Analyzing qualitative data

Both quantitative and qualitative data analysis involves inference. Researchers infer from the empirical evidence of social life. To infer means to pass a judgment, to use reasoning, and to reach a conclusion based on evidence.

In qualitative research, adequacy of data means the amount of data collected, rather than to the number of subjects as in quantitative research.

In both methods, the researchers systematically record and gather data and in so doing making accessible to others what they did. They all look for patterns- similarities and differences. Qualitative researchers examine the similarities and differences across cases and try to come to terms with their diversity, quantitative researchers examines differences across the cases in order to explain the covariation of one variable with another, usually across many cases.

For qualitative research, the data analysis is less a distinct final stage of research than a dimension of research that stretches across all stages.

The qualitative researchers analyze data by organizing it into categories on the basis of themes, concepts, or similar features. Then develop new concept, formulate conceptual definitions. Idea and evidence are interdependent.

Coding data:

Codes are tags or labels for assigning units of meaning to he descriptive or inferential information complies during a study. Coding involves mechanical data reduction and analytic categorization of data.

Open coding: is performed during a first pass through recently collected data. The researcher locates themes and assign initial codes or labels in a first attempt to condense the mass of data into categories.

Open coding brings themes to the surface from deep inside the data.

Axial coding:This is second stage passing through the data. The researcher begins with an organized set of initial codes or preliminary concepts, he focuses on the initial coded themes more than on the data. Additional codes or new ideas may emerge during this pass and the research notes them. He then moves toward organizing ideas or themes and identifies the axis of key concepts in analysis.

Axial coding stimulates thinking about linkage between concepts or themes, and it raises new question, it reinforce the connection between themes and evidence.

Selective coding: The last phrase of passing through the data, he has identified the major themes of the research project, selective coding involves scanning data and previous codes. Then he looks selectively for cases that illustrate themes and make comparisons and contrasts after most of all data collection is complete.

They begin after they have well developed concepts and have started to organize their overall analysis around several core generalizations or ideas. The major themes and concept ultimately guide the researcher's project. Finally reorganizes the specific themes identified in earlier coding and elaborates more than one major themes.

Field research

Field research is suitable when the research question involves learning, understand and describing a group of interacting people. Field research is to study people in their natural setting.

Three principles:

1. study people in their natural setting, or in situ
2. study people by directly interacting with them
3. gain an understanding of the social world and make theoretical statements about member's perspectives.

Ethnography (ethno: people; graphy: to describe)

Field research is based on naturalism, involving observing ordinary events in natural setting. The researcher examines social meanings and grasps multiple perspectives about the people he studies. The direct involvement often impose an emotional impact to the researcher.

The steps of field research: (flexible and not fixed)

1. begins with a general topic, not specific hypothesis, the researcher first empties his mind of preconceptions and defocuses.(cast a wider net to observe; not focus on own researcher's role, prepares oneself self knowledge and knowledge about subjects.

2. select a site, and gain access to it.
Gatekeeper is someone with formal or informal authority to control access to a site. Field researchers are expected to negotiate with gatekeepers and bargain the access.

Strategy for entering:

entering and gain access to a field site is a process that depends on commonsense judgment and social skills. Researchers need to plan, negotiate, and gain the trust of people they want to study. They often have to make judgment on whether to disclose, and how much to disclose their research objective and methods and how to present themselves, etc. Researcher in field research is the instrument for measuring field data. That implies, 1) the researcher must be alert and sensitive to what happens in the field and to be disciplined about recording data; 2)it has personal consequences, it involves personal feeling and social relationships.

It is vital to gain rapport with people in site. The researcher's personal charm and social skills play an important role. The researchers also have to decide the their roles in the field and the level of involvement.

The researchers have to cope personal stress, how to normalized the social research and how to be like an acceptable incompetent.

How to normalized the social research:

- presenting his own biography,
- explaining the field research a little at time
- appearing non threatening
- accepting minor deviance in the setting.

