BOOK REVIEW
After
reading the book about the teaching of qualitative analysis in the social
sciences many of the procedural discussions are concluded with rules of thumb
that can usefully guide the researchers' analytic operations. The difficulties
that beginners encounter when doing qualitative analysis and the kinds of
persistent questions they raise are also discussed as is the problem of how to
integrate analyses.
1. Introduce
The
purpose of this book is to instruct anyone who is interested in learning or
improving his or her ability to do qualitative analysis of data. Traditionally,
researchers learn such analysis by trial and error, or by working with more
experienced people on research projects. So in this handbook I have attempted to
address the issues of how one
does theoretically informed interpretations of materials, and does them
efficiently and effectively. (I assume experience with or at least knowledge
on the part of readers of qualitative data-collecting methods.) To that
end, detailed discussions of basic analytic procedures are given, as are
rules of thumb for proceeding with them. The illustrative materials are
drawn from my research or that of research associates and students, with
repeated use of materials from three projects, in order to give a
heightened sense of procedural continuity.
A
word more about the illustrative materials. In assembling them, a decision had
to be made about which ones to use. Originally I had thought of drawing on
materials dealing with a relatively wide variety of substantive phenomena. In
the end I opted for using those from my own research and teaching, because even
with their necessarily restricted scope they would better serve to convey how
analysis is taught and learned, as well as to make analytic operations more
comprehensible for readers. From considerable experience I have learned that
certain operations - particularly the coding, the use of comparative analysis
and theoretical sampling, and the integration of findings into a coherent theoretical
formulation are especially difficult to teach and carry out with ease. The
analytic mode introduced here is perfectly learn able by any competent social
researcher who wishes to interpret data using thismode (either without
quantitative methods or in conjunction with them). It takes no special genius
to do that analysis effectively. True, when students are first learning it,
they often listen in awe to their teacherresearcher and mutter about his or her
genius at this kind of work, but despair of their own capacities for doing it.
They never could! (I shalltouch on this psychological problem later in the
book.) Inevitably, students get over this phase, if unhappily they have been in
it, as they gain increasing competence as well as confidence in that
competence. Of course they do not believe they can do it until their first
major piece of research - usually a thesis - has actually been completed.
I
wish also to express appreciation to many other colleagues for their direct and
indirect contributions to this book, for in a genuine sense it is truly a
collaborative enterprise. Among social scientists a distinction is commonly
drawn between quantitative and qualitative research. The distinction in part
has its origins in the history of some disciplines, especially perhaps
sociology and social anthropology — in sociology, because so many disciplinary
trends since World War II have fostered questionnaires and other survey methods
of collecting data and their statistical treatment; and in anthropology, because
qualitative analysis of field data is the primarymode, although quantitative
methods have lately been more employed, to the distress of many who steadfastly
rely on qualitative methods. "Qualitative methods" has generally been
used, also, to refer to the work of researchers who work as differently as
ethnographers, clinical
and organizational
psychologists, grounded-theorist sociologists, or macrohistorians/
sociologists. Qualitative researchers
tend to lay considerable emphasis on situational and often structural contexts,
in contrast to many quantitative researchers,
whose work is multivariate but often weak on context. Qualitative researchers
tend, however, to be weak on crosscomparisons because they often study only
single situations, organizations, and institutions. In any event, moving to the
research materials themselves: They occur in a variety of forms, all of which
have been utilized by social scientists - as well as by investigators in fields
like history, psychology, education, and law - although different disciplines
and their specialties have favored one type of material rather than another.
For instance, among those primarily utilizing qualitative methods,
ethnographers have relied mainly for
data on field observations converted into field notes and on interviews.
Historians may interview if their work is on contemporary or relatively recent
events, but principally they utilize many different kinds of documents,
depending on their specific research aims and on the availability and accessibility
of materials: records of various types, memoirs, official and personal letters,
diaries, newspapers, maps, photographs,- and paintings. Researchers in clinical
psychology base conclusions primarily on their clinical observations of
patients'
nonverbal as well
as verbal behavior, and on therapeutic interviews. Many sociologists prefer to
analyze written texts rather than engage in field research or interviewing;
others generate materials through tape
recordings of
conversations, transcripts of court trials, and the like.
More
important for our purposes here is that improved qualitative analysis requires
more explicitly formulated, reliable, and valid methods than currently exist.
At the beginning of a research project, when the researcher reads a sentence or
sees an action, the analysis may be quite implicit; but analysis it surely is
insofar as perception is selective, mediated by language and experience. Later
in the investigation or even during the first days when an observed scene,
interview, or perused document challenges the researcher's analytic sense, the
conclusions will be drawn more explicitly and probably more systematically.
Depending on the purposes of the investigator, the final conclusions drawn in
the course of the research can vary greatly by level of abstraction. At the
lowest levels they can be "descriptive," and at the highest levels,
the researcher may aim for the most general of theory. But description itself
can be "low level" - perhaps only reproducing the informants' own
words or recording their actions or can be reported at a much more complex,
systematic, and interpretative level. If social theory is aimed for, it can be
formulated with more or less systematic treatment and with varying degrees of
abstraction. In addition, the theory at any level can be broader or narrower in
scope; and it may be linked with other theory which is more or less developed.
