12.1: Analysis Strategies

Learning Objectives

• Define ethnomethodology and describe its purpose.
• Define and describe conversation analysis.
• Define grounded theory and describe each of the 3 major coding methods.

Introduction

Qualitative analysis is the analysis of qualitative data such as text data from interview transcripts. Unlike quantitative analysis, which is statistics driven and largely independent of the researcher, qualitative analysis is heavily dependent on the researcher’s analytic and integrative skills and personal knowledge of the social context where the data is collected. The emphasis in qualitative analysis is “sense making” or understanding a phenomenon, rather than predicting or explaining. A creative and investigative mindset is needed for qualitative analysis, based on an ethically enlightened and participant-in-context attitude, and a set of analytic strategies. This chapter provides a brief overview of some of these qualitative analysis strategies. Interested readers are referred to more authoritative and detailed references such as Miles and Huberman's seminal book on this topic.

Analysis Strategies

Though not unique methods of data collection per se, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis are unique enough, and prominent enough in sociology, that they warrant some dedicated attention in this text. Ethnomethodology refers to the study of everyday reality. Rather than assume that the purpose of social science is to understand some objective reality, ethnomethodologists investigate how people construct, prolong, and maintain their realities. The term ethnomethodology was coined by sociologist Harold Garfinkel (1967),Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. who, as described in his 2011 obituary, was a “sociologist who delved into the minutiae of everyday life” (Lynch, 2011).Lynch, M. (2011, July 13). Harold Garfinkel obituary. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.guardian.co.uk/education/...inkel-obituary Ethnomethodology’s emphasis on the everyday, and on ordinary people’s methods for producing order in their social worlds, is perhaps its most distinctive characteristic.

An example of ethnomethodological research is C. M. Scharff’s (2008)Scharff, C. M. (2008). Doing class: A discursive and ethnomethodological approach. Critical Discourse Studies, 5, 331–343. study of how young feminist women “do” social class. In her study, Scharff examines data from interviews with 40 German and British young women to understand how they “think, talk, and feel about feminism” (p. 334). By focusing in on language, talk, and interaction, Scharff argues that her account is ethnomethodological in nature. Kevin Whitehead (2009)Whitehead, K. (2009). “Categorizing the categorizer”: The management of racial common sense in interaction. Social Psychology Quarterly, 72, 325–342. also takes an ethnomethodological approach in his study of the social organization of race. In Whitehead’s words, he considers “one mechanism by which racial categories, racial ‘common sense,’ and thus the social organization of race itself, are reproduced in interaction” (p. 325).Whitehead, K. (2009). “Categorizing the categorizer”: The management of racial common sense in interaction. Social Psychology Quarterly, 72, 325–342. To study these processes, Whitehead analyzed the interactions and practices of participants in an employment “race training” workshop and found that individuals use race as a framework from which to understand their own and others’ actions, thereby reproducing race as a relevant social category.

Conversation analysis grew out of ethnomethodology (Schutt, 2006)Schutt, R. K. (2006). Investigating the social world: The process and practice of research (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. and thus shares its focus on the construction of reality as opposed to the discovery of reality. Conversation analysts focus specifically on talk in interaction: how talk progresses, how it is facilitated or impeded, how turns are taken in talk, and how these processes both shape and are shaped by social context. In conversation analysis, what people say is just as important as how they say it. Also important are the pauses people take in expressing themselves and how or whether they interrupt themselves or others while talking. Conversation analysts might study recordings of court proceedings or legislative debates to learn about the social construction of law and punishment. They might also study more simple interactions, such as a conversation between two people meeting for coffee.

Some research methods texts include coverage of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis in their presentations of qualitative data analysis (Schutt, 2006).Schutt, R. K. (2006). Investigating the social world: The process and practice of research (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. It makes sense to do so; both represent unique approaches to analyzing qualitative data. Yet they also rest upon particular ontological and epistemological assumptions that set them apart, in some ways at least, from more traditional mechanisms of analysis such as coding.

Grounded theory is another strategy that can be used, which we talked about in Chapter 10.6, but will go into more detail here.

Specifically one might ask the question, how can you analyze a vast set qualitative data acquired through participant observation, in-depth interviews, focus groups, narratives of audio/video recordings, or secondary documents? One of these techniques for analyzing text data is grounded theory – an inductive technique of interpreting recorded data about a social phenomenon to build theories about that phenomenon. The technique was developed by Glaser and Strauss (1967) ^[18] in their method of constant comparative analysis of grounded theory research, and further refined by Strauss and Corbin (1990) ^[19] to further illustrate specific coding techniques – a process of classifying and categorizing text data segments into a set of codes (concepts), categories (constructs), and relationships. The interpretations are “grounded in” (or based on) observed empirical data, hence the name. To ensure that the theory is based solely on observed evidence, the grounded theory approach requires that researchers suspend any preexisting theoretical expectations or biases before data analysis, and let the data dictate the formulation of the theory.