Acceptable incompetent: is someone who is partially competent, skilled or knowledgeable in setting but who is accepted as nonthreatening person who needs to be taught (a humble learner)

3. Maintaining social relationship
4. Observe and collect data, analyze data

listening, learning about argot (specially language shared among members of group), taking notes.

Four types of notes: direct observation; inference; analytic notes, and personal journal.

Data quality: valid and reliable
6. Conduct field interviews
5. Leaving the field, public the report.

Field research process: choosing a site, gaining access, relation in the field, observing and collecting data, and field interview.

Field researchers begin data analysis and theorizing during data collection phase.

Qualitative research method

Qualitative and quantitative styles of research differ in several ways, but in other ways they are complementary. Both researchers are systemically collect and analyze empirical evidence to understand and explain social life.

The orientation of qualitative research follows "logical in practice", while for quantitative research follows "Reconstructed logic".

Reconstructed logic means the logic of how to do research in highly organized and restated in an idealized, formal, and systematic form. Quantitative research is usually described as using reconstructed logic. The researchers describe the detailed technique procedure in their studies.

Logic in practice is the logic of how research is actually carried out. It has few rules, and often is based on judgmental calls or norms shared among experienced researchers. Qualitative research uses more of a logic in practice, it relies on the informal wisdom that has developed from the experiences of researchers.

When approaching data, the attitude from these two method differs greatly. For positivist, qualitative data are mental states or conditions that cause measurable behavior. The issues is how to capture it with precise, reliable quantitative measurement. They assume that they can develop objective, precise measures with numbers that capture important features of social life. By contrast, qualitative researchers view their data as intrinsically meaningful. The issue is how to access of other culture and obtain the relative descriptions and actor's conceptions of their actions. They focus on subjective meanings, definition, metaphors, symbols and descriptions of specific cases.

Characteristic of qualitative research

1. Emphasize the importance of social context for understanding the social world. The meaning of social actions can be various in different social contexts.

2. A quantitative researcher usually gathers specific information on a great many cases and look for pattens in the variables on many cases; a qualitative research may use a case study approach, he or she looks for patterns in the context of the complete case as a whole.

3. Researcher's integrity. The positivist may question that how can qualitative research by objective, there are many opportunities for a researcher's personal influence to affect qualitative research. In fact, the researcher' integrity is a real issue, that is one of reasons for an increased reliance on quantitative methods. On the other hands, the qualitative researchers substitute detailed descriptions of standard techniques and statistic for readers'trust.

4. Checks. qualitative researcher have to check their evidence in order to ensure accuracy. When she or he obtains a statement from informant, for example, she or he has to ask whether the informant's feeling or self interests led him to lie? or is there historical evidence to verify the authenticity of sources? Qualitative researchers have the first hand knowledge of the people in their studies. It often arise the question of bias, but it also provides a sense of immediacy, direct contact and intimate knowledge.

5.Grounded theory, is a widely used approach in qualitative research. The researchers develop and refine the theory during the data collection process, in which conceptualization and operationalization occur simultaneously with data collection and preliminary data analysis.

6. Interpretation. Quantitative research is expressed in numbers, and researchers give meanings to the number and tell how they related to hypotheses; Qualitative research mainly in words, maps, photos, diagram. The researchers giving them meaning, translating them and making them understandable.

Complementary evidence

Many researchers combine quantitative and qualitative research. The logic of qualitative research does not forbid the use of numbers, statistics, and precise quantitative measurement. Qualitative researchers believe that different methods reveal different perspectives.

Some critical researchers say that technically competent, neutral, unbiased survey research is expensive, only those who have money and power can pay for it. Such researches often already have framed perspective, are to help the ruling class to understand "people", rarely are results used to help people understand themselves, their class consciousness and social condition. Therefore, critical researchers often combine survey with field research to create a mutual learning experience and help respondents reflect on their own situation.

Quantitative social science measurement

The process of measurement begins after a researcher has formulated a research question and determined the variables and units of analysis. The main concern here is to develop the clear definitions and to create measurement that will yield precise and accurate findings.

Measurement process (COM):

Conceptualization: is the process of taking a construct or concept and refining it by giving it a conceptual or theoretical definition. Eg. What is religious?