This stepping away into conceptualization is especially difficult for even
experienced researchers who may, in a particular study, either have gone a bit
native through personally participating in the field of study, or who know too
much experientially and descriptively about the phenomena they are studying and
so are literally flooded with their materials. Yet the conceptual stepping back
must occur if one is to develop theoretical understanding and theories about
the phenomena reflected in the materials. Open coding quickly forces the
analyst to fracture, break the data apart analytically, and leads directly to
excitement and the inevitable payoff of grounded conceptualization. In research
seminars, open coding is additionally valuable since students often find it
much easier to code someone else's data, being more emotionally distant from
them, and so learn through the open-coding procedures how more quickly to
fracture their own data.
saturates
individual codes." Initially they are likely to be crude, so they will
need much modification. Anyhow they are provisional so will end up considerably
modified, elaborated, and so on. Hence, the analyst must not become too
committed to the first codes, must not become "selective too quickly,
tempting as that is, since initial codes can seem highly relevant when they are
actually not. Open coding proliferates codes quickly, but the process later
begins to slow down through the continual verifying that each code really does
fit. Eventually the code gets saturated
and is placed in relationship to other codes, including its relation to the
core category or categories if, indeed,
they or it are not actually the core." This results in cumulative
knowledge about relationships between that category and other categories and
subcategories. A convenient term for this is axial coding, because the
analyzing revolves around the "axis" of one category at a time. It is
unlikely to take place during the early days or even weeks when the initial
data are collected and analyzed. However, axial coding becomes increasingly
prominent during the normally lengthy period of open coding, before the analyst
becomes committed to a core category or categories and so moves determinedly
into selective coding (to be discussed next). During the open-coding period,
however, the very directed axial coding alternates with looser kinds of open
coding, especially as the analyst examines new aspects of the phenomena under
study. It also runs parallel to the increasing number of relationships becoming
specified among the many categories, whether this part of the coding is done as intensively as the
axial coding or not.
2.
Two illustrations
The
first is to give some sense of how a grounded theorist operates with data,
since that style of analysis is somewhat different than other modes. Thus the
analyst-teacher will be seen developing theory by using both "real"
and experiential data, making constant comparisons, discovering and naming
categories, suggesting possible theoretical samples to be examined later,
emphasizing all of the elements in the coding paradigm, and raising a host of
theoretically informed questions. The second reason for presenting this
material here is to give a more concrete sense of how grounded theory is taught
in research seminars, providing thereby useful imagery before readers are
plunged into the technicalities of coding, memoing, and so forth. This case
illustration, unlike most of the others in this book, will be presented without
detailed commentary of what is transpiring, analytically speaking, throughout
the session as it proceeds phase by phase. Here, though, is an overview of some
notable things that occurred. There was open coding, which resulted in a number
of categories and terms for them (assessing, balancing of priorities, pain
expectations, inflicted pain). In relation to those categories, the teacher
showed how to find numerous comparison groups, suggesting theoretical sampling.
Some exploration was made of conditions, tactics, dimensions, interactions,
consequences. There was much emphasis on variation, including how to
potentially qualify an interesting hypothesis. So the open coding was already
leading to some conceptual density, through exploring possible relationships
between categories. As for pedagogy: The teacher explicitly emphasized and elicited the use of his own
and students' experiential (research, personal, professional) knowledge qua
data. He converted data into questions, categories, hypotheses, dimensions,
consequences, etc. A key feature of this kind of teaching of analysis is the
raising of generative questions for discussion: expecting that students will be
able to respond intelligently, not merely because they are intelligent and can
think logically, but because they have experiential data in which to ground
their answers - and need not be afraid to do so, once they get over shyness in
front of the teacher or their classmates.
A
student suggests the idea that, "From what we've been saying today, what
is really important is the assessment; once the assessment is made, the
treatment somewhat naturally follows." The instructor answers that this is
an hypothesis, "but suppose that I say 'yes but' — and pick a theoretical
sample where you get a situation in which an assessment of pain is made and
treatment follows, but then we look for a situation where an assessment is made
but you aren't sure what the treatment for the pain should be? Under what
conditions would we expect to find they don't know what to do despite
assessment? Because we might just qualify your hypothesis that way." Larry
answers that he believes assessment also entails treatment, and that if the
nurse has faith in the treatment she will assume she won't be punished for
using it with a patient in dire pain, even though she has not been given orders
to use the medication. "Ok," the instructor replies, "pain
management always involves where the pain is, how long it has been going on,
its intensity, and it involves calculations about how much medication, what
kind, how it is acting or how fast acting, etc. But the game I wanted to play
with you now is that of possibilities - based on your own experiential data.
