Title: Approaching qualitative analysis
Course: EDPS0009: Researching Education and Society: Qualitative Methods 2020/2021 > Section: 6. Analysis

The analytical process

Analysis is a way of making sense of data, and most analytical approaches follow some basic steps to do that.

Watch the following three videos and make a note of the commonalities across the three videos, as these constitute the very basis and foundation of analysing qualitative data:

Video [9:00]

Thematic analysis

Thematic analysis is a commonly used approach to making sense of qualitative data. It is not linked with any particular theoretical framework and is therefore quite flexible. In fact, coding and creating themes is part of a number of frameworks, so this may be considered the basic of many analytical approaches.

In recent years, Professors Braun and Clarke have focussed on thematic analysis and have produced a number of useful guidebooks and support pages for their reflexive thematic analysis. Check out the website of the University of Auckland for more details.

And here are two videos to help you better understand the processes and details of thematic analysis:

Quality of codes

One of the biggest concerns we have when we analyse data relates to the accuracy of our work. How do we know that what we do is "correct" or "right"?

The truth is, we cannot be entirely sure. We can only stay as close to the data as possible, and interpret what we have in front of us. But as we have said in previous weeks, the researcher's positionality, previous knowledge and experience will all shape how data is interpreted. The more we read, the more frameworks and theories we are acquainted with and the more analytical anchors we have available to us. How can we then judge the quality of our analysis?

The following video provides some first steps for ensuring good quality:

We will be thinking about quality in qualitative research in greater detail in Week 7 "Turns", but if you would like a heads-up, read the essential reading Qualitative Quality: Eight "big tent" criteria for excellent qualitative research, where Sarah Tracy outlines eight key markers of quality in qualitative research: worthy topic, rich rigor, sincerity, credibility, resonance, significant contribution, ethics, and meaningful coherence.

Discourse analysis

Discourse analysis is concerned with the way knowledge is produced through the use of distinctive language within a particular field or through the adoption of implicit theories to make sense of social action (e.g. power, poverty, gender relations). Discourse analysis also deals with which linguistic styles or rhetorical devices are used to achieve particular aims, such as to convince.

The following video outlines different branches or strands of discourse analysis:

Grounded theory

Grounded Theory is probably one of the most commonly misunderstood approaches to analysis in qualitative research, because it has been oversimplified over time.

Just to add, for the purpose of this module, you are not expected to use Grounded Theory in your presentation or proposal, but because of its relevance and importance within the qualitative research landscape, you do need to know about this.

Let's go back to basics here. We have learnt that quantitative research tends to test hypotheses and measure the effects of variables. That means that in quantitative research you start out with a clear assumption. When social scientists started to develop and encourage qualitative frameworks, initially, there was still an expectation that research needed to have a hypothesis or variables. The ground-breaking change came with the introduction of Grounded Theory, because social scientists now said that we cannot start with hypotheses and variables in qualitative research but through the gathering of qualitative data we can develop hypotheses and theories around the effects of variables.

Unfortunately, that basic principle was then simplified, misinterpreted and misunderstood and the general thought became that grounded theory just means being guided by data and going into the data collection process without a theoretical framework. Instead, nothing could be further from the truth. Grounded Theory relies heavily on the process of "memoing" (a specific form of note-taking and writing fieldnotes), which means you engage with frameworks and concepts at all stages.

For more details on the Grounded Theory watch the following two videos: