Tuesday, August 10, 2010

EDU 530 Fall 2010 Creswell Discussion Ch. 9

Please post your question, quote, and fact here for chapter 9. Also, respond to at least two of your peers' posts as well as answer my questions.
Questions:
1.) Name the steps for analyzing qualitative data.
2.) How do you organize and transcribe qualitative data?
3.) How do you code qualitative data?
4.) How do you develop a detailed description and a theme?
5.) How do you check the accuracy of your findings and interpretation?

29 comments:

  1. Question: Why do you keep the quotes short simply for space and to add realism, because I would think longer quotes would add more reader appeal?
    Quote: "The reason for the small number of themes is that it is best to write a qualitative report providing detailed information about a few themes."
    Fact: Not all qualitative projects include both description and themes, but all studies include at least themes.

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  2. 1. The steps for analyzing qualitative data are:
    1. The researcher collects data (i.e., a text file such as fieldnotes, transcriptions, or optically scanned material)
    2. The researcher prepares data for analysis (i.e., transcribes fieldnotes)
    3. The researcher reads through data (i.e., obtains a general ssense of material)
    4. The researcher codes the data (i.e., locates text segments and assigns a code label to them)
    5. Codes the text for themes to be used in the research report
    6. Codes the text for description to be used in the research report

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  3. 2. Organize data into file folders or computer files or onto index cards. This is because of the large amount of information gathered during a study. A system of organization can take several forms. You might listen to the tapes or read your fieldnotes to begin the process of analysis. Transcription is the process of converting audiotape recordings or fieldnotes into text data. Hand analysis of qualitative data means that resarchers read the data, mark it by hand, and divide it into parts. A computer analysis of qualitative data means that researchers use a qualitative computer program to facilitate the process of storing, analyzing and sorting the data. A qualitative data analysis computer program is a program that stores data, organizes your data, enables you to assign labels or codes to your data, and facilitates searching through your data and locating speciifc text or words.

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  4. 3. A preliminary exploratory analysis consists of exploring the data to obtain a general sense of the data, memoing ideas, thinking about the organization of the data, and considering whether you need more data. Coding is the process of segmenting and labeling text to form descriptions and broad themes in the data. The object of the coding process is to make sense out of text data, divide it into text or image segments, label the segments with codes, examine codes for overlap and redundancy, and collapse these codes into broad themes. This is an inductive process of narrowing data into a few themes.

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  5. 4. Describing and developing themes from the data consists of answering the major research questions and forming an in-depth understanding of the central phenomenon through description and thematic development. All studies include at least themes. The use of themes is another way toanalyze qualitative data. Because themes are similar cordes aggegated together to form a major idea in the database, they form a core element in qualitative data analysis Like codes, themes have labels that typically consist of no more than two to four words. There are several types of themes: ordinary themes, unexpected themes, major and minor themes. Saturation is the point where you have identified the major themes and no new information can add to your list of themes or to the detail for existing themes.

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  6. 5. Validating findings means that the researcher determines the accuracy or credibility of the findings through strategies such as member checking, auditing, or triangulation. This ensures that the study will be accurate because the information draws on multiple sources of information, individuals, or processes. Researchers may also ask a person outside the project to conduct a thorough review of the study and report back, in writing, the strengths and weaknesses of the project. This is the process of conducting a external audit.

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  7. Helen,

    For the literature review, you will have a mix. Sometimes, for qualitative research, you use shorter quotes from the data because you want to capture the themes that emerged from the data. You do not have to have long quotes to show those to the reader, but you will see a mix sometimes there too. Does that make sense? The quotes should address your themes specifically and help answer the research questions you are trying to find answers to with your study.

    Keep up the good work!