One works out possibilities even if you can't find immediate examples of them,
provided you do have that data. (Usually you eventually do find them in the
real data.) You say,
He
added that while he had been trying to show the class how to do theoretical
sampling and find comparison groups, he would also suggest that it doesn't take
a genius to do this kind of work. Some people do it better, more efficiently,
and can operate on more abstract levels. And of course, one learns to do it
faster and better. A student hazards that the genius part is, "How far to
take it and in what direction. He had been given a one-page interview, also
reproduced below, by a graduate student in sociology, some time after a
conference between them (see the precised version of the conference, Chapter 7,
Case 5). The central theme of the student's research seemed then to be this:
crucial contributions made by parents to the physical survival of their babies
and young children, who had been born with severe congenital heart conditions.
The student had had little expereince with coding, for he had been unable to
attend the research seminars because of the constraints of his position,
working as a social worker with the parents at a medical center where the
babies were born and given medical treatment. After scrutinizing the interview,
the instructor conveyed his coding results (and associated queries) on the
telephone, while the student took careful notes.
3.
Codes and coding
Besides
these materials, there are throughout this book many instances of the coding
features exemplified and discussed here. You will see there, and here also,
many instances of generative questions leading to coding; of line-by-line or
paragraph-by-paragraph eliciting of categories, and queries about them; of
discovering in vivo categories as well as the provisional labeling of
sociological categories; of relationships drawn between categories; and of
relationships between a category and its conditions, consequences, and the
strategies and interactions associated with it. (Later chapters address the
issue of how to integrate those codes, including into sucessive integrative
diagrams.) Particular instances of coding can place emphasis on various of
those items.
These
field observational data have been specially coded for this book in order to
illustrate coding procedures as they occur during the first days of a research
project. While this coding was actually done long after the project's close, so
that the observer and analyst (Anselm Strauss) knew more about those materials
than ordinarily a researcher might know, analytically speaking, nevertheless,
the coding processes and techniques would be the same as if he had done it
early in the research project. It is recommended that you first scan the entire
fieldnote, then study the coding discussion and commentary that follow. In the
above coding process, one can see categories and subcategories being noted and
labeled, and a few connections among them suggested. A variety of questions are
asked, some probably truly generative in terms of the future of the study.
Also, comparisons are made and thought about that further the more direct
itemization of category properties. Theoretical samples are implicitly or
explicitly touched on. A few conditions and consequences are touched on also,
but not especially pursued. A couple of explicit hypotheses are hazarded but
many more are left implicit in terms of discussions of their implied conditions
and consequences. Strategies are not noted, but interactions concerning what
the nurse "does to" the patient are.
It
cannot be emphasized too much that, at such an early stage of open coding, the
analyst has many options which can be followed in the same coding session or in
succeeding ones. The inexperienced analyst is likely to be somewhat anxious
about what option is "the best." The rule of thumb here is: Don't
worry, almost any option will yield useful results. Typically, for instance, in
a research seminar the class will face the following options after an hour's
open coding: (1) to follow through on one or more of several comparisons
already touched on, (2) to return to the actual data again to do more
microscopic coding, (3) to follow up on something suggested by an operational
diagram that has sketched out relationships among the categories discussed so
far, (4) to further relate some of those categories, (5) to code specifically
any of the categories in terms of the coding paradigm. Both the observational
data and the analyst's experiential data (personal, research, and technical)
are used at various junctures. Note also the kinds of choices that the analyst
can make: To dimensionalize. To make comparisons. To follow through with a
topic - or to put off thinking about that until later. To write memos
immediately, or later, on these initial codes and on lines of thought suggested
by the coding session. But if the researcher chooses to move directly into
axial coding, he or she would focus on the specific kind of safety monitoring
that seems associated with this set of data. Then either close-in or further-out
comparisons could be used to further the immediate analysis. In such coding,
the analyst must exert great discipline to stay concertedly on target, not
allowing diversionary coding temptations to interfere with this specific and
highly directed coding. Any other coding or ideas that come to mind should be
noted briefly, but on a separate piece of paper for later consideration. .
Sometimes analysts draw on data so well known to themselves or their teammates
that they do not directly reference to specific data. Note, too, that in the
above coding notes, the coding sometimes brings out new categories without
relating them to previously discovered ones; but sometimes a connection is made
or suggested. Sometimes, too, the researcher's attention is drawn, in the lines
or phrases that are being studied, to what they suggest about strategies or
consequences or conditions in relation to each other and to the categories and
subcategories. (The very last code item above illustrates that point very
well.)