Strauss and Corbin (1998) describe three coding techniques for analyzing text data: open, axial, and selective. Open coding is a process aimed at identifying concepts or key ideas that are hidden within textual data, which are potentially related to the phenomenon of interest. The researcher examines the raw textual data line by line to identify discrete events, incidents, ideas, actions, perceptions, and interactions of relevance that are coded as concepts (hence called in vivo codes ). Each concept is linked to specific portions of the text (coding unit) for later validation. Some concepts may be simple, clear, and unambiguous while others may be complex, ambiguous, and viewed differently by different participants. The coding unit may vary with the concepts being extracted. Simple concepts such as “organizational size” may include just a few words of text, while complex ones such as “organizational mission” may span several pages. Concepts can be named using the researcher’s own naming convention or standardized labels taken from the research literature. Once a basic set of concepts are identified, these concepts can then be used to code the remainder of the data, while simultaneously looking for new concepts and refining old concepts. While coding, it is important to identify the recognizable characteristics of each concept, such as its size, color, or level (e.g., high or low), so that similar concepts can be grouped together later . This coding technique is called “open” because the researcher is open to and actively seeking new concepts relevant to the phenomenon of interest.

Next, similar concepts are grouped into higher order categories . While concepts may be context-specific, categories tend to be broad and generalizable, and ultimately evolve into constructs in a grounded theory. Categories are needed to reduce the amount of concepts the researcher must work with and to build a “big picture” of the issues salient to understanding a social phenomenon. Categorization can be done is phases, by combining concepts into subcategories, and then subcategories into higher order categories. Constructs from the existing literature can be used to name these categories, particularly if the goal of the research is to extend current theories. However, caution must be taken while using existing constructs, as such constructs may bring with them commonly held beliefs and biases. For each category, its characteristics (or properties) and dimensions of each characteristic should be identified. The dimension represents a value of a characteristic along a continuum. For example, a “communication media” category may have a characteristic called “speed”, which can be dimensionalized as fast, medium, or slow . Such categorization helps differentiate between different kinds of communication media and enables researchers identify patterns in the data, such as which communication media is used for which types of tasks.

The second phase of grounded theory is axial coding , where the categories and subcategories are assembled into causal relationships or hypotheses that can tentatively explain the phenomenon of interest. Although distinct from open coding, axial coding can be performed simultaneously with open coding. The relationships between categories may be clearly evident in the data or may be more subtle and implicit. In the latter instance, researchers may use a coding scheme (often called a “coding paradigm) to understand which categories represent conditions (the circumstances in which the phenomenon is embedded), actions/interactions (the responses of individuals to events under these conditions), and consequences (the outcomes of actions/ interactions). As conditions, actions/interactions, and consequences are identified, theoretical propositions start to emerge, and researchers can start explaining why a phenomenon occurs, under what conditions, and with what consequences.

The third and final phase of grounded theory is selective coding, which involves identifying a central category or a core variable and systematically and logically relating this central category to other categories. The central category can evolve from existing categories or can be a higher order category that subsumes previously coded categories. New data is selectively sampled to validate the central category and its relationships to other categories (i.e., the tentative theory). Selective coding limits the range of analysis, and makes it move fast. At the same time, the coder must watch out for other categories that may emerge from the new data that may be related to the phenomenon of interest (open coding), which may lead to further refinement of the initial theory. Hence, open, axial, and selective coding may proceed simultaneously. Coding of new data and theory refinement continues until theoretical saturation is reached, i.e., when additional data does not yield any marginal change in the core categories or the relationships.

The “constant comparison” process implies continuous rearrangement, aggregation, and refinement of categories, relationships, and interpretations based on increasing depth of understanding, and an iterative interplay of four stages of activities: (1) comparing incidents/texts assigned to each category (to validate the category), (2) integrating categories and their properties, (3) delimiting the theory (focusing on the core concepts and ignoring less relevant concepts), and (4) writing theory (using techniques like memoing, storylining, and diagramming). Having a central category does not necessarily mean that all other categories can be integrated nicely around it. In order to identify key categories that are conditions, action/interactions, and consequences of the core category, Strauss and Corbin (1990) recommend several integration techniques, such as storylining, memoing, or concept mapping. In storylining , categories and relationships are used to explicate and/or refine a story of the observed phenomenon. Memos are theorized write-ups of ideas about substantive concepts and their theoretically coded relationships as they evolve during ground theory analysis, and are important tools to keep track of and refine ideas that develop during the analysis. Memoing is the process of using these memos to discover patterns and relationships between categories using two-by-two tables, diagrams, or figures, or other illustrative displays. Concept mapping is a graphical representation of concepts and relationships between those concepts (e.g., using boxes and arrows). The major concepts are typically laid out on one or more sheets of paper, blackboards, or using graphical software programs, linked to each other using arrows, and readjusted to best fit the observed data.

After a grounded theory is generated, it must be refined for internal consistency and logic. Researchers must ensure that the central construct has the stated characteristics and dimensions, and if not, the data analysis may be repeated. Researcher must then ensure that the characteristics and dimensions of all categories show variation. For example, if behavior frequency is one such category, then the data must provide evidence of both frequent performers and infrequent performers of the focal behavior. Finally, the theory must be validated by comparing it with raw data. If the theory contradicts with observed evidence, the coding process may be repeated to reconcile such contradictions or unexplained variations.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Ethnomethodologists study everyday reality and how people produce those realities through their presentations of self and interactions with others.
• Conversation analysts focus specifically on the dynamics of talk.
• Grounded theory has some important ways to code information.