Lecture 10: Analysis of textual data

HEST 5001

Levels of Research

Philosophies/Paradigms/Dilemmas

Methodological Criteria

Research Strategies

Research Methods

Data Analysis

Data collection Data analysis

Quantitative approaches

Data collection

Data analysis

Qualitative approaches

10a Grounded Theory

Types of Analysis

Thematic Analysis [Grounded Theory]

Content Analysis

Discourse Analysis

Cognitive Mapping

Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis

Grounded Theory

Traditional model of science:Theory Hypotheses DataDeductive

Grounded Theory Research Process Data TheoryInductive

Grounded Theory

A strategy developed in the 1960’s

Glaser, B. & Strauss, A. (1967) The Discovery of Grounded Theory Chicago: Aldine

“Theory that emerges from systematically obtained and analysed data”

“Generating the explanation cannot be separated from the process of conducting research”

‘in contrasting grounded theory with logico-deductive theory…we have taken the position that the adequacy of theory for sociology today cannot be divorced from the process by which it is generated…and we suggest that it is likely to be a better theory to the degree that it has been inductively developed from social research

(Glaser and Strauss, 1967: 5).

Theoretical Sampling

“Sampling on the basis of concepts that have proven theoretical relevance to the evolving theory”

Grounded theory – categories developed in the course of research not before

Sample incidents not people

Constant comparative method

Saturation not representativeness

Open, Axial and Discriminate Theoretical Sampling (Strauss and Corbin, 1990)

Theoretical sampling is very different from probability sampling:

Not deciding what the key characteristics are beforehand

To let the factors that make a difference come from the sample themselves

Categories emerge from first sets of data

Thematic Analysis

Majomi, P. Brown, B. & Crawford, P. (2003) The sacrifice of the personal to the professional in the lives of Community Psychiatric Nurses, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 42, (5): 527-538.

Thematic Analysis

Theoretical Construct

Category 1

Concept A Concept B

Category 2

Concept C Concept D

Category 3

Concept E Concept F Concept G

Start with words and concepts used by participants themselves

Concepts combine to form categories

Reflexive Analysis

1. Your personal experiences of being a researcher in that setting

2. Reflections on the process of research

3. Subjectivity made explicit

4. Estimate reactive effects

5. Analytic memos

Food as a Comfort

Introduction:

Quotations

Explanation:

Implications

Eating to relieve boredom or unhappiness was described by the eight year olds and thirteen year olds

A: I eat when I'm sadB: I eat when I'm bored.2: I eat chocolate when I'm depressed1: I eat loads when I'm bored3: If there isn't ought on telly you eat a right

load.

Young women in both age groups described eating for reasons other than hunger. Unhappiness and situations where they were bored lead them to resort to food as a comfort.

This suggests that in order to develop appropriate policies, we need to take account of the fact that food has emotional and social meanings as well as physical effects.

Sub-title

Presentation of Results

Presentation of Results

Introduction:

Quotations

Explanation:

Implications

Thirteen year olds said that food choice (when eating because of boredom) was determined by the amount of effort required in preparation

Int.: What sort of foods do you eat when you're bored ?

3: Anything2: Biscuits1: You won't make anything healthy when you're

bored cos its so much trouble.

'Healthy' food was less likely to be eaten at these times because it was thought that it took longer to prepare.

This implies that health education messages need to be adapted to the reality that young women preferred quickly available food

Grogan, S & Wainwright, N (1996) Growing Up in the Culture of Slenderness: Girls Experiences of Body Dissatisfaction. Women’s Studies International Forum, 19, 665-673.

The Trouble with FoodSub-Title

Writing up 1

Defence of Internal Validity– Talking with participants in their own frame of reference

Member checking (Glaser and Strauss, 1967)– Show results to participants, to check views

‘Thick description’ (Geertz, 1973)– A very detailed description of context of findings

Triangulation (Denzin, 1989)– Do findings converge? ? More than 1 method

Defence of Reliability

Estimate of reactive effects– Understand variation and estimate

Audit trail– Tracability of process

Searching for disconfirming evidence– Has researcher sought other evidence / specific cases?

