1. Participatory Analysis and Collaborative Coding
Lucy Pickering (University of Glasgow)
Daniel Turner (Quirkos Software)

2. Who we are Dr Daniel Turner Founder and Director of Quirkos
Dr Lucy Pickering
Senior Lecturer in Medical Anthropology
The University of Glasgow

3. What is analysis? Coding data Interpreting that data
Writing up findings
Interpretation and sense checking
Answering research question
Linking back to theory

4. Why (not) participatory analysis/coding?
Not commonly done
It’s the academic’s job
Not considered to add analytic value
Responsibility and credit
Academic as ‘glorified administrator’?
Are academics ready to give up control?!
Co-authorship (politics of the REF / RCUK)
Not commonly done (and no movement)
Standard expectation academic’s job to the analysis – expectation that the academic is either training (MA, PhD) or has the necessary skills to do it (and other don’t!)
No expectation participatory analysis will add anything? (in analytic terms)
Responsibility and credit – authors get the recognition but they also have to take responsibility for the analysis
‘glorified administrator’??? What’s left for the academic to do? They don’t set the Research Questions, Don’t choose the methods, Don’t collect the data just a Contributor to analysis
It’s more work and less credit
No incentive at the moment: stakeholders in projects from funding councils etc, but RCUK are not pushing for this!

5. Why do participatory analysis?!
Ethical values
Quality
Dissemination and knowledge exchange
Personal development as a researcher
Ethical values
Empowering people
Skill development
Ownership
(Triangulation of analysis)
Quality
Triangulation of analysis
Questioning our own assumptions and interpretations
Dissemination and knowledge exchange
Ownership of the project – investment in sharing findings
Findings more likely to resonate because created by people in the community
Findings are more reliable / sense-checking
If people don’t like the findings, how will they speak back?
Personal development
New challenges
Teaching and facilitation focus

6. General challenges of doing participatory analysis
Roles and expectations
Hierarchies and relationships
Communication
Technology
Learning software at the same time as coding
Learning to do analysis in public
Investment / buy-in
Investment – buy in – are your participants invested in the project? What are their motivations for taking part? 6

7. Cultural differences Geographical cultures Class cultures Gender norms
Age / status

8. How to do it Individually Comparatively Collaboratively
Individually – everyone gets X transcripts to code
Comparative – everyone codes eg 1 transcript and then compares their work
To create a shared coding frame
Or, is the discussion of value in itself? What does the discussion tell us you about the interpretations that people give?
Quotes???
Collaborative – work as a team to code transcripts

9. Ways of coding Researcher codes – participants comment/challenge
Participants code – researcher challenges/comments
Group challenge – all do it together?

10. Ways of doing participatory coding
Blank sheet of paper
Framework creation
Emergent coding
Grouping exercise
Category prompts

11. Quotes from participants
I started adding in categories, and then thinking, ooh, if I’d added that in earlier I could actually have tied it up to such-and-such comment
I thought that bit revealed a lot about her political beliefs, and I could feel my emotions entering into my judgement
Suspicion, oh yeah, that’s negative trust. Love of Scotland, oh! I put anti-English feelings which is the opposite! Ours are like inverse pictures of each other’s!

12. Ways of collaborative interpreting
What does it mean? / What did you discover?
Researcher does the interpretation – participants comment/challenge
Participants do the interpretation – researcher challenges/comments
Group challenge – all do it together?
Group challenge – all do it together?
Everyone writes >1 page of notes – compares
Co construct through dialogue (facilitation skills)

13. After Coding…
Using for sense-checking? (how will you manage conflicts?)
Is it representing/building a narrative?
How many interpretations?
What are you doing this for?
Communicate the range of views on a topic,
Can you quantify?
(do you want to?)
can you group them into different themes?

14. Writing up How do you bring it all together?
How write up multiple interpretations of the same data?
How to write sincere and coherent outputs?
Different outputs for different audiences / authors
Different outputs (you might first author an academic paper, but will write the first draft of the community report, or the poster for the library….)

15. Tools Physically meeting (or Skype / Zoom)?
Paper, highlighters, post it notes (tea and coffee!)
What training is needed?
Coding software?

16. What is Quirkos?
Simple software tool for qualitative analysis (CAQDAS)
Originally designed for participatory analysis
Visual, quick to teach
Grown sideways!

17. Let’s look...

18. Blog articles & References
Participatory data analysis: a step too far? Nind (2011)
A Participatory Group Process to Analyze Qualitative Data Jackson (2008)