Note
that in this coding session the main effort was to fairly exhaustively itemize
and relate these subcategories of the core category (work type). The session
might have stopped there, to be resumed later with a consideration of
comparisons with other data, some already coded, of course. For example, this
body work could be compared in terms of the coding paradigm — for conditions,
strategies, interactions, consequences - against the body work done in other
situations: x-ray, telling the patients to move their body positions, or doing
it for them; transporting the bodies to and from the radiology department -
that is, transport work, a subtype of body work. These included pain relief,
pain minimization, pain expression, expression control, pain assessment, pain ideologies,
negligence accusations, incompetence accusations, and balancing pain relief or
minimization against other considerations. Some of those categories appear in
the codes below. Note, as in the above materials on monitoring, the usual
underlinings, occasional quoted material, and the frequent explicit relating of
strategies, conditions, consequences, interactions to the category under
discussion, and also the occasional research directives. However, here the
relating of multiple categories - including to the core category - is
considerably more complex now than in the case analyses presented earlier.
These
codes illustrate selective coding because they all relate to the core category
of pain management. It can be seen in the analysis that the codes (categories
and subcategories, too) densely relate to each other, many of those
relationships being brought out above in conditional, consequential,
interactional, and strategical terms: and all of that related to the core
category of pain management whether it be relief, minimization, or prevention.
These codes also exemplify the list of coding functions noted on the first page
of this chapter; though the raising of generative questions has not been
especially prominent, except in the coding of the cardiac recovery nurse's
work. Remember, however, that after some coding the analyst will write
theoretical memos, both to summarize some of those codes and to include
research questions raised by the codes. It is worth adding that although codes
may be handwritten on the margins of the document being analyzed (and probably
most qualitative researchers do that), they tend to be far less detailed and
less easily sorted than the typed alternative. Proper coding can surmount the
dilemma represented by these choices and still allow the analyst to put more
weight - because of personal interest, substantive knowledge, research skills,
or contingencies affecting the research project either on the macro- or the
microanalysis. In any event, proper coding within either level will make for
more effective theory about phenomena at that level. Thus, one can study
negotiation among nations without looking at the minute details of the
negotiative interaction among them, rather than making a study of one or two
specific negotiations, in standard case study style. The focus can, instead, be
upon nations interacting through their respective political or economic
institutions, their political maneuvering, their negotiative representatives,
etc.
4.
Seminar on open
coding
Data
that she had not focused on, thus expanding the possible scope of her future
analyses. She would not necessarily be committed to the lines of inquiry
explored in the seminar, but would follow through only on those that turned out
to fit her data best, and with seemingly greatest exploratory power. Utilizing
comparative analyses, and to slip easily into the line-by-line mode of
analysis. So, this seminar discussion, as it developed, illustrated for the
class the rapidity with which diverse lines of inquiry, generative questions,
and initial categories could be developed even from the first pages of a single
interview. Apropos of this data, let me first give you a rule of thumb. If you
know an area, have some experience, as I have said before, you don't tear it
out of your head. You can use it. Now, with things like illness, we've all had
a fair amount of experience, alas, either ourselves or somebody else's. So we
can talk about the properties of the illness, and about the properties of signs
of the illness - that is, the symptoms. Or we can talk about the properties of
the regimen. Without even reading one interview. You're running ahead of the
story, you're reading ahead of the data. I had that down on my list, but
decided to hold it: that one aspect of diagnosis is, it is done by medical
people.
5.
Memos and memo
writing
There
is one further point about the memoing process. Even when a researcher is
working alone on a project, he or she is engaged in continual internal dialogue
- for that is, after all, what thinking is. When two or more researchers are
working together, however, the dialogue is overt. In any event, the memos are
an essential part of those dialogues, a running record of insights, hunches,
hypotheses, discussions about the implications of codes, additional thoughts,
whatnot. Cumulatively, the memos add up to and feed into the final integrative
statements and the writing for publications. s we all know, it doesn't end with
finding a place to store equipment - difficult as that may be in itself. Then
you've got to be able to retrieve the darned stuff when you need it. If it's
too hard to get at, may even forget it, and improvise. (I'm thinking of
household storage - gadgets, etc.; This memo, first in a series about comfort
work, was written two years later by another team member, a sociologist, who is
also a nurse. She had finally realized that so-called comfort care had been
profoundly changed by contemporary medical technology. This memo represents the
opening phase in the team's attack on the phenomenon.
This
memo and succeeding ones became the basis for the directed observations and
further analyses which fed into a monograph on medical work (Strauss, et al.
1985). That is to say, this memo illustrated thinking about selective coding,
in this instance done in relation to the core category of types of work.
In
the past two decades, comfort work has drastically changed. The changes are due
(1) the complexity of hospital organization due to the overall technological
changes; (2) the technologizing of comfort care. Comfort work, such as body
positioning, back rubs, sponge baths to lower fevers and decrease discomfort
are all being technologized. Beds are electric, so patients can lower or raise
the bed. If there is a potential for bed sores because of inability to move,
there are air-circulating mattresses, or gadgets such as sheepskin, cooling
mattresses to lower fever, etc. There is a whole array of gadgetry of various
kinds. There are separate tasks involved in each and they can be done by
separate people or by the same. How does one keep them separate? How does one
integrate them? Can one? What are the separate tasks of each; how and when do
they overlap? Can one successfully do both? If so, how and why? What are the
consequences of each possible combination for each partner? It looks, from this
case, that when the wife tries to do both, then the work of wife and attendant
becomes blurred, confused, for both her and husband. What would normally be a
division of labor becomes all mixed up.
