Research analysis methods
The time you get to the analysis of your data, most of the really difficult work done. If you have done this work well, the analysis of the data is usually straightforward most social research the data analysis involves three major steps, done in ng and organizing the data for analysis (data preparation). Together with simple graphics analysis, they form the basis of virtually tative analysis of data. Thus, we use tics to make inferences from our data to more general conditions; we use tics simply to describe what's going on in our most research studies, the analysis section follows these three phases of ptions of how the data were prepared tend to be brief and to focus on only the aspects to your study, such as specific data transformations that are descriptive statistics that you actually look at can be voluminous. Usually, the researcher links each of ntial analyses to specific research questions or hypotheses that were raised in uction, or notes any models that were tested that emerged as part of the most analysis write-ups it's especially critical to not "miss the forest for . Often extensive analysis details are appropriately appendices, reserving only the most critical analysis summaries for the body of ght 2006, william m. Trochim, all rights se a printed copy of the research methods revised: 10/20/ble of contentsnavigatingfoundationssamplingmeasurementdesignanalysisconclusion validitydata preparationdescriptive statisticsinferential tative and qualitative research skillsyouneed:A - z list of learning skills. Types of learning tanding your preferences to aid al thinking al thinking and fake g a dissertation or uction to research tative and qualitative research ative research iews for ative data from tative research ng and sample s and survey ational research and secondary ing research ing qualitative statistical tical analysis: identifying ariate our new research methods of the skills you need guide for ng, coaching, mentoring and ability skills for ibe to our free newsletter and start improving your life in just 5 minutes a 'll get our 5 free 'one minute life skills' and our weekly 'll never share your email address and you can unsubscribe at any tative and qualitative research also: surveys and survey ch methods are split broadly into quantitative and qualitative you choose will depend on your research questions, your underlying philosophy of research, and your preferences and pages introduction to research methods and designing research set out some of the issues about the underlying page provides an introduction to the broad principles of qualitative and quantitative research methods, and the advantages and disadvantages of each in particular tative research is “explaining phenomena by collecting numerical data that are analysed using mathematically based methods (in particular statistics). Research seeks to answer questions about why and how people behave in the way that they do. Tative research is perhaps the simpler to define and data produced are always numerical, and they are analysed using mathematical and statistical methods.
If there are no numbers involved, then it’s not quantitative phenomena obviously lend themselves to quantitative analysis because they are already available as numbers. However, even phenomena that are not obviously numerical in nature can be examined using quantitative e: turning opinions into you wish to carry out statistical analysis of the opinions of a group of people about a particular issue or element of their lives, you can ask them to express their relative agreement with statements and answer on a five- or seven-point scale, where 1 is strongly disagree, 2 is disagree, 3 is neutral, 4 is agree and 5 is strongly agree (the seven-point scale also has slightly agree/disagree). It is important to note that quantitative methods are not necessarily the most suitable methods for investigation. Which may either involve counting the number of times that a particular phenomenon occurs, such as how often a particular word is used in interviews, or coding observational data to translate it into numbers; ary data, such as company pages on survey design and observational research provide more information about these ing quantitative are a wide range of statistical techniques available to analyse quantitative data, from simple graphs to show the data through tests of correlations between two or more items, to statistical significance. Other techniques include cluster analysis, useful for identifying relationships between groups of subjects where there is no obvious hypothesis, and hypothesis testing, to identify whether there are genuine differences between page statistical analysis provides more information about some of the simpler statistical ative research is any which does not involve numbers or numerical often involves words or language, but may also use pictures or photographs and any phenomenon can be examined in a qualitative way, and it is often the preferred method of investigation in the uk and the rest of europe; us studies tend to use quantitative methods, although this distinction is by no means ative analysis results in rich data that gives an in-depth picture and it is particularly useful for exploring how and why things have r, there are some pitfalls to qualitative research, such as:If respondents do not see a value for them in the research, they may provide inaccurate or false information. Qualitative researchers therefore need to take the time to build relationships with their research subjects and always be aware of this gh ethics are an issue for any type of research, there may be particular difficulties with qualitative research because the researcher may be party to confidential information. It is important always to bear in mind that you must do no harm to your research is generally harder for qualitative researchers to remain apart from their work. It is therefore helpful to develop habits of reflecting on your part in the work and how this may affect the research. Data, including diaries, written accounts of past events, and company reports; ations, which may be on site, or under ‘laboratory conditions’, for example, where participants are asked to role-play a situation to show what they might pages on interviews for research, focus groups and observational research provide more information about these ing qualitative e qualitative data are drawn from a wide variety of sources, they can be radically different in are, therefore, a wide variety of methods for analysing them, many of which involve structuring and coding the data into groups and themes. The best way to work out which ones are right for your research is to discuss it with academic colleagues and your page analysing qualitative data provides more information about some of the most common y, it is important to say that there is no right and wrong answer to which methods you mes you may wish to use one single method, whether quantitative or qualitative, and sometimes you may want to use several, whether all one type or a mixture.
