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Qualitative Research Analysis Software
[Description] [Pros]
[Cons] [Common Uses] [Resources]
Description
Computer software is now commercially available to help you analyze
the results of your focus groups and in-depth interviews. Here’s how
to use software to analyze your qualitative data:
- Transcribe
the sessions into an electronic format that the software
can read. Check the requirements of the software package you choose.
- Develop
and apply the codes you will use to organize the information in
the transcripts. A code is a word or number that represents
a research objective, research question, theory or idea you are
testing. The codes
you develop will be unique to your research. For example,
if your first research question is to find out parents’ practices
related to smoking
around their children, you might code all lines of your
transcript that include comments on that question as “A” to represent
that they correspond to your first research question.
- Generate
reports using your codes. To do this, instruct the program to
search for a particular code or a combination of codes.
The program
then presents a single report showing all the lines of
the transcript bearing the requested codes.
Pros
- You
can highlight sections of the transcript that are important to
the research
and eliminate “noise,” or unnecessary
sections (a word processor’s cut-and-paste functions can also do
this)
- You
can quickly access and compare information on one topic or questions
across several transcripts.
Cons
- You
must audiotape and transcribe all sessions
- Transcribing
sessions is time-consuming and costly
- Coding
the transcripts is time-consuming and costly: You’ll need to train
the coder(s). If
you use more than one coder, you’ll
have
to periodically assess their work to make sure each coder
is interpreting the transcript material in the same way (intercoder
reliability) and
retrain them if necessary.
- While
all comments on a particular topic can be gathered, they are taken
out of context in the process.
Sarcasm and
other nuances may
be lost.
- Analysis
by software may produce overwhelming amounts of paper reports.
Common Uses
- Analyze
findings from large number of focus groups with several audience
segments
- Analyze
findings from long in-depth interviews, about many topics.
Resources
Weitzman, E.A., and M.B. Miles. 1995. Computer
Programs for Qualitative Data Analysis: A Software Sourcebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
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