Suppose
we have some theoretical conception or relationship, which has been adopted in
several different lines of work (presumably, these lines are closely related).
For example: the speed of light is constant, or acquired characters are not
inherited. There is evidence supporting the notion in each (or most) lines of
work, and several lines of work use the notion as a taken-for-granted package,
without being very much concerned with its justification (e.g., plant breeding
and inheritance of acquired characters). Suppose, finally, that the notion is
disconfirmed in one line of work, and claims are put forward that the idea is no
good/needs revision/etc. As long as I can claim validity for the idea by
pointing to its robust character (supported in all the other neighboring lines
of work) I don't have to take the impeachment claims too seriously - after all,
the notion is robust. Something like this seems to have been happening in the
units-of-selection debate (Wimsatt), in which several different approaches
converged on the same artifact, and fell into the trap of using the same bad
heuristic assumptions in their work.
This
does not exhaust the entire range of memo types, but it suggests something of
how and when varieties of memos are written, as well as how they function in
research projects. Other types include additional thoughts memos, taking off
from previous memos. One may even code anew after rereading a previous memo and
being stimulated to fill in gaps or to extend points made in that memo.
Following that new coding, another memo is written. Another type of memo is the
integrative memo, which will be discussed in Chapters 8 and 9. Another
important type is the organizing, summary memo, presented at team meetings in
order to prompt discussion, the meetings themselves constituting a form of
theoretical memo. Such an organizing, summary memo and a portion of the discussion
that followed its presentation are given in the next chapter. in a summarizing
memo written about clinical safety, as well as in the memo sequence reproduced
in Chapter 9. In each instance, the core categories for this particular study
(trajectory and types of work) are more in the nature of reporting on or
sparking off of the results of open coding, because the core categories had not
yet clearly emerged for the researchers.
6.
Team meetings and
graphic representation as memos
This
chapter explains about the condition when one or more researchers met, some
ideas maybe will be explored either in data or idea that can be developed. Some
ideas resulting in a new set of new perspectives such as the need for the data
can be explored or maybe just some comparison. The memo that has been discussed
has two parts both are the impact of medical technology on hospital work and
the initial of the two topics discussed after the summary had been submitted.
The discussion happened between the researchers in interaction, giving comments
that followed by eventual writing of it. Afterward, this book gave the thing
that should be considered done while doing the summary memo that very important
in order as a guideline for the process to keep on track.
Organizational
condition is very core to predict which make for those consequences and what
happens when you faced those consequences in macro-level or in another word,
how to manage the danger by starting taking broadest scoop and then come down.
In the arena of analysis involved the machinery, certain kinds of the way
nursing and many different things, as well all the thing is measured over the
issues, definition, priorities, and degree of risk. Finally after the set of
preventive had done, so the rule can be made and applied based on those
analyses and a lot of discussions that result in a final decision. The analysis
of different social worlds represents the act toward that the danger explicitly
and implicitly the way when they are having a great deal of debate, discussion,
criticism. The organizational condition perhaps can make the maximum safety
inch per inch.
When
running a system I figured out that continuous monitoring is essentially done
because this phase trying to monitor the danger, potential right on the spot or
what or done already so anyone can be an actor because they have known what to
do and do it without panic. In certain areas, like a hospital ‘keep it cool’ is
a must when a certain condition happened all the component should be
well-prepared to face danger or unconditional situation. The reason behind this
continuous monitoring should be done every time danger and error maybe happen
because people of doing it they can make errors at every point, option point,
at every cluster task that involves in judging whether the error has been made.
The more, error does not mean danger but when we are talking about the hospital
where anything can happen, so error that can produce the failure should be
reduced because no one will suffer from the error that you have made. In the
discussion when the analysis was done, the team began to focus on the safety of
patient followed by an act like comfort, sentimental, coordination, machine and
informational work and the last past is teach the staffs of the hospital to
work properly and what should be done in a verbal and non-verbal situation.
The
function of the graphic is as a summary of a total discussion and it helps many
people to reveal what is still blank on the process of the discussion or while
infusing knowledge. A seen media stimulates data when data is analyzed or being
suggested and this method can also be used effectively in research consultation
with students, even with the project associates who happen to be puzzled by
some features of their data, dissatisfying by their data, or statically with
their analytical data.
7.
Excerpts that
illustrate a common problem
The
purpose of this chapter is to enlighten the common problem that has been
produced by the student on grounded theory analysis such as making detailed
comments and raise astute questions by utilizing the procedures through
fragments of seminar sessions and student-teacher consultations. The majority
of students were found struggling with making implicit comments and questions
as well as more explicit if provisional answering of questions and issues
raised in the memo.