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  8. 1.) Name the steps for analyzing qualitative data.
    A)1- collect data
    2- Prepare data to be analysis
    3- Read the Data to gain a sense of the material
    4-Code the data
    5-Codes the text for themes
    6- Code the text for descriptions (Page 245)

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  9. 2.) How do you organize and transcribe qualitative data?
    A) There are several forms of organization: create a matrix or table; organize materials by type; keeping a duplicated form of all data. When it comes to transcribing qualitative data a few helpful guidelines are to leave room in the margins of you notes to jot down questions, leave room between the interviewer’s questions and the interviewee’s responses, highlight or make some other indication of the interviewer’s questions so you know what to analyze in your data, make sure that detailed headers or on the paper that contain information about the session, and transcribe all words and sounds: (Pause, laughter, phone ringing, and inaudible) these will create a clear detailed picture of the interview. (Page 246)

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  10. 3.) How do you code qualitative data?
    A) To code qualitative data you need to read through the text data, dived the text into segments of information, label the segments of information with codes, reduce overlap and redundancy of codes, then collapse cods into themes. (Page 251)

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  11. 4.) How do you develop a detailed description and a theme?
    A) to develop a detailed description and a theme you look at three questions: What it attempts to accomplish, how you might use it, and how it appears in a research report? When you are developing a detailed description you are looking at and laying out where the people are, who they are, and what events are taking place. This step is compared to the beginning of a short story. You want he reader to understand what this is all about. (Page 254-255)
    There are four types of themes: Ordinary, Unexpected, Hard-to- clarify, and major and minor themes. When you look through your data and codes and reduce the codes you will come up with a handful or so themes. When you come to the point of saturation (where no new evidence or data will form a new theme) you have adequately formed all the themes. (Page 257-258)

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  12. 5.) How do you check the accuracy of your findings and interpretation?
    A) As the researcher you need to check yourself and make sure that you are remaining un-bias. To do this you may want to do some member checking or use triangulation to make sure that you are being accurate in your report. (Page 267)

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  13. QUESTION: After reading over this chapter I’m wondering if there is a person out there that you can hire that will organize your data and transcribe it for you. Those seem to be the biggest pains in the study and definitely the most time consuming and tedious!

    QUOTE: “As a general rule of thumb, it takes approximately 4 hours to transcribe 1 hour of tape (Dana Miller, personal communication, April 11, 2000)” (Page 246) WOWZER!!! That’s a ton of work!

    FACT: There are 4 types of themes: ordinary, Unexpected, Hard-to-clarify, and Major or minor themes. I didn’t know there were so many I thought that the word “theme” covered them all and no need to expand upon that. (Page 257)

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  14. Helen,

    Your fact struck me as odd when I read it in the book also. Wouldn't you think that all qualitative data would have a description. When reading it in the book it seemed like the description was the part that sets everything up, let's you get a picture in your mind of what the study is about. In my mind I guess they SHOULD have both. :) Good post Helen!

    Becky

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  15. Becky,
    I love descriptive writing, but I think it would be the hardest to do when you are writing up your qualitative study. Have a clearer picture of things is a basic in any book, I guess.

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  16. 1.) Name the steps for analyzing qualitative data.
    A:
    1.Prepare and organize the data for analysis
    2. Explore and code the data in analysis.
    3.Use the code to build description and themes.
    4.Represent and report findings.
    5. Interpret findings.
    6. Validate the accuracy of findings.
    2.) How do you organize and transcribe qualitative data?
    A:
    There are a few ways to organize the large amount of data.
    1. Developing a matrix or a table of sources.
    2. Organizing the meterials by type, such as interviewing, observation, photograph, and material uses.
    3. Keeping duplicate copies of all form of data.
    The researchers have to take some time to listen the audio tapes of interviews, or watch the interview video tapes in order to take the note out of the conversation. The researches may have to pause the tape frequently to take note and follow the speech. Moreover, the researchers may have to use some kind technology to help slow the conversation in the tape. There is a few guildline to take the note.
    1. Create 2 inch margins on each side of text document.
    2. Leave extra space on page between the interviewer's comment and the interviewee's comment.
    3. Highlight or mark interviewer's questions off.
    4. Use complete, detailed headers that contain about the interview or observational session.
    5. Indicate when the interviewee pause or can not response, the phone ring, or quiet.

    3.) How do you code qualitative data?
    A:
    Coding is the process of segmenting and labeling text to form descriptions and broad themes in the data. In this process, the researcher wants to make sense of the data. For example, the interviewee said, "I like Mrs. Moores because she is a very nice person. She doesn't get mad when I do something wrong. She always smiles and let me having some snack in the class." This data can put in the code, "a very nice person." Researcher has to look at the data and code from the very important thing in the data.

