1. INFO 272. Qualitative Research Methods

2. Admin  Syllabus changed around a bit  Guest speakers scheduled

3. The Iterative Model 1) research topic/questions 2) ‘corpus construction’ 3) data gathering 4) analysis 5) write-up 4) more analysis Field work

4. 1) Initial coding 2) focused coding 3) theoretical coding 4) memo-writing 5) draft writing From Analysis to Write up Granularity

5. Grounded Theory  Constructing analytic codes and categories from data  Simultaneous involvement in data collection and analysis  ‘Sampling’ aimed toward theory construction  Lit review after analysis

6. Grounded Theory, e.g.

7. Coding…  …is attaching labels to segments of data that depict what each segment is about  …is the bones of your analysis  …forces you to interact with your data (again and again)

8. Coding: Key concepts  Granularity varies Word-by-word, line-by-line, incident-to- incident observational data vs. interviews  Ideas, categories, concepts must ‘earn their way’ into your analysis  ‘in vivo’ codes (attention to language)  Constant comparative method  Are provisional!

9. Warning!  Be careful with the language of intention, motivation, strategy  Don’t impute  Treat social reality as what is apparent, presented to you (not underlying, secret motives)

10. What does coding do to data?  Condenses  Disaggregates

11. 1) Initial coding  Remain open  Stay close to the data  Keep codes simple and precise  Construct short codes  Preserve actions [gerunds – i.e. shifting, interpreting, avoiding, predicting]  Compare data with data  Move quickly through the data

12.  Take most frequent codes from the initial coding  tying emerging concepts to the data (verification process) 2) focused coding 1) Initial coding

13. After Coding: Some Heuristics  Sorting and Diagramming Concept charting Flow diagrams  Lofland and Lofland and Charmaz have many suggestions

14. Memo-Writing  Transitioning between codes and write up  Could be blog entries

15. Timesavers and Shortcuts  Moving along quickly to ‘focused coding’  Do ‘initial’ coding on a selection of the data (the early data, the most rich material)  Software (for searching especially) – NVivo or even MS OneNote