Computer aided analysis (NVIVO)

Inter-rater reliability (Armstrong et al, 1997)

Writing up 2

Defence of External Validity

Theoretical saturation

Analytic generalisation

Constant comparison

Transferability (Pawson and Tilley, 1997)– Rather than generalisability– See Gomm (Would it work here?)

Writing up 2

Possible Criticisms

Sampling for diversity BUT emergent theory frames what you see?

Concepts ‘emerge’. Can check by audit trail BUT constituted by author?

Member checks BUT incongruent data represents invalidity or contingency?

Realist critique: ‘the way things are’. Grounded theory legitimises status quo?

Prejudices against counterfactual thinking?

No observation free of theory. Grounded in researcher’s interpretation (or theory generates theory)

Consensus among coders: mind set or acquiescence effects?

Dissemination of grounded concepts of less powerful to powerful?

Develops a jargon as alienating as formal theory?

‘Researcher effect’ remains untheorised – distinct from symbolic interactionism?

Reflexivity lost within HSR: criticism of GT as “qualitative positivism” (Stanley and Wise, 1983)

Possible Criticisms 2

Adaptive Theory (Layder, 1998)

"focuses on generating social theory in conjunction with ongoing empirical research" (p. viii)

"to produce ever more adequate knowledge" (p. 9). adaptive theory ‘is an original amalgam of different influences

and approaches that falls somewhere between what are various referred to as deductive or theory-testing aproaches on the one side and inductive or theory-generating approaches on the other’ (p. 5).

Layder, D. (1998) Sociological Practice: Linking Theory and Social Research Polity Press.

10b Content Analysis

Example 1 Counting words or other things

Content Analysis converts non-numerical data (speech/ visual images etc. ) into numbers:

e.g. Manstead & McCulloch (1981) ‘Sex-role stereotyping in British Television Advertisements’ British Journal of Psychology 20: 171-180.

Portrayal of men and women in British television advertisements.

men women visual portrayal 33% 92% product authority 75% 13% dependent roles 10% 68% home portrayal 7% 38%

Content Analysis and Theory

e.g. Saks, M. (1991) The flight from science? The reporting of acupuncture in mainstream British medical journals from 1800 to 1990. Complementary Medical Research 5 (3) 178-182.

Items on acupuncture appearing in the British Medical Journal and the Lancet 1820-1989.

Saks, M (1991: 178) Year BMJ Lancet Combined

1820-29 - 7 7 1830-39 - 13 13 1840-49 1 - 1 1850-59 1 2 3 1860-69 - - - 1870-79 1 2 3 1880-89 3 1 4 1890-99 1 1 2 1900-09 - - - 1910-19 - - - 1920-29 - - - 1930-09 1 - 1 1940-49 2 - 2 1950-59 1 - 1 1960-69 2 - 2 1970-79 33 26 59 1980-89 28 29 57

Advantages of Content Analysis

Simplification of data into easily comprehensible summary

Quantification of qualitative data

Statistical analysis possible to look at group differences

Useful for dealing with large body of qualitative data, where other forms of analysis (thematic or discourse analysis) would become impractical.

Presentation of Content Analysis Results

Introduction to analysis

Tables of frequencies and percentages

Statistical tests, results, and interpretation

Description of data

10c Discourse Analysis

It’s increasingly finding a place in health care research e.g. Hodges et al (2008);

Discourse Analysis Out of a variety of disciplines (linguistics, psychoanalysis,

psychology, sociology)

Discourse “A term to cover all forms of spoken language, formal and informal, and written texts of all kinds” Potter, J. & Wetherell, M. (1987)

Analysis of text (recorded talk, written scripts)

Language not a representation of reality, but performs an action (Austin, 1962)

‘Performatives’ commit speakers to their consequences (Austin, 1962)

Belief in ‘fact’ itself treated as a topic of research (Potter, 1997)

Selection of Words

We choose particular words to achieve particular effects on our audience

House/Home Poll Tax/Community Charge Client/Patient/Service User/Customer/Lay Person/ Alternative medicine/Complementary medicine Social context determines language use Variability is a normal aspect of language use (not

an indication of irrationality/psychosis) Variability can be used to understand the way that

people view their social worlds (the way in)