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  17. To Grill,
    I don't know who can help researchers to organize the data. I agree with you that qualitative data is very large and take a lot of time to manage it.

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  18. 4.) How do you develop a detailed description and a theme?
    A:
    Description in qualitative research has to be visualable. Therefore, researchers have to descript the vivid detail in order to make readers imagin to the person, site, and event clearly from the words.
    Theme are similar to colding data. Therefore, in a theme can have sub-themes. However, every themem has to have evidence(short quotes) to support the theme.

    5.) How do you check the accuracy of your findings and interpretation?
    A:
    Researchers can check accurancy from member checking(asking more participants to check the data) and triangulation (correborating evidence from different individuals).
    The researchers will not use their personal agenda, belief or bias attitude to interpret finding.

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  19. The fact, "Qualitative research has a huge data and sometimes we cannot descript them all because time and funding."

    Quote, "Qualitative researchers donot typically use the word bias in research; they will say that all research is interpretive and that the research should be self-reflective about his or her role in the research, how he or she is interpreting the findings, and his or her personal political history that shapes his or her interpretation. (Creswell, 2007)"

    This quote is pretty long. However, I want you to see the point here. The quote said that researchers donot use bias language, but the researcher will shape their finding interpreting from their personal political history. Is it sound like the bias?? That is my question.
    Thank you all.

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  20. I agree with Prueksa that research takes a long time, but without it education would not go forward and improve. That's why I like qualitative research because it goes right to the source for information.

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  21. 1. Organize the data, transcribe field notes, analyze by hand or computer, read through the data, code the data.

    2. Develop a matrix or table of sources to help organize materials, organize materials by type and keep duplicate copies of all forms of data.
    Transcription is converting fieldnotes into text data. Special equipment can be used that enables the transcriber to start and stop recordings to make them easy to follow.

    3. Read through the text data, divide the text into segments of information, label the segments with codes, reduce overlap and redundacy codes, and collapse the codes into themes.

    4. Good detailed description should: Situate the reader in the place or context, provide details, use action verbs and vivid adjectives, describe the facts, and use quotes to emphasize ideas. Good themes should: Have a title based on the participant, use evidence based on multiple perspectives, use multiple subthemes, and quotes.

    5. Researchers use three forms of validation.
    a.) Triangulation - the process of coroborating evidence from individuals, types of data or methods of data collection.
    b.) Member checking - asking one or more participants to check the study.
    c.) External audit - asking a person outside the study to conduct a thorough review of the study.

    Question: Have computers made data analysis more accurate?

    Quoate: "Realize the extensive time that transcribing takes." p.268

    Fact: The most frequently used validation strategies are member checking and triangulation. p.269

    Rebecca,
    The answer to your question is yes, I know a couple of people who do this full time, one of them used to transcribe for the Bill O'Rielly radio show...she said that was interesting!

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  22. 1. Preparing and organizing data, exploring and coding database, describing findings and forming themes, representing and reporting findings, interpreting the meaning of the findings, and validating the accuracy of the findings.
    2. To organize data you can develop a matrix or table, you can organize by type (i.e interviews, observations, photos, etc), and keeping duplicates of all data. To transcribe create 2 inch margins so you can write notes, leave space between interviewer and interviewee comments so you know who said what, highlight questions asked by interviewer, use complete detailed headers that contain information about the interview or observation, Transcribe all words, even pauses and the interviewee’s actions.
    3. Read all of the transcriptions and jot down ideas as they come to mind. Pick one document and go through it and try to figure out what the person was talking about or find underlying meanings with two or three words. Identify text segments. Come up with words or phrases that describe the meaning. Then make a list of all code words. Then go back to the data and find quotes that tie in with the code. Then pick 5-7 themes.
    4. Not all data has both descriptions and themes but they all have themes. You have to ask yourself three questions and answer them in order to develop a description or theme. The 3 questions are what does it attempt to accomplish, how might you use it, and how it appears in a research report.
    5. There are three ways to check for accuracy:
    a. Triangulation- corroborating evidence from different individuals or methods of data collection in description and themes in qualitative research.
    b. Member checking-researchers ask one or more participants in the study to check for accuracy of the account.
    c. External audit- researcher hires someone from outside the study to review different aspects of the research.