It involves carefully thinking, directly observing and consulting with others, reading others’ work and trying possible definitions.

Operationalization: the process of developing an operational definition for the construct. It involves to use indicator to measure a concept. Eg to use times to go to church or religious service as one of indicators to measure being religious.

In this process, a researcher links the world of ideas to observable reality.

Rule of correspondence or auxiliary theory, are the logical statements of how an indicator corresponds to an abstract construct.

For example, a rule of correspondence states that a person’s verbal agreement with a set of ten specific statements is evidence that the person holds strongly anti feminist beliefs and values.

For example, auxiliary theory suggests that the construct of alienation has four parts: family relations, work relations, relations with community and relations with friends.

Empirical measurement, using indicators in empirical world.

Reliability: means that information provided by indicators eg. a questionnaire does not vary as a result of characteristics of the indicator, instrument, or measurement device itself. It means that the repeated measurement under the same condition should be the same.

Three types of reliability:

o Stability reliability is reliability across time
o Representative reliability is reliability across sub populations or groups of people
o Equivalence reliability apples when researchers use multiple indicators (e.g., several items in a questionnaire all measure the same concept). If several different indicators measure the same concept, then a reliable measure should give the same result with all indicators.

How to improve the reliability:

1. Clearly conceptualize all concepts, reliability increase when a single concept or sub-dimension of a concept is measured. That shows the more precise a concept is defined, the less noise in measurement.

2. Increase the level of measurement, for example, 1 to 10 level categories is more reliable than high or low.

3. Use multiple indicators, it allows researchers to measure a wider range of content of a conceptual definition; one indicator may be imperfect, several indicators are less likely to have the same systematic error. Multiple indicators tend to be more stable than measures with one item.

4. Use pretest, pilot study and replication.


Validity is the degree of fit between a concept and indicators of it. It refers to how well the conceptual and operational definitions mesh with each other. The better the fit, the greater the measurement validity.

Four types of validity:

1. Face , in the judgment of others
2. Content, capture entire meaning
3. Criterion, agree with an external source

• concurrent, agrees with a preexisting study


• predictive, agrees with future event

4. Construct, multiple indicators are consistent.

• convergent, alike ones are similar


• discriminate, different ones differ

Quantitative research

Quantitative research relies much on assumptions from the positivist approach to science. Basically quantitative research involves: a language of variables, hypotheses, units of analysis, and causal explanation.

High quality quantitative research depends on a well defined and focused research question.

Variable is the concept that varies. The language of quantitative research is the language of variables and relationships among variables.

Record we learn there are two types of concepts: those that refer to a fixed phenomenon and those that vary in quantity, intensity, or amount (eg, amount of education). The second type of concept and measures of concepts are variables.

Commonly, there are three types of variables: independent variables (cause variables), dependent variable (effect variables) and the intervening variable, ie it comes between the independent and dependent variables and shows the link or mechanism between them.

Hypothesis and causality

A hypothesis is a proposition to be tested or a tentative statement of a relationship between two or more variables. It is kind of guess what social world looks like.

A causal hypothesis has the five characters:

o It has at least two variables
o It expresses a cause and effect relationship between variables
o It can predict a future event
o It is logically linked to a research question
o It is falsifiable, ie. It is capable of being tested against empirical evidence and shown to be true of false.

Unit and level of analysis

The unit of analysis refers to the type of unit a researcher uses when measuring variables, commonly individuals, groups, organization, social category or social institution.

The level of analysis is the level of social reality to which theoretical explanations refer. The social reality varies from individual to a group, from micro to macro level. To be clear the level of analysis helps researcher to delimit the kinds of assumptions, concepts and theories that a researcher uses.

Testing causal relationship

The researchers avoid using term proved when testing hypotheses. In the language of science, knowledge is tentative, and creating knowledge is an ongoing process that avoids premature closure. Scientists do not say they have proven a hypothesis or the causal relationship it represents. The best they can say is that overwhelming evidences, or all studies to date, support or are consistent with the hypothesis. Scientists do not close off the possibility of discovering new evidence that might contradict past finding.

