since our regular series of articles started nearly three years ago, we have clocked up 100 blog posts on a wide variety of topics in qualitative research and analysis! These are mainly short overviews

process

Thinking About Me: Reflexivity in science and qualitative research

Reflexivity is a process (and it should be a continuing process) of reflecting on how the researcher could be influencing a research project. In a traditional positivist research paradigm, the researcher attempts to be a neutral influence on research

analysis

Analytical memos and notes in qualitative data analysis and coding

There is a lot more to qualitative coding than just deciding which sections of text belong in which theme. It is a continuing, iterative and often subjective process, which can take weeks or even months. During this time, it’s almost essential to be recording your thoughts

process

10 tips for sharing and communicating qualitative research

Writing up and publishing research based on qualitative or mixed methods data is one thing, but most researchers will want to go beyond this, and engage with the wider public and decision makers. This requires a different style of publication, and a different style of writing

methods

Reaching saturation point in qualitative research

A common question from newcomers to qualitative research is, what’s the right sample size? How many people do I need to have in my project to get a good answer for my research questions? For research based on quantitative data, there is usually a definitive answer

quirkos

Tips for managing mixed method and participant data in Quirkos and CAQDAS software

Even if you are working with pure qualitative data, like interview transcripts, focus groups, diaries, research diaries or ethnography, you will probably also have some categorical data about your respondents. This might include demographic data, your own reflexive notes

analysis

Merging and splitting themes in qualitative analysis

To merge or to split qualitative codes, that is the question… One of the most asked questions when designing a qualitative coding structure is ‘How many codes should I have?’. It’s easy to start out a project thinking that just a few themes will cover the research questions

process

7 things we learned from ICQI 2016

was lucky enough to attend the ICQI 2016 conference last week in Champaign at the University of Illinois. We managed to speak to a lot of people about using Quirkos, but there were hundreds of other talks, and here are some pointers from just a few of them!

analysis

Sharing qualitative research data from Quirkos

Once you’ve coded, explored and analysed your qualitative data, it’s time to share it with the world. For students, the first step will be supervisors, for researchers it might be peers or the wider research community

process

Tools for critical appraisal of qualitative research

I've mentioned before how the general public are very quantitatively literate: we are used to dealing with news containing graphs, percentages, growth rates, and big numbers

analysis

Finding, using and some cautions on secondary qualitative data

Many researchers instinctively plan to collect and create new data when starting a research project. However, this is not always needed, and even if you end up having to collect your own data, looking for other sources already out there can help

process

Transcribing your own qualitative data

In a previous blog article I talked about some of the practicalities and costs involved in using a professional transcribing service to turn your beautifully recorded qualitative interviews and focus groups into text data ready for analysis

methods

Sampling considerations in qualitative research

Two weeks ago I talked about the importance of developing a recruitment strategy when designing a research project. This week we will do a brief overview of sampling for qualitative research, but it is a huge and complicated issue

quirkos

Qualitative evidence for SANDS Lothians

Charities and third sector organisations are often sitting on lots of very useful qualitative evidence, and I have already written a short blot post article on some common sources of data that can support funding applications, evaluations and impact assessments

process

Recruitment for qualitative research

You’ll find a lot of information and debate about sampling issues in qualitative research: discussions over ‘random’ or ‘purposeful’ sampling, the merits and pitfalls of ubiquitous ‘snowball’ sampling, and unending questions about sample size and saturation