Chapter 8

Data Analysis
and
Representation

Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e

8.1
 Key Questions
• What are the common data analysis
strategies used in qualitative research?
• How might the overall data analysis
process be conceptualized in qualitative
research?
• What are specific data analysis
procedures used within each approach to
inquiry, and how do they differ?
• What are the procedures available in
qualitative computer analysis programs,
and how would these procedures differ by
approaches to qualitative inquiry?
Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e
8.2
 Three Analysis Strategies
Analytic Huberman &
Strategy Madison (2005) Miles (1994) Wolcott (1994b)
Sketching ideas Write margin notes Highlight certain
in fieldnotes information in
description
Taking notes Write reflective
passages in notes
Summarize field Draft a summary
notes sheet on fieldnotes

Getting feedback
on ideas

Working with Make metaphors

words
Identify codes Abstract coding or Write codes,
concrete coding memos

Reduce codes Identify salient Note patterns and Identify patterned

into themes themes or patterns themes regularities
8.3
Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e
 Three Analysis Strategies (cont.)
Analytic Huberman &
Strategy Madison (2005) Miles (1994) Wolcott (1994b)
Count frequency Count frequency of
of codes codes
Relating Factoring, noting
categories relations among
variables, building a
logical chain of
evidence
Relate to analytic Contextualize in
framework in framework from
literature literature
Create a point of For scenes,
view audience, readers
Display the data Create a graph or Make contrasts and Display findings in
picture of the comparisons tables, charts,
framework diagrams, and
figures; compare
cases; compare
Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e
with a standard 8.4
 The Data Analysis Spiral
Account
Matrix, trees
Propositions
Representing
Visualizing Context,
Describing Categories
Classifying Comparisons
Interpreting Reflecting
Writing notes
Reading Across questions
Memoing
Files,
Data Units,
Managing Organize
Data Collection
(text, images)
Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e
8.5
 Data Management

• Organize data into file folders or computer

files
• Make back-up copies of the data
• Construct an organizational plan so that
the data is easy to locate
• Convert files into text units (e.g., word,
,
sentence, story)
• Computer programs can facilitate data
management and storage of data

Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e

8.6
 Reading and Memoing

• Read entire transcripts several times to

get an overall meaning
• Make notes in the margins of transcripts,
field-notes or photographs as you read to
note key phrases, ideas, or concepts
• These notes can become part of the
database for analysis

Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e

8.7
Describing, Classifying, and Interpreting
• Code the data to describe the context of
the setting
• Develop codes or categories that describe
what is being talked about or seen in a
visual image (e.g., photograph)
– Develop only about 25-50 codes (“lean
coding”)
– Codes can be counted to see how frequently
they appear in the data
– Preexisting or a priori codes can sometimes
come from the literature
– Codes can originate from the researcher or
can be in vivo codes, which are the exact
words of the participants
Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e
8.8
Describing, Classifying, and Interpreting
• Code segments to look for
– Codes that represent information that
researchers expect to find before the study
– Codes that represent surprising information
the researchers did not expect to find
– Codes that represent information that is
conceptually interesting or unusual to
researchers
• Use codes to develop larger themes
– Themes are the broad general ideas that
come from the coding process
– Limit themes to 5-7 that have sub-themes to
support the themes (“winnowing the data”)
Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e
8.9
Describing, Classifying, and Interpreting
• Using a postmodern perspective, theme
may be formed during data analysis to:
– Dismantle a dichotomy to expose a false
distinction
– Examine silences noting who or what is
excluded
– Attend to disruptions and contradictions to learn
where the texts fail to make sense
– Focus on the element most peculiar to the text
– Interpret metaphors as a rich source for multiple
meanings
– Analyze double entendres that point to an
unconscious subtext
– Separate group-specific and more general
sources of bias by reconstructing the text with
substitution of its main elements
Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e
8.10
Describing, Classifying, and Interpreting
• All qualitative research is interpretive.
• Interpretation of the data involves making
sense of the data
– It is based on researcher hunches
– It can be based on social science constructs
– It can be based on personal views that are
contrasted with social science constructs
• The process of interpretation involves
forming larger meanings of what is
happening in the situations or sites
• Post modern and interpretive researchers
view these interpretations as tentative,
inconclusive, and questioning
,
Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e
8.11
 Representing, Visualizing
• Researchers package the findings as text,
tables, or figures
– Matrix tables can be used to compare men
and women in terms of themes or categories
– Tree or hierarchical diagrams can be used to
represent the levels of abstraction in the
analysis
– Axial coding diagrams in grounded theory
studies illustrate the parts in the process being
studied
– Hypotheses or propositions in grounded
theory studies specify the relationships among
the categories
Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e
8.12
Analysis Within the Approaches to Inquiry:
Narrative (Clandinin & Connelly 2000)
• Analysis centers on the story to be told
– Chronology
– Epiphanies (turning points)
• Options for analysis
– Focus on the five elements of plot structure
(characters, setting, problem, actions, and
resolution)
– Three dimensional space approach focusing
on interaction (personal and social), continuity
(past, present, future), and situation (physical
places or the storytellers’‘ ‘ places)

Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e

8.13
 Analysis Within the Approaches to
Inquiry: Narrative
• Common elements to both approaches
– Collecting personal stories
– Retelling stories based on narrative elements
such as the five elements approach or three
dimensional space approach
– Rewriting the story into a chronological
sequence
– Incorporating the setting or place of the
participant’s experiences

Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e

8.14
 Analysis Within the Approaches to
Inquiry: Narrative

• Identifying life experiences in

biographical research (Denzin 1989b)
– The participant constructs a journal or sketch of
his or her life
– The researcher looks for life-course stages or
experiences to develop a chronology
– The researcher looks for contextual materials
– The researcher asks the participant to expand
on sections of stories and theorize about his or
her life

Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e

8.15
 Analysis Within the Approaches to
Inquiry: Narrative

• Identifying life experiences in

biographical research (cont.)
– The narrative segments and categories are
isolated and meanings are determined
– The researcher reconstructs the story and
identifies the factors that have shaped the life
– The final case includes the processes of the
individual’s life, the theories that relate to these
life experiences, and unique and general
features of life

Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e

8.16
Analysis Within the Approaches to Inquiry:
Phenomenology (Moustakas 1994)

• The researcher describes personal

experiences with the phenomenon
(bracketing)
• Develop a list of significant statements
that are non-overlapping and have
equal worth about how individuals are
experiencing the topic
(horizonalization)

Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e

8.17
Analysis Within the Approaches to Inquiry:
Phenomenology (Moustakas 1994)

• Collapse the statements into

meaning units or themes
• Write a description of what the
participants in the study have
experienced (textual description)

Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e

8.18
Analysis Within the Approaches to Inquiry:
Phenomenology (Moustakas 1994)
• Write a description of how the experience
happened (structural description)
• Write a composite description of the
phenomenon that incorporates both the
textual and structural descriptions
– This is the essence of the experience
– It is the culmination of the study
– It is a long paragraph that tells the reader what
the participants experienced with the
phenomenon and how or in what context they
experienced it
Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e
8.19
Analysis Within the Approaches to Inquiry:
Grounded Theory (Strauss & Corbin 1998)
• Open coding
– Researcher examines and codes the text and
develops categories
– Researcher attempts to saturate the
categories
– Researcher dimensionalizes the categories by
creating subcategories called properties that
represent multiple perspectives on the
categories and presents the dimensionalized
categories on a continuum typically in a table
that contains each of the dimensionalized
categories
Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e
8.20
Analysis Within the Approaches to Inquiry:
Grounded Theory (Strauss & Corbin 1998)
• Axial coding
– Researcher identifies a single category from
the open coding list as the central
phenomenon of interest (central category)
– Researcher uses the remaining categories to
form a coding paradigm consisting of the
causal conditions, intervening conditions,
context, strategies,, and consequences that
relate to the central category
– The coding paradigm presents a theoretical
paradigm of the process that is being studied
Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e
8.21
Analysis Within the Approaches to Inquiry:
Grounded Theory (Strauss & Corbin 1998)
• Selective coding
– The researcher creates a conditional matrix
based on the axial coding paradigm (This is
seldom seen in studies)
– This matrix is used to help the researcher
visualize the range of conditions and
consequences related to the phenomenon
– The researcher generates propositions
(hypotheses) from the theory. These hypotheses
could be tested using empirically quantitative
methods
– The researcher forms a storyline connecting the
categories
Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e
8.22
Analysis Within the Approaches to Inquiry:
Ethnography (Wolcott 1994b)
• Description
– Describe the culture-sharing group and setting
– Present the facts without interpretation
– Present the facts in an interesting way
– Can chronicle a day in the life of the group or
individual
– Can focus on a critical or key event or develop
a story complete with plots and characters that
can focus in the interaction between groups or
showing different perspectives through the
viewpoints of the participants

Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e

8.23
Analysis Within the Approaches to Inquiry:
Ethnography (Wolcott 1994b)
• Analysis
– Sorting through the materials
– Developing a description, identifying themes
(searching for patterned regularities), and
making interpretation
– Building taxonomies and comparison tables
– Comparing cultural groups to others or
evaluating the group according to standards
– Connecting the culture-sharing group and
broader theoretical frameworks

Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e

8.24
Analysis Within the Approaches to Inquiry:
Ethnography (Wolcott 1994b)
• Interpretation
– The researcher probes the question, How
does the culture-sharing group work?
– The researcher goes beyond the data to draw
inferences from the data or turns to theory to
provide structure for interpretations
– The researcher personalizes interpretations
– The researcher may also develop an
interpretation though poetry, fiction, or
performance

Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e

8.25
Analysis Within the Approaches to Inquiry:
Case Study (Stake 1995)
• Description of the case and its setting
– If there is a chronology of events, find
evidence for each step
– Determine how the case or incident fits into
the larger situation
• Approaches to analysis and interpretation
– Categorical aggregation: the researcher
collects instances from the data to look for
issue-relevant meanings
– Direct interpretation: the researcher looks at a
single instance and draws meaning from it

Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e

8.26
Analysis Within the Approaches to Inquiry:
Case Study (Stake 1995)
• Approaches to analysis and interpretation
– Cross-case analysis: the research studies two
or more cases to look for similarities between
the two
– Naturalistic generalizations: the researcher
notes what can be learned for individuals or a
larger population from the case

Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e

8.27
 Computer Use in
Qualitative Data Analysis
• Advantages of using qualitative analysis
software
– provides a means to store data
– provides an organized filing system
– Helps the researcher locate material easily
– Allows the researcher to look at the data more
closely
– The researcher can visualize the relationship
among codes and themes with concept mapping
features
– Memos can be created, associated with codes
and themes, and can easily be retrieved
Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e
8.28
 Computer Use in
Qualitative Data Analysis
• Disadvantages of using qualitative analysis
software
– Time must be spent learning the software
– Perceived discomfort introduced by the computer
between the researcher and data
– Perception that the data and organizational
structures are set by the software and can’t be
changed
– Software documentation is sometimes confusing
– Some programs may not have the features the
researcher needs
Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e
8.29
 Common Packages Available

• NVivo7: (www.qsrinternational.com)
• Atlas.ti: (www.atlasti.com)
• HyperRESEARCH (
www.researchware.com)
• Ethnograph: (www.qualisresearch.com)
• Qualrus: (www.qualrus.com)
• MAXqda (www.maxqda.com)

Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e

8.30
 Comparing Software Packages
BASIC ATLAS.TI NVIVO HYPERRESEARCH MAXQDA2
FEATURES
Platform Windows Windows Mac/ Windows
Windows
Import text files X X X X
Import image files X X X X
Import audio and X X X
video files
Concept mapping X X X X
Allows for team X X X X
work
Export report to X Text file Text file X
Excel or SPSS
Memoing X X X X
Drag and drop X X X X
coding
Text searching X X X X
Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e 8.31
Ways Computer Programs Facilitate
Qualitative Data Analysis

• Helps store and organize data

• Helps locate text or image segments
• Helps locate quotes or segments
associated with codes in large
databases
• Facilitates comparing codes

Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e

8.32
Ways Computer Programs Facilitate
Qualitative Data Analysis

• Facilitates forming themes

• Creates a visual concept map of
themes and codes
• Facilitates writing, storing and
attaching memos
• Helps create a template that fits the
analysis

Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e

8.33
 Chapter 8
Data Analysis
and
Representation

Creswell Qualitative Inquiry 2e

8.34