The positive or confirming evidence for a hypothesis is less critical because alternative hypotheses may make the same predication. Negative and disconfirming evidence shows that predications are wrong. Negative evidence is more significant because the hypothesis is tarnished or soiled if the evidence fails to support it.

Spuriousness occurs when two variables are associated but are not causally related because there is actually an unseen third factor that is the real cause.

In summary, quantitative research design uses a deductive logic, begins with a general topic, narrow it down to research questions and hypothesis, and finally tests hypothesis against empirical evidence.

Difference bewteen Qualitative and Quantitative research

Quantitative	Qualitative
-Test hypothesis that the researcher begins with.	-Capture and discover meaning once the researcher becomes immersed in the data.
-Concepts are in the form of distinct variables	-Concepts are in the form of themes, notifs, generalizations, taxonomies
-Measures are systematically created before data collection and are standardized	-Measures are created in an ad hoc manner and are often specific to the individual setting of researcher
-Data are in the form of numbers from precise measurement	-Data are in the form of words from documents, osbervations, transcipts
-Theory is largely causal and is deductive	-Theory can be causal or noncausal and is often inductive
-Procedures are standard, and replication is assumed	-Reseacher porcedures are paritcular, and replication is very rare
-Analysis proceeds by using statistics, tables, or charts and discussing how what they show relates to hypotheses	-Analysis proceeds by extracting extracting themes or generalizations from evidence and organizing data to present a coherent and consistent picture

A debate between Burawoy 1977 and Treiman 1977 can well illustrate the disagreement over research method. Treiman conducted a series of quantitative cross-nation studies on prestige rankings of occupations and social mobility from a positivist approach. Burawor conducted participant observation studies of factory work in several countries, and qualitative historical research on migrant labour in South Africa and California.

Burawoy attacked Treiman's research on social mobility comparing the United States and Britain and cross-national quantitative research generally. He said the standard quantitative measure requires a basic similarity across units of analysis. If a researcher uses quantitative techniques e.g. random sampling, standard measurement, and statistic analysis, across fundamentally different social realities or cultures, he creates false precision and distorted results. Burawoy said that it is impossible to draw conclusion without referring the specific social context of a society. He rejected imposing a deductive theoretical framework with implicit values.

Treiman defended his research by restating the principles of positivist social science. He believed that the goal of comparative research was to discover what is true for all societies, what varies regularly across societies and what is unique to particular societies. The advantage of standardized measurement is to compare results from different units, in this case societies. He suggested that positivist research would eventually simplify the complexity of society into law-like generalization.

From above, we can see these two methods are valid under their own assumptions. Qualitative researchers insist that social reality has to be discovered under its own social context as the interpretive meanings of individuals can be different. However, the qualitative research, often involves intensive works and greater impacts on researchers lives, it is often used when studying a small group of people interacting in the present.

Three approaches in social science

Is social science the same as natural science? Can social science be studied as a natural science? What really "science" means? ....all these questions seem to be asked over century, especially on the mythology of sociology. There are three approaches that one can conduct social science research:-

1. Positive social science

This is the approach of natural sciences. They assume that positive approach is "science".

Positivism arose from a 19th century school of thought by the Frenchman who founded sociology- August Comte. Classic French Sociology Emile Durkheim also outlined the same school of thought in his "Rules of the sociology method." (1895). essentially, they believe there is Law governing the social life, and the task of social science researcher is to find such Law. By using scientific observation, positivists hope to give scientific explanation to discover and document universal laws of human behaviour and society. It also assumes that knowledge can be used as tools to predict or control social environments.

The basic assumption of positivism is just like physical world, social reality is "out there" and waiting to be discovered. They also assume that human beings are self interested, pleasure seeking and rational individuals. People operate on the basis of external causes with the same cause having the same effect on everyone. Human events are not randomly happening, but in a stable pattern following "causal law". They also emphasize the value free science, i.e. observers agree on what they see and that science is not based on values, opinions or attitudes or beliefs. Positivist sees science as a special distinct regime of free from personal, political and religious values.

