qualitative analysis, not only will you have to deal with lots of data (transcripts, images, videos, documents, etc.) but the very process of analysis will create lots more documents (coded transcripts, memos, research diary, document summaries, etc.). So you will need to work out some way of organizing and managing all the material. There is no doubt that these days the preferred way of managing your project materials is to use CAQDAS. Programs like ATLAS.ti, MAXQDA, NVivo and QDA Miner are designed not only with functions to help your analysis but also to help you keep on top of all the material you will have and will create. If you use such a program you will be able to keep all your project documents in one place and the program will prompt you to create a meaningful organization for them and add appropriate meta-data.
But you don’t have to use CAQDAS. If you don’t have access to the software or your project is small and/or you don’t have time to learn to use the software, then you can carry out your analysis using a PC and paper (and of course, in the days before there were PCs, researchers just used paper). It is most likely that you will be using a PC to manage all your data and analysis, though even these days, there may be some books, reports and documents that you can only get in some non-digital form, but you will have notes about them that you can keep on your PC. Box 2.4 lists some of the documents you will have to manage.
BOX 2.4 Data and documents that need to be managed
Field notes.
Interview transcripts (and audio/video recordings).
Focus group transcripts (and audio/video recordings).
Cover documents for interviews, focus groups, etc.
Documents (including organizational/admin. documents and websites).
Media documents and social media documents (news clippings, Tweets, etc.).
Ethics documents (signed consent forms, information sheets, etc.).
Letters and emails (permissions, arrangements, etc.).
Survey responses (completed questionnaires, spreadsheets, etc.).
Organizational charts, diagrams, etc.
Research diary.
Memos and other analytic writing you do.
Policy documents, government reports, etc.
Reports and papers you write based on the analysis.
Relevant academic literature (commonly lots of pdfs these days) and your notes on the literature.
The simplest way to organize things on your PC is by the use of folders. For example, you might have a folder for each case in your study and perhaps also folders for each setting you have visited (e.g. your cases might be schoolteachers and the settings might be the schools you went to to observe and interview the teachers). It might make sense to include dates in the names of these folders to record when the data were collected. This may be particularly important if you undertake multiple rounds of data collection. You may also have folders for documents you have collected (including any organizational data) and any survey data (if you are doing mixed methods research). The CAQDAS programs allow you to make similar arrangements within your project file.
You may also have a folder for all your notes about the literature you are reviewing for your project. Within that it makes sense to organize your notes thematically, so perhaps have a folder for each major theme in the literature.
The next chapter discusses all the kinds of writing you will do as part of your analysis, so you’ll need to keep that organized too. Files on a PC will all have a date when you created them and when you last changed them. But if you are handwriting notes or keeping a handwritten research diary then it makes sense to put on a date recording when you wrote them or added to them. Not only is it often useful to see in what order you had your ideas and thoughts, but such documents can also form part of an audit trail (see Chapter 7) of your analytic thinking. You will also find you will do lots of cross-referencing. (Who was the head teacher in the school where this interviewee was working? What were the customers this sale representative was dealing with last year?) So it makes sense either to include such data with the pertinent documents (interview transcripts) or to create separate documents like the document summary in Box 2.3.
All these arrangements of folders and files are flexible. Change them and re-arrange them to reflect your changing analytic needs and your developing interpretations. You might even find that the folder structure of your documents reflects the key ways you are developing your analysis. For example, if you keep your memos in thematically named folders you might find the folder names suggest a way of structuring a write up of your analysis. Above all, though, don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can leave all your stuff on the PC desktop and that you are so on top of your material that you can remember where everything is. That may be true for a few weeks, but months if not years later and after your 30th interview the chances are that all you’ll have is a messy PC desktop.
Key Points
Most qualitative data are transcribed into typed (or word-processed) text. This is because analysts find it easier to work with typed copy than with scribbled notes, or audio and video recordings. However, transcription involves a change of medium and therefore a degree of transformation and interpretation of the data.
One consequence is that you will need to decide what level of transcription to use; whether you want to transcribe every pause, stress, pitch change and overlapping speech as well as every word spoken or whether a less detailed rendering is sufficient for your purpose.
It is always best if you personally undertake the transcription, as you already know the subject matter well and are less likely to make mistakes, but also because it gives you a chance to start thinking about your analysis. There is now some new technology, such as OCR and voice recognition software, that might make the task easier. However, if you have the resources, you can pay a transcriber to do the work.
Either way, the accuracy of the transcription is important. You need to check your own typing or check that done by your transcriber. It is very easy to make mistakes that can radically change the meaning.
One way you can avoid a lot of transcription is to collect your data from the Internet. Data from emails, chat rooms, web pages, blogs and the like mean that someone else has already done the typing for you. However, you may still need to do some processing to convert the data into the form you need for your analysis or is needed for your CAQDAS project.
Qualitative analysis uses lots of different kinds of data and creates lots of writing and documents during the process of analysis. So you need to get organized and keep all this material tidy and in places where you can easily find it when you need it.
Further Reading
The following works will extend the issues of this brief introduction in more detail.
Bird, C.M. (2005) ‘How I stopped dreading and learned to love transcription’, Qualitative Inquiry, 11 (2): 226–48.
Brinkmann, S. and Kvale, S. (2018) Doing Interviews (Book 2 of The SAGE Qualitative Research Kit, 2nd ed.). London: Sage.
Park,