    Fact:
    Organization of data is critical in qualitative research.

    Question:
    How reliable are the computer programs that transcribe data for you?

    Quote:
    “Take the time to read all of your data to obtain a general sense of it before you conduct a detailed analysis.”

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  23. Helen,

    For most studies, the intent is to publish them in a journal, and you are limited for space in those submissions. GREAT question! I concur.

    Keep up the good work!

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  24. Matt,

    Yes and they have helped us speed up data analysis in some ways.

    Keep up the good work!

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  25. Jessica,

    I like QSR N-6 for qualitative data. I think it helps with the coding part in particular. As far as actual transcriptions, I think it is better if you type out the interview responses and then put them into QSR N-6 to find the common themes and code it. I have used a Dragon Speaking program which is supposed to help with the transcription part, and that was not useful for me and my work. You can also hire someone to transcribe your interviews for you, but then you have to worry about confidentiality issues then.
    Keep up the good work!

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  26. Prueska,

    GREAT question! I think there is bias in everything. Even people who do quantitative studies and think they avoid bias do not avoid bias. We can see that in Rosenberg's books about the philosophy of science.

    Keep up the good work!

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  27. Rebecca,

    Yes, you can hire someone to type out your transcriptions for you. In some large universities, you see ads for this service on the boards in the halls.

    Keep up the good work!

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  28. 1.) Name the steps for analyzing qualitative data.

    1. The researcher collects data.
    2. The researcher prepares the data for analysis
    3. The researcher reads through the data.
    4. The researcher codes the data.
    5. Codes the text for description to be used in the research report.
    6. Codes the text for themes to be used in the research report.

    2.) How do you organize and transcribe qualitative data?

    Qualitative research involves a extensive amount of data and organization of the data is critical for research. In early collection, it can involve computer data bases or index cards. Then the organization can take several forms such as organizing the it into a matrix or table of data sources, organizing the material by type, and/or keeping duplicates of all of the data.

    Transcription is the processing of converting field notes or audiotape recordings into text data. The transcriptionist needs special equipment to record the data on. This includes a machine that the transcriber can start and stop during the recording, and play back during the transcription process at a rate that the transcriber can record the data into text.

    3.) How do you code qualitative data?

    Coding is the process of labeling of text data and dividing it into broad themes in order to make sense out of the data. There is no definite procedure; however, researchers have suggested using these 6 steps:
    1. Get a sense of the data as a whole by reading through the text data.
    2. Start dividing the data into segments of information
    3. Label the segments of information into a code word or phrase.
    4. After all the text are coded, make a list of code words and look for similar or redundant codes.
    5. Use the list of codes to go back to the text and see if any new codes emerge.
    6. Reduce the list of codes to five to seven themes or categories of codes that form a similar idea.

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  29. 4.) How do you develop a detailed description and a theme?

    Descriptions and themes are developed to form an in depth understanding of the central phenomenon and the thematic development. Description is the detailed rendering of people, places, and events of the research. Description is best started after reading and coding the text. The researchers analyzes data from all the sources and helps the reader to build a portrait of the particular setting or event. Themes are similar groups of codes that are aggregated together to form a major idea from the data. Themes are usually labeled in two to four words. During the initial data analysis, the researcher may find 50 to 70 codes. However, these codes are narrowed down to five to seven codes by eliminating redundant codes. The types of themes are usually, ordinary themes, unexpected themes, hard-to-classify themes, and major and minor themes.

    5.) How do you check the accuracy of your findings and interpretation?

    Researchers validate their findings to ensure that the findings are accurate and credible through three processes, triangulation, member checking, and external audit. Triangulation involves using multiple, individuals, types of data, and data collection methods to draw on multiple sources to develop a report that is accurate. Member checking is when the researcher checks their findings with one or more participants in the study to determine if they are accurate. An external audit is when the researcher has an outside source review the study and then report back in writing the strengths and weaknesses of the study.

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