Analyzing and Reporting Qualitative Research

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Analyzing and Reporting Qualitative Research
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Characteristics of Qualitative Data Analysis

• Data is textual (or visual)
• Goal is understanding
• Analyses are on-going and iterative
• Member checking is used
• Approach is inductive
• Need to establish credibility

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Components of Data Analysis
Data collection
Data display
Data reduction
Conclusion drawing
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Steps in Analysis
1 Data reduction
2 Data display
3 Conclusion drawing/verification
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Data Reduction
Data reduction is the categorization and coding
of data that is part of the theory development
process in qualitative data analysis
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Data Reduction

• Categorization
• Coding
• Abstraction
• Comparison
• Integration and theory building
• Iteration and negative case analysis
• Tabulation

Initial Code Sheet
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Coding in the Margins
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Tabulation
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Relationships between Categories
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Emic Validity
Emic validity is an attribute of qualitative
research that affirms that the key members within
a culture or subculture agree with the findings
of a research report
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Cross-researcher reliability
Cross-researcher reliability is the degree of
similarity in the coding of the same data by
different researchers
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Forms of Triangulation

• Multiple methods of data collection and analysis
• Multiple data sets
• Multiple researchers analyzing data
• Data collection in multiple time periods
• Providing selective breadth in informants

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Threats to Credibility

• Salience of first impressions or of observations
  of highly concrete or dramatic incidents
• Selectivity which leads to overconfidence in some
  data
• Co-occurrences taken as correlations or even as
  causal relationships
• Extrapolating the rate of instances in the
  population from which those observed
• Not considering that some sources may be
  unreliable