It is your research and only you can decide which methods will suit both your research questions and your skills, even though you may wish to seek advice from ng and sample iews for g a research proposal | writing a ing qualitative data | simple statistical @tative and qualitative research skillsyouneed:A - z list of learning skills. It is your research and only you can decide which methods will suit both your research questions and your skills, even though you may wish to seek advice from ng and sample iews for g a research proposal | writing a ing qualitative data | simple statistical @ative research methods & is is more than gh one important feature in is the coding function, also at we whole-heartedly support the statement that “analysis is more than coding”. Software is simply a tool that supports the data analysis process by helping you to find what you are looking for, to retrieve data in all kinds of ways, to help you think and to work with your data. What cannot help you with is to decide on the overall approach that you want to use for your analysis. Analysis approaches and their suitability for a caqdas based phical research / life history sational rse analysis / critical discourse ive hermeneutics. About method and ing to the academic literature, it should be your research question that is guiding this decision. Furthermore, not everyone who has the need for analyzing qualitative data is conducting an academic research project that requires more thorough thinking regarding knowledge generation. A simple analysis of themes and quick access to the data by themes is all that is needed. The question which theoretical research tradition one should follow, and subsequently which methodology and method to choose is not so important. Certain techniques and procedures that guide them in gathering and analyzing data related to their research questions and ology as compared to the term ‘methods’ refers to the strategy, the plan and action, the process or design lying behind the choice and use of a particular method.
Analysis methods derived from these various frameworks are statistical procedures, theme identification, constant comparison, document analysis, content analysis, or cognitive mapping. Gt may also be classified as method, if understood and used as a series of you may wonder what type of techniques and procedures for analyzing qualitative data have been described, here are a few:Close reading of a text, becoming immersed in the data, reading and re-reading a text, taking notes, reflecting on the data and writing down tial text interpretation, taking a closer look at only a few text or data passages, engaging in thought experiments and developing possible story lines considering different contexts, discussing possible data interpretations with a group of other researchers and coming to an agreement after intense discussions. Conclusions are reached through discursive analysis of embodied lived experience before empirical data are collected via self-inspection and reflection of own experience. This is considered necessary as all empirical data are regarded as being reductions and : coding in qualitative research means to assign a word or a phrase that summarizes a section of language-based or visual data. Can be derived from the above is that they are many different methods to analyze qualitative data and coding is only one of them. The analysis of embodied lived experience for instance is rooted in phenomenology and phenomenologists forego coding of data all together. Researchers following the interpretivist paradigm where the above listed sequential analyses techniques belong to even perceive coding as an abhorrent incompatible act for data analysis. And for them caqdas packages like do not help them in pursuing their particular form of analysis. What we will however see later, researchers from these traditions still use as a tool for data management. Coding as method for you decide that coding is an appropriate method to approach the analysis of your data, there is still a lot to learn.
You either have a good teacher at your side, with whom you can discuss your ongoing analysis, or you learn yourself via experience and with time through a process of trial and error what works and what does not work – like finally managing to prepare your first perfect both cases, you will learn to appreciate the software features that allow you to retrieve and to review data, to modify boundaries of coded segments, to rename, to merge or to split codes, to provide spaces forwriting, spaces for you to reflect on the data, spaces to “play” with the data, to rearrange it in different ways, to visualize them – these are all features that support the analysis process and that help the user to immerse in the data, trying to grasps its meaning. Results can be saved in various forms as a basis for new queries, for instance supporting researchers in identifying types and typologies in the , analysis is more than coding and still largely dependent on the person sitting in front of the computer using thesoftware me end this section with a quote from the manual:When iasked anselm strauss back in 1996 to contribute a foreword to the manual of the first version of , i was extremely happy heagreed. As i have no idea how his attitude and his decision would betoday, i decided not to include the original foreword, except for thefollowing quotation which, i promise, will remain true for some time tocome:“… the program author makes no claims whatever to havingproduced a program that will perform miracles for your research –you still have to have the ideas and the gifts to do exceptionalresearch. Analysis approaches and the suitability for caqdas based the next section an overview of various analysis approaches is will find pointers whether caqdas is a useful choice and where researchers have used it for data organization and management only. References to studies that employed are also research consists of a family of research methodologies. The aim is to promote change by engaging participants in a process of sharing contains among other elements also components of field research. Biographical research / life history phical research is an approach to research which elicits and analyses a person’s biography or life history. The steps of data analysis involve thematic analysis, the reconstruction of the life history, a microanalysis of individual text segments, contrastive comparisons and the development of types and contrasting comparison of several cases. Also unger (2009), a student of schütze, works with to support particular parts of the analysis process. Conversational sational analysis or ca is the study of naturally occurring talk-in-interaction, both verbal and non-verbal, in order to discover how we produce an orderly social world.