This
chapter describes some cases related to the struggling of processing their data
with Coding technique a way to isolate and give a name to categories. The aim
of this technique is the researcher can give an implicit meaning or nuance
toward their research. By giving this technique, the writer can give stress to
their writing or certain meaning where the reader will be helped to identify
the tone of the writing. Same with Dimensionalizing explain the condition,
consequences, and associated inter-action and strategies. By doing this method,
the participant can figure out the base thing that being happen to them. For
example, based on the case women get poor medical care and insufficient medicine
when their son is in trouble in fever. Then by conducting through kinds of the
questionnaire, an interview, and seminar discussion she will get proper or
sufficient care by other doctor or medical service.
Flooded
with often happened by the researcher when they filled with personal
experience; know too much that they study at. This method give the researcher a
way to a research that supposed to be by limiting the discussion analytically
and what to study specifically. A general rule of thumb, then, when one is
flooded with experiential data, is to get distance from them by raising
theoretically oriented questions about items in the data, possibly even
selecting one such question and then focusing the usual kind of analysis around
it. One looks at it, then, in terms of categories, thinking in terms of
hypotheses about possibly relevant conditions, consequences, etc.
Many
of young researchers have a tendency to gather all kinds of data when they are
in the field and do not start to analyze the data. In the grounded theory even
with very little data it can be analyzed because in the data there are micro
and macro analysis in a context that can be described by the researcher, so
they can get a rigid information from the participant. Other obstacle from the
research is many researchers do not know how to examine the data it is not
because of the capability but many practitioners have no time to learn at a
seminar, and being busy with their work. The goal of the qualitative research
itself is the description based on the experience at the field and examine the
data by knowing the central issues of the data and taking step to further the
analysis like keep an eye to central theoretical issues, doing selective coding
rather than doing an open coding. However, as a researcher do not waste a
valuable time by collecting many data and start to analyze even though with a
tiny information.
8.
Integrative
diagram and sessions
There
are also, in this chapter, commentaries written, after three consultative sessions,
by the recipients. For getting maximum benefit from the materials, you should
probably do the following. Turning now to the session itself: The student was
far along in collecting and analyzing her data; has a fine analytic mind; and
will be seen interacting essentially on equal footing with her "official
thesis advisor." The student is deep into the sociology of science and
into the substantive materials of her research (on the development of brain
localization work and associated debates during the late nineteenth century);
whereas the instructor knows relatively little about these materials, something
more about the sociology of science, and much about the sociology of work. The
study had proposed going from a more general focus to targeting this now
seemingly salient issue.
The
diagram provided visual stimulation, too, which helped visualization of some of
those possible relationships. All that amounts to saying is that the total
analysis got systematically furthered, that integrative steps were taken, and
categories were rendered more precise and analytically powerful. The session is
notable also for the speed and cumulative development of its analytic
evolution. Of course, this first productive integrative session was followed by
the student's further analytic struggle, leading to new diagrams throughout the
course of her investigation.
During
the next four phases of this work session, more questions and issues were
raised, more data were reviewed and pinned down provisionally, and a third diagram
was drawn. During the sixth phase, an additional important linkage of two boxes
was added to the previous diagram. The diagramming process would begin with a
phrase of single code, perhaps even a hunch about what was important in the
analysis at that point in time. Several kinds of questions would come from
Anselm, Elihu, or from students at that point: "And then what
happened?" "Who else was involved?" "How does that relate
to the point you raised last month?" "Doesn't that contradict what we
usually think about in relation to this point?" "Did it always happen
like that, or were there exceptions? What were they?. So many ideas and
fragments of insights kept flying around, but none of them seemed to be very
connected. There were some moments that felt almost hopeless. I should add that
there were times during that three-month period when some of those insights and
ideas really caught my attention and I was delighted by them. That was fun and
it felt great. There are definite highs and lows in this process. The highs are
terrific. The lows just need to be recognized as a necessary part of the
creative process and used to advantage. Those times are more likely, for me, to
occur when I'm being flooded with data and can't keep ahead of it.
The
integration of our major concept into an overall theoretical scheme. There was
the joy that accompanies discovery, not only regarding the overall scheme and
relationships, but also from the discovery of how this piece of research
contributed to the unfolding of the term trajectory. There was relief from the
anxiety that came from wondering how we were ever going to make sense from all
this data and a feeling of, "We did it!" when the relationships were
finally firmly established and the scheme outlined. There was a sense of
direction for the remaining work to be done on this project. Since we now know
what our major and minor concepts are and how they relate, we can theoretically
sample to test the hypothesized relationships under various conditions and to
increase the density of the relationships. Finally, there was fatigue. It was a
long, hard working session. None of these had arrows to indicate the direction
of relationships, only lines to indicate that a relationship existed. I wasn't
finding the diagram terribly helpful. I was also worried about where or how to
integrate the policy questions that I was trying to integrate. I felt like they
look glued on, like I had parts of two dissertations uncomfortably stuck
together. Anselm asked me to tell him about my dissertation. As I talked, he
drew a diagram. Then he asked questions about the direction of relationships,
which I hadn't done. We drew in the arrows and added some things I hadn't
included in my earlier diagrams. The diagram fit! It felt good. Then, when
Anselm asked me to show him where the policy work fit in, it was obvious. There
was no problem placing it. It no longer felt forced
So
many ideas and fragments of insights kept flying around, but none of them
seemed to be very connected. There were some moments that felt almost hopeless.
