Handling Qualitative Data: A Practical Guide

by Lyn Richards

Overview

This updated edition offers a practical step-by-step guide to understanding, working with and presenting both primary and secondary qualitative data, thereby equipping students with a toolkit that they can apply to data in any context.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781526490773
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	03/09/2021
Edition description:	Fourth Edition
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.53(h) x (d)

About the Author

About the author

Lyn Richards has a highly unusual range of relationships with qualitative research. After undergraduate training as a historian and political scientist, she moved to sociology. Her early work as a family sociologist addressed both popular and academic audiences, with a strong motivation always to make the funded research relevant to the people studied, and the qualitative analysis credible to those affected. Each of her four books in family sociology was a text at university level but also widely discussed in popular media and at community level. During her tenure as Reader and Associate Professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne, she won major research grants, presented and published research papers, was a founding member of a qualitative research association and taught qualitative methods at undergraduate and graduate level, supervising Masters and PhD students.

She strayed from this academic pathway when challenges with handling qualitative data in her own studies led to the development, with Tom Richards, of what rapidly became the world's leading qualitative analysis software. They founded a research software company, in which for a decade Lyn was Director of Research Services, writing software documentation and managing international training of researchers and trainers in the methods behind the software. Designing and documenting software taught her to confront fuzzy thinking about methods, and to demand straight talking, clarity of purpose, detail of technique and a clear answer always to 'Why would we want to do that?' Teaching methods to thousands of researchers in dozens of disciplines in 14 countries, she saw what worked and what didn't. From those researchers, graduates and faculty in universities and research practitioners in the world beyond, she learned their many ways of handling data, on and off computers, and their strategies for making sense of data.

Handling Qualitative Data is a direct result of this experience. It offers clear, practical advice for researchers approaching qualitative research and wishing to do justice to rich data. Like her previous book, with Janice Morse, Readme First, for a User's Guide to Qualitative Methods it strongly maintains the requirements of good qualitative research, assumes and critiques the use of software and draws on practical experience of helping researchers whose progress has been hindered by confusion, lack of training, mixed messages about standards and fear of being overwhelmed by rich, messy data.

Throughout this hybrid career, Lyn continued contributions to critical reflection on new methods, as a writer and a keynote speaker in a wide range of international conferences. She has life membership of the International Sociological Association and its Methodology section. Her writing aims always to cut through barriers to high quality qualitative research and to assist researchers and teachers in making the inevitable shift to computing whilst maximizing the benefits for their research processes and outcomes. On leaving software development, she took an Adjunct Professorship at RMIT University, creating and coordinating an active, informal and splendidly supportive Qualitative Interest Group (QIG). She currently works from home, (online, of course), combining research advising with convening of an asylum seeker support group and growing roses and vegetables, all of which provide marvellous metaphors for qualitative research.

Table of Contents

Preface x

Acknowledgements xiii

Introduction 1

Starting points 1

The shape of this book 5

Part I Setting Up 9

1 Setting up your project 11

Purpose, goal and outcome 12

Designing the project 13

You and your data 20

Logging your design 25

Learning your software 27

To do 30

Suggestions for further reading 31

2 Making qualitative data 33

Understanding data 33

Preparing to 'make' data 39

Purposive data making 47

Data about your project (and you) 48

To do 52

Suggestions for further reading 52

3 Data records 55

What will the records be like? 56

How big should a data record be? 58

How will the records be stored? 61

What information will be stored with the record? 64

When can you start analysing? 68

To do 69

Suggestions for further reading 70

Part II Working with the Data 71

4 Up from the data 73

Meeting data 75

Where do your ideas go? 79

Handling your discoveries 82

Drawing it - the early uses of models 83

Revisiting design 83

Revisiting and reviewing records 85

Writing it 88

Up to the category 89

To do 89

Suggestions for further reading 90

5 Coding 93

Qualitative and quantitative coding 93

What can you do with coding? 95

Ways of coding in a qualitative project 96

Revisiting the coded data 104

Coder reliability in qualitative research 108

Avoiding the coding trap 109

Establishing your personal data processing style 110

Writing about coding 111

To do 112

Suggestions for further reading 112

6 Handling ideas 115

Organization and creativity 116

Catalogues of categories 117

Writing your ideas 127

To do 129

Suggestions for further reading 129

Part III Making Sense of Your Data 131

7What are you aiming for? 133

What are you seeking? 134

What can you achieve? 136

What would be satisfactory? 138

What might it look like? Possible outcomes 139

How will you know when you get there? 143

How will you know if it is good enough? 147

To do 153

Suggestions for further reading 153

8 Searching the data 155

Moving forward 155

The data-theory process 157

Searching coding 159

Searching the text 164

Building on searches 166

Reporting searches 167

To do 168

Suggestions for further reading 168

9 Seeing a whole 171

Seeing what's there - and what's not there 171

Ways of seeing 172

Accounting for and validating your 'seeing' 185

To do 189

Suggestions for further reading 189

10 Telling it 191

Start with what you have written 192

What if it won't write? 195

Planning a qualitative report 197

What about validity and reliability? 199

Using your data 201

Reports that don't work 203

Concluding your study 206

To do 207

Suggestions for further reading 207

References 208

Index 211

Editorial Reviews

This is an excellent text, it is well structured and provides a step by step approach for students to follow when analysing their qualitative data with particular application to the use of computer software.

Glynis Bennett

Strengthening an already impressive publication, Richards has produced an excellent addition to the literature on qualitative research. The signposting of additional resources within the text allows readers to further hone their analytical skills. Written in an accessible format, I would recommend this to both experienced researchers and those beginning their research journey.

Lyndsey Harris

This book provides helpful tips and easy-to-follow guidelines for carrying out rigorous qualitative data-collection and analyses. Lyn Richards’ straight to the point explanations of various techniques and methodological procedures can help novice students and seasoned researchers conduct systematic qualitative research.

Rudy Leyva

A really useful text to help students get to grips with data analysis.

Nikki Petty

Lyn Richards has produced a very accessible guide on how to work with qualitative data in a meaningful way. This book is unique in that Richards’ correctly assumes that today’s qualitative researchers will be using technology in their analysis. She weaves this understanding into each phase of the process she describes, guiding the novice through key aspects of how to effectively handle their data.

Trena Paulus

'While this book scratches the surface of qualitative research overall, the focus always remains on qualitative data. The author glides through important areas of qualitative research and presents them with a "you can do it" tone...serves as a great companion to an advanced undergraduate research course or a research design course at the master's level' - The Qualitative Report

From the Publisher