Typically data are subjected to afine-grained sequential analysis based on a sophisticated form of transcription. In addition to sequential analysis, coding approaches have also been used in recent years for identifying recurrent themes. The use of coding in conversational analysis however is questioned as an appropriate form of analysis by some. Thus, would not be a natural choice when embarking on a fine grained ca analysis of score transcripts. Discourse analysis / critical discourse rse analysis (da) and critical discourse analysis (cda) both encompass a number of approaches to study the world, society, events and psyche as they are produced in the use of language, discourse, writing, talk, conversation or communicative events. It is generally agreed upon that any explicit method in discourse studies, the humanities and social sciences may be used in cda research, as long as it is able to adequately and relevantly produce insights into the way discourse reproduces (or resists) social and political inequality. They used for an analysis of online focus groups within a discourse analytical ough, norman (2003). An example where was used for analysis is a study by hernández and rené (2009) and the online ethnography of greschke (2007). The aim is to discover the methods and rules of social action that people use in their everyday life. Important for an ethnomethodological analysis is self-reflection and the inspectability of data, thus the reader of an ethnomethodological study should be able to inspect the original data as means to evaluate any claim made by the analyst.
Steps in the process of data analysis include coding by type of discourse, counting frequencies of types of discourses, selecting the main types and checking for deviant cases. London: research examines the personal meanings of individuals’ experiences and actions in the context of their social and cultural environment. Its methodological roots are in phenomenology, social interactionism and ethnographyadapted by business studies and marketing research, but also used in other disciplines like medical research. Analysis procedures consist of description, ordering or coding of data and displaying summaries of the data. Nia parson (2005) for example used field research methodology and in her dissertation study: gendered suffering and social transformations: domestic violence, dictatorship and democracy in , carol a. Guide to qualitative field s where was employed as a tool:A focus group is a form of group interviewmainly used in marketing research. Krueger & casey (2000) describe the analysis cutting, pasting, sorting, arranging and rearranging data through comparing and contrasting the relevant information; thus a classical code & retrieve approach and they recommend the use of caqdas for the analysis process. An example where was used for an analysis of focus group is the study by walsh et al (2008). The free s where was employed as a tool:Frame analysis has generally been attributed to the work of erving goffman and his 1974 book: frame analysis: an essay on the organization of experience. In quantitative studies the keyword approach is used extracting frames by means of hierarchical cluster or factor analysis.
Frame analysis: propaganda plays of the woman suffrage movement: an essay on the organization of experience. European journal of communication 19 (3) ed theory (gt) is an inductive form of qualitative research that was first introduced by glaser and strauss(1967). It is a research approach in which the theory is developed from the data, rather than the other way collection and analysis are consciously combined, and initial data analysis is used to shape continuing data collection. Sociological research has been greatly influenced by grounded theory and the method of coding based constant comparison and the theoretical sampling strategy is widely accepted. As coding is central for a grounded theory analysis, caqdas is well suited to support such an analytic approach, apart maybe for the glaser version of gt. Today hermeneutics is also used as a strategy to address a broad range of research questions like interpreting human practices,events, and situations. Researchers bring their personal conviction to the analysis, but they need to be open for revision. The researcher’s concept of the whole is corrected as each interpretation is compared against the parts of the text. In order to achieve this, a number of data typesare employed like document analysis, interviews, standardized surveys or observant participation. The latter means that the researcher goes into the social “field” and tries to get as close as possible to the linguistic and habitual customs of the people examined.
The aim of the analysis is to gain insights into a person’s understanding of the meaning ofevents in their transcription, narratives may be coded according to categories deemed theoretically important by the researcher (riesman, 1993). Another approach is a formal sequential analysis with the purpose of identifying recurrent and regular forms which are then related to specific modes of biographical experiences. An example where is used is the research by de gregorio (2009) on narrating ive analysis can however also be conducted using quantitative methods (qna). Similar as in ethnomethodology, personal motives and intentions are not analysis follows a strict sequential pattern and is usually conducted by a group of researchers, the “interpretation circle”. The opening sentence, different story lines are developed and discussed by the team of researchers. The story lines can beviewed as preliminary hypotheses that in the process of analysiscan be falsified when inspecting more of the empirical method is very time-consuming and thus only feasible with small amounts of text. 5, enography is a fairly new qualitative research method developed in the mid to late 1970s. The focus is on variation in both the perceptions of the phenomenon as experienced by the actor and in the “ways of seeing something”, as experienced and described by the researcher. Thus, the use of caqdas appears to be a feasible tool for phenomenographic analysis as well as put into practice by boon, johnston and webber (2007). They used to analyze faculty’s conceptions of information literacy within a phenomenographical research framework.
Ative data ative data analysis ative research methods & is is more than gh one important feature in is the coding function, also at we whole-heartedly support the statement that “analysis is more than coding”.