I should add that there were times during that three-month period when some of
those insights and ideas really caught my attention and I was delighted by
them. That was fun and it felt great. There are definite highs and lows in this
process. The highs are terrific. The lows just need to be recognized as a
necessary part of the creative process and used to advantage. Those times are
more likely, for me, to occur when I'm being flooded with data and can't keep
ahead of it.
Looking
back over the diagrams we've made over the course of this research (about two
years now), they appear as records of questions, blind spots, and gaps, as well
as increasingly complex syntheses of the data. This visual "story" of
the thesis process is a useful organizational tool as I begin the final
write-up of this material. It helps keep me close to the data, and to remember
that the codes and concepts I'm writing about grew from mistakes and collective
work, not from logical imperatives!
9.
Intergrative mechanisms:
diagrams, memo sequence, writing
This
makes a contribution to integrating both analytic clusters and the total
analysis. Coding results are incorporated into the memos, and besides there is
a recoding of old data along with coding of new data from time to time. Memo
sequences include a number of memos and are characterized by their intensity of
analysis as well as by their cumulative results. There are several useful rules
of thumb that apply to these memo sequences and sets, but they will not be
given until the end of this section, after readers have gotten a better sense
of what a sequence might actually look like and what some of its main features
are.
In
the preceeding year, their attention had been focused on married couples'
illness-trajectory work - work done in the service of managing a spouse's
illness. However, the researchers had also coined terms like identity work and
biographical work, based on analysis of many interviews. Yet, they had
unknowingly blackboxed these terms, not yet realizing that these kinds of
phenomena needed intense scrutiny. that conceptual density is increasing
throughout the sequence, and so is integration. The researchers, of course,
understood this; but their drawing of integrative diagrams at two points in the
study, and occasional rereading of codes and memos, helped to locate,
"Where are we now?" as well as to initiate further integrative
efforts.
As
with the memos reproduced in earlier chapters, you may not entirely understand
the substance of each memo but, scanning the memo sequence, you should get a
vivid sense of how each memo more or less follows through with some preceding
ones and how the analyses cumulate. Later, a careful re-reading of this
progression may help, as we shall note below, to further your own integrative
efforts, especially when you are actively engaged in doing that aspect of the
research. To get the fullest from the sequence may take quite close study,
especially as the substantive materials may be foreign to your own experience.
Also, pay special attention not only to the general points made below and the
specific commentary in each memo, but to how the researchers are putting
clusters of analysis together, as they examine new data, rethink the old, and
reexamine older categories and their relationships with newly emerging ones. The
next begins what will develop into a new line of inquiry, involving the central
topics mentioned. As they move along, these analyses become integrated with
each other and with preceding ones (which had focused on various kinds of
trajectory work and the associated division of labor between spouses). The
immediately next memos reflect the researchers' struggles with relationships of
the spouses' biographies to the trajectory work, including visualization of
that work through trajectory schemes and projections.
Near
the end of this memo sequence, the researchers begin to think about types of
trajectories (comeback, stabilized, downward), coding and memoing for them for
the next two months. Into those memos are incorporated many of the
conceptualizations developed in the preceding months. And the way such a book
is written (present looking back, with open if cloudy future), it's really a
narrated sequential past up to the present moment, but "as if" author
and reader were moving through presents sliding into future step by step. The
vivid sense of moving into the future - it all feels too much like he is
looking back into the sequential-stepped pasts, in the pasts. The change may
occur along any dimension of the self (and many times along various dimensions
of the self), body image, spiritual, social, identity, sexual. These changes
may be occurring at the same time or at different times. Time can't be split
from it. There are conceptions of time in relation to biog. and perceptions of
biog. in relation to time. Time and biography can't be separated one from the
other: time as central attribute of biography. (As Mead says, the past and the
future come together in the present with the past acting as a condition to
action in the future and present.)
Though
one may wish one never had to die, or be ill, in coming to accept and know this
new self, one sometimes finds that this new self transcends the old self, is a
better self in many ways. Degrees of this transcendence occur along the way and
manifest themselves as increased sensitivity to others, acuity of vision; that
is, the ability to see and experience old or different situations in new ways,
with new appreciation, or realization perhaps that one has indeed fulfilled or
has the potential to fulfill that biog. but in a better, or if not better at
least different, way. n. In moving back or failing to come to terms there is
decrystallization without the recrystallization or mobilization necessary to
move forward (even if at a lower level of functioning, having accepted
increased limitations). Not long after this sequence of memos was completed, a
third and last diagram summarizing the project's work was done (Figure 16).
