be revealed. But usually this is not the case. We are normally required to go to some lengths to protect the identity of those involved in our research. Chapter 2 discusses some of the aspects of anonymization of transcripts that are required in qualitative analysis.
The personal nature of much qualitative research means that researchers need to be very sensitive to the possible harm and upset their work might cause to participants. Again, mostly these issues arise at the stage of data collection, when, for example, the nature of depth interviews might allow people to talk at length and in depth about issues they would not normally address. Researchers have to be aware of the distress this might cause participants and make provisions for dealing with it. By the time the data are analyzed, these issues should have been dealt with, although there might still be some remaining issues connected with the publication of the results of the analysis. These issues will be discussed further in Chapter 7.
Key Points
Qualitative data are very varied, but all have in common that they are examples of human meaningful communication. For reasons of convenience most such data are converted to written (or typed) text. The analysis of what is often a large amount of material reflects two characteristics. First, the data are voluminous and there need to be methods for dealing with this in a practical and consistent way. Second, the data need to be interpreted.
There are some practical issues that make qualitative data analysis distinctive. These include starting data analysis before the sampling is decided and the data collection is complete, and the fact that the analysis of the data tends to increase its volume (at least to start with) rather than reduce it.
There is a tendency to see qualitative research as constructionist, inductive and idiographic. That is to say, to see it as concerned with the interpretation of new explanations about the unique features of individual cases. However, this is a gross simplification. Much qualitative research is concerned with explaining what people and situations have in common and doing this with reference to existing theories and concepts. To that extent it is nomothetic and deductive/abductive. In addition, although all researchers are sensitive to the way that even their descriptions are interpretations, they are sufficiently realist to believe that it is important to represent the views of participants and respondents as faithfully and accurately as possible.
These differences in methodology have an impact on the overall aims of your qualitative analysis, at least to start with. But qualitative analysis is very flexible and your final analysis might examine phenomena you hadn’t imagined when you started out.
Because of its individual and personal nature, qualitative research raises a host of ethical issues. However, most of these should have been dealt with before data analysis starts. Nevertheless, it is important to ensure that anonymity is preserved (if the assurance has been given) and that respondents know what will happen to the data they have provided.
Further Reading
The following works discuss the issues in this brief introduction in more detail:
Barbour, R. (2018) Doing Focus Groups (Book 4 of The SAGE Qualitative Research Kit, 2nd ed.). London: Sage.
Brinkmann, S. and Kvale, S. (2018) Doing Interviews (Book 2 of The SAGE Qualitative Research Kit, 2nd ed.). London: Sage.
Coffey, A. (2018) Doing Ethnography (Book 3 of The SAGE Qualitative Research Kit, 2nd ed.). London: Sage.
Crotty, M. (1998) The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Flick, U. (2018) Designing Qualitative Research (Book 1 of The SAGE Qualitative Research Kit, 2nd ed.). London: Sage.
Flick, U., von Kardorff, E. and Steinke, I. (eds) (2004) A Companion to Qualitative Research. London: Sage. See especially Parts 3A and 4.
Hesse-Biber, S.N. and Leavy, P. (eds) (2004) Approaches to Qualitative Research: A Reader on Theory and Practice. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. See especially Part I.
Howell, K. (2012) An Introduction to the Philosophy of Methodology. London: Sage.
Maxwell, J.A. (2012) A Realist Approach for Qualitative Research. London: Sage.
Rapley, T. (2018) Doing Conversation, Discourse and Document Analysis (Book 7 of The SAGE Qualitative Research Kit, 2nd ed.). London: Sage.
Chapter Two Data Preparation
Contents
Transcription 18
Doing the transcription 24
Printing the transcript 28
Internet data 29
Meta-data 30
Preparing for archives 31
Getting organized 32
Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should:
know that most analysts work with textual data, usually neatly transcribed and typed;
see that the task of transcription is time consuming and must be done carefully and with pre-planning as it involves a change of medium and thus inevitably a degree of interpretation; and
be aware of the decisions to be made about the process and level of transcription, naming conventions, anonymization and formatting.
Transcription
Most qualitative researchers transcribe their interview recordings, observations and field notes to produce a neat, typed copy. They do this because they find it much easier to work with textual transcriptions of their recordings. Now that most recordings are digital there is very good software to play them, but even so, it is usually easier to navigate around a transcript and mark it with notes, ideas, etc. This is particularly important in the process of analysis when you are reading, re-reading and cross-referencing the text many times. Trying to find the point in an interview transcript where you remember the respondent made some important comment is hard enough when you have many pages to look through. But a quick glance at the transcript and your memory of the sequence of discussion will often enable you to home in quickly to the comments you are looking for. All this is much harder and slower to do when working with audio or video files.
However, there are two big issues to bear in mind before undertaking transcriptions: they take a lot of time and effort to do, and transcription is an interpretive process. Estimates of the time transcripts take vary from author to author and depend on what level of detail you transcribe and how talented the typist is. A common figure is that even the most straightforward transcribing takes somewhere between four to six times as long as it takes to collect the data. This means work can pile up, especially for the lone researcher doing their own transcription. Many PhD students using qualitative