Issues in Discourse Analysis

Relate analysis of text to broader social science concerns (gender relations, social control) (Silverman, 1993)– Wider power relations can be investigated by DA

Not use analysis of ‘ordinary’ conversation as baseline for understanding as in Conversation Analysis (Silverman, 1993)

Use of transcripts: more detailed than ethnography (Potter, 1997) less than CA (Silverman, 1993)

Analysis of discourses [Parker, Burman] or discourse analysis [Potter, Wetherell] (Burr, 1995)

Transcribing of talk Silences Overlapping speech Time lapses Intakes of breath/out-breaths Stress/emphasis Prolongation of sound Loudness Uncertainties in transcription Author’s descriptions

– considerable detail, probably including emphasis

Analysis 1. Search for repertoires in data (regularities in ways

of saying things) 2. Pick out representative quotations to represent

repertoires 3. Note contradictions between repertoires

(variability) 4. Infer ‘function’ of discourse (how people view the

social world) from variability– How do people get their own way through

language? 5. How do people negotiate morally tenable

discourses (justify actions, blame others, excuse selves?)

Repertoires Repertoires not representations of reality (Potter and

Wetherall, 1987) Empiricist and contingent repertoires (Gilbert and Mulkay,

1984)

“For instance, factors adduced to explain scientific error include: failure to understand, prejudice, commitment to one’s own theory, dislike of the new theory, extreme naivety, narrow disciplinary perspective, threat to status, insufficient experimental skill, false intuition, subjective bias, accepting the views of an authoritative figure, being out of touch with reality, personal rivalry, emotional involvement, general cussedness, being too busy, living in a country where theory is not popular, stupidity, pig-headedness, being American and therefore thinking in a woolly fashion!” (Gilbert and Mulkay, 1984)

Empiricist language for own work, contingent repertoires for others

Deconstruction

Revealing contradictions [e.g. passive language obscures activity of the researcher]

Archaeology of knowledge [identify subject positions of discourse and audience and the political implications of these: what power relations are constituted through it?]

Interrogating the silences. What views are suppressed? Whose view is presented? Whose view is absent? To whom is the text addressed? What could have been said that is not said? – What is said and what is not said?

Power: dispersed not central, relational not possessed, contingent, constituted not pre-existing.

Extract 1a (Silverman, 1993:121)

M: She’s going through a very languid stage ( ) she won’t do anything unless you push her

D: so you find you’re having to push her quite a lot?M: mm no well I don’t (.) I just leave her now

Example of charge-rebuttal sequence Dr. topicalises ‘pushing’ (draws attention to it in a

manner that makes her accountable for it) Mother withdraws into an account that claims to

respect autonomy

Extract 1b: (Silverman, 1993: 122)

M: I don’t think she’s really sticking to her diet (.) I don’t know the effects this will have on her (.) its bound to alter her sugar if she’s not got the right insulin isn’t it? I mean I know what she eats at home but [outside

D: [so there’s no real consistency to her diet? It’s sort [of

M: [no well I keep it as consistent as I can at home

Hearable charge against her responsibility to the child Controlling and irresponsible possible charges rebutted

contingently. Practical uses (doctors aware of double binds their

questioning puts mother in; mothers aware of double binds in our culture not individual failings)

Evaluation: identify the discourses

‘Just a few moments discomfort for a lifetime’s protection’

Evidence Based Medicine

‘Look After Yourself!’

‘Frankenstein foods’

‘Collateral damage’

Advantages of Discourse Analysis

(Wetherell & Potter, 1988) 1. Does justice to the subtlety and complexity of

natural speech

2. Systematic approach to organising discourse

Criticisms

Some authors are suspicious of the lack of any account of cognitive structures and processes underlying the use of language. From this perspective it is unclear what determines word-choices and choice of linguistic strategy.

Aside from some schools of thought (e.g. critical discourse analysis, Foucaldian analysis), there’s little attempt to think about larger-scale social structures or processes. E.g. power, ideology, inequality .

Discourses are partly in the text, and partly in the mind of the researcher.

Researcher MUST understand the culture of the speakers to make a valid reading of the text.

The researcher is still the expert

Levels of Research

Philosophies/Paradigms/Dilemmas

Methodological Criteria

Research Strategies

Research Methods

Data Analysis