Even after reading this chapter, readers may not be able to understand all of
its concepts, but the diagram should be useful for suggesting several points:
its overall design, sketching of relationships, processual flow, potential for
further expansion, and of course its complexity. Only the portion of the
diagram that pertains most directly to the memo sequence is reproduced here.
.
Acceptance here means that a person has found a way of biographically
accommodating to an illness through altered or changed performances and, in
doing so, a way to give meaning to life despite ongoing and progressive body
failure. Some ill people not only reach the state of acceptance but go on to an
even higher level, a state that we call transcendence. Transcendence occurs
when persons have found a way to overcome bodies in such a way that they are
able to find real joy in living, There are at least two situations where that
kind of incompleteness will occur. One is when the researcher (or research
team) decides to write an additional manuscript, whether a monograph or paper,
and therefore has not coded or memoed in nearly enough detail to sustain the
analysis to be presented in this additional publication. For that reason, a
great deal of recoding of old data and coding of new data needs to be done.
10. Presenting
case materials: data and interpretations
The
aim of the case studies is the explanation that can explain the real live data
when a reader read this study they feel that they are in a place, can feel they
are there or in other word, the explanation is delegating the reader to being
involve with the point of view of the actor. A very well data explanation helps
the readers to understand what is going on, at the site study and the phenomena
that being analyzed. However, as a researcher we should consider about the
general issue before we begin to interpret the data. The grounded theory the
mode of analysis is very critical. That is the features at least should
considerable open and theoretical coding, emphasis on core categories, the
insistence on conceptual density, the use of theoretical sampling and of
constant comparative analysis. However, sometimes when a researcher concern
theory more rather than the description, it is considered as a low-level
description or we can call it as a raw data. In general, there is much more
reliance, as we shall see below, on an interweaving of discursive propositions
utilizing the results of coding and memoing — with carefully selected pieces of
data. The latter may just be quoted phrases in combination with the theoretical
points being made, or very short quotations or fieldnote items following on
some systematically made theoretical point. Or an actual analysis is built into
a descriptive precis constructed from a number of fieldnotes recording field
observations, interviews, or other documents.
Gathering
data in life histories and biographies, the narratives gathered through
interviews from respondents about their lives. In a way to conduct a study we
need cover some temporal span or interlude in social - a biography, an
occupational career, a project, an illness, a disaster, a ceremony. Also, the
case history involves a story about social unit- a person, group, organization,
relationship. Constructing analytic abstractions for purpose of presenting
theory at some level or another is that should be done first before turning to similar
issues with case histories.
In
the grounded theory for the characteristics to the most qualitative research is
not very different from the conceptual analysis and the tightness which the
presentation hangs together. In general, the analytic mode uses theoretical
sampling and constant comparison so extensively. Some case studies take the
form of short descriptions which are included as cases within papers and
sometimes even as separate chapters or sections within monographs. Or the
author may briefly contrast two or more cases. The construction of those cases
is relatively simple, since it consists mainly of highly selected descriptive
detail put together as a more or less coherent whole, to illustrate one or more
theoretical points.
As
a reader, I found that some essential steps in order to construct a case study
starting with collect data and analyze it where the data included brief or
lengthy case-study and history documents which can contribute the researchers
to build their theory then followed by construct a working model of case study-
illustrate the theory not material yet because we need to pay attention on
necessity for clearly specifying all of the theoretical elements and their
connection to each other and finally build in illustrative data (versthen,
credence, comprehensibility, and reality). The tendency of many authors are
fill the data with colorful because it is very interesting but we should
remember that these data should function mainly the service of our theory.
To
build a construction, theoretical commentary in interpreting the case history
is to give a broadened picture of the particular case and then the phenomenon
should describe such a biography related to
the illness for example where the patient reflecting what will happen
and what is the effect in all aspect. The process of the data then describe the
way the patient comeback from the illness starting by reflecting when did it start, and what is wrong with the
body and the process of healing.
11. Grounded
formal theory: awareness contexts
This
chapter illustrate the importance of the formal theory and how to use written
materials, technical writing and how to develop formal theory. Getting down
with the open coding is the most difficult one because as developing the formal
theory involves relating subcategories to the core categories. Selective coding
to formal theory seems not present special issues expect the analysis is more
abstract and based on more diverse kinds of data than more of substantive
theories. In this case the core categories is the phenomenon that have found by
the researchers then will be studied then the data will be examine by
interview, fieldnote, newspaper account, article in a popular magazine, paper
in technical magazine, novel in fact any document and from someone’s else
experience and at the end of the process the researchers is trying to select
the code and try to relate on because it is rely merely on how the connection
connect as specific as possible.
After
I read this chapter, I should consider some part before presenting a paper by making
a brief contrast between nature of formal and substantive theories but
sometimes in comparative both can be used. The latter theory is developed for a
substantive, or empirical, area of inquiry, such as patient care, professional
education or industrial relation while formal theory is developed for a formal,
or conceptual, area of inquiry such as stigma, formal organization, or
socialization. Both types of theory exist on distinguishable levels of
generality, which differ only in degree.
12. Reading and
writing research publication
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