Week 3 Trying out approaches to analysis Theoretical sensitivity Grounded theory – or constant comparative method Using other sources of ideas (Sanger)

Part of theoretical sensitivity is having ideas from Coffey, A. and Atkinson, P. (1996) Making Sense of Qualitative Data, Sage, London.

‘… you can have ideas about the sort of data you wish to collect, the setting, and the social actors. Those ideas can be about what you aim to explore, find out, discover, confirm, or disprove. These ideas can be wholly your own or can use or transform the ideas of others, such as researchers in the same field, philosophers, professionals, and the respondents themselves. [as long as you cite them of course … AJH ]

Similarly, the analysis of the data can be informed by your own ideas about what is going on, or it can be informed by your respondents ’ views of what they think is happening. The kinds of ideas you use, transform, or draw upon can also be influenced by your understanding, sympathy, curiosity or antagonism in relation to particular ‘ schools ’ of ideas – for example, critical, Marxist, interactionist, positivist, feminist, or phenomenological … We strongly reject the notion that qualitative research substitutes for disciplinary perspectives and theoretical frameworks ’ (Coffey and Atkinson, 1996 p.140)

They talk about using theory as making explicit what we all do anyway – ‘ integrating our ideas with our data collection and data analysis, generating new ideas and building on existing ideas ’ **Then the quality of qualitative research depends on the quality of that integration

Grounded theory One systematic approach to analysis, involving ‘coding’ data Originally, a piece of research on the impact on interactions of the awareness of dying (Glaser and Strauss) Intended as a process of inductive discovery – from the data, to a ‘theory’

Why grounded ‘theory’? ‘Theory’ is ambiguous Better to think of it as a process of carefully interpreting data to construct a useful interpretation Resist any implication from others that you do or don’t have the ‘right’ interpretation Rightly ‘haunted by explanations’ (Wittgenstein)

Having a go… The constant comparative method Categorise elements of data – write memos Take one category at a time and compare data in it: comparisons and contrasts are always conceptual – reflecting some criterion or other – write memos Interpret through this comparison: identify / construct themes which connect the categories – write memos Describe the limits of this interpretation – write memos

What we constructed…

Developing this view - Sanger

Start from this….

…. or this?

Seven approaches – Sanger 1.Labels and categories (eg. using those that participants use) 2.Methodological imports (eg. ‘punctum’ and ‘studium’) 3.Theoretical imports (eg. Derrida, destabilising assumptions about data) 4.Novel methods (eg. constructing and using critical incidents) 5.Reporting (eg. writing complete sentences in notes) 6.Metaphors (eg. identifying and reflecting on those that are commonly used) 7.Alien structures (eg. random or unrelated ideas, applied to the data)

Choose two approaches to try out as a group.

Summary The fly in the milk Institutionalised – negative, control – compared to the institution (system, education, etc) ‘work with people’ – what does this express as a metaphor for her relationship with colleauges?