Quantitative research method, in some ways, resembles this approach. By first defining the concepts, variables, quantitative researches develop certain hypothesis, collect data then analyze about the casual relationship among variables. Testing hypothesis is one of main tasks.

2. Interpretive social science (ISS)

ISS can be traced back to Max Weber. For interpretive researchers, the goal of social research is to develop an understanding of social life and discover how people construct meaning in natural setting. They want to learn what is meaningful or relevant to the people being studied. The researchers must take into account the social actor’s reasons and the social context of action. They note that human action has little inherent meaning. It acquires meaning among people who share a meaning system that permits them to interpret it as socially relevant sign or action. Human social life is intentionally created out of the purposeful actions of interacting social beings. The social world is largely what people perceive it to be. Social life exists as people experience it and give it meaning. It is fluid and fragile. People maintain it by interacting with others in ongoing processes of communication and negotiation. They operate on the basis of untested perception and taken-for-granted knowledge about people and themselves.

This approach holds that social life is based on social interactions and socially constructed meaning systems. The social reality is also based on people’s definition of it. Positivists assume that everyone shares the same meaning system and that we will experience the world the same way. The interpretive approach says that people may or may not experience the same way. Human behaviours may be patterned, but it is not due to pre-existing laws, but evolved from shared meaning system through social interactions.

Positivist usually uses deductive axiom, and causal effects in explaining and predicating the world, interpretive researcher, on the other hand, uses ideographic and inductive. Interpretive approach does not using the same procedure to test hypothesis, for ISS, a theory is true if it makes sense to those being studied and if it allows other to understand deeply or enter the reality of those being studied.

Interpretive research does not try to be value free, in fact, ISS doubt it would even achievable. What positivist calls “value free” is just another meaning system and value.

3. Critical social science (CSS)


This approach is traced to Karl Marx, was elaborated by Theodor Adorno. CSS thinks positive science is narrow, non-humanist in tis use of reason. CSS defines social science as a critical process of inquiry that goes beyond surface illusions to uncover the real structures in the materials world in order to help people to change conditions and build a better world for themselves.

It adopts historical realism in which reality of social world is shaped by social, political, cultural and similar factors. Society reality evolves over the time. CSS focuses on changes and conflicts, especially the paradoxes of inner conflicts or contradiction that brings about changes. (dialectic)

CSS thinks the initial knowledge and observation about social life may not be true reality, because human senses are limited and misled by the illusions and myths. The goal of social study is to uncover social reality through these myths. There are many layers of social reality, beneath the immediately observable surface reality lie deep structures or unobserved mechanism.

Value free sociology

From Kenneth D Bailey “Methods of social research”

Weber was the first to suggest “value free sociological study”. He suggested that a researcher to display “ethical neutrality” to attempt to be purely objective in his or her research regardless of personal feeling. That could be accomplished if a researcher took care to separate his or her every day life, with the particular set of values he or she displays every day, from his or her professional role as social scientist in which he or she tries to refrain from making value judgements.

This view is probably the prevailing view in social study today. However, an increasing number of social scientists, including adherents from several methodological paradigms, rejected the notion that it is possible or even desirable to separate values from either the selections of the research problems or the application of findings. These persons tend to advocate use of qualitative rather than quantitative methods, and to reject the physical-science model of research. Rather than label themselves scientific, they would be more like to adopt the terms “humanistic, qualitative, or radical”

Gouldner (1962) in his article “Anti-minotaur: the myth of a value-free sociology” says that the strict adherence to the value free position tends to ignore the distinction between the good and the evil potentials always present in science. He suggests that a teacher should state his or her personal values as honestly as he or she can lest these values by introduced in a covert or disguised fashion, perhaps without the teacher’s awareness. Gouldner also notes that the value-free position can cause researchers to avoid researching social problems that are of vital importance to society but controversial, so as to render them difficult to study without some explicit moral commitment.

Recent work on the value-free issue has noted that among other things, the difficulty in maintaining a value-free position and the shifts that some social scientists make in their thinking regarding this issue.