Data Analysis II: from Notes to Stories

Course goals

After completing this course, students are able to:

• code and interpret qualitative data;
• report on qualitative data;
• make various sorts of qualitative data displays;
• judge the quality of qualitative research.

Content

When doing fieldwork, researchers can generate all sorts of qualitative data. There may be fieldnotes, interview recordings, pictures, policy documents and other materials to work with. There are various ways to analyze these rich data. Through an iterative process, procedural systematicity and an attitude of doubt, these all aim to build knowledge claims about the ways actors in the field make sense of their worlds. Importantly, building such knowledge claims itself is a kind of sense-making.

In this course you will learn about the principles of qualitative analysis and the ways in which qualitative analyses should be done. In addition, you will work with data throughout the course. We will be condensing, coding and comparing qualitative data. You will learn to do specific analyses, like narrative analysis. Furthermore, we will creatively display data in accessible form (table, figure, and more) and you will become more experienced in writing up a qualitative analysis and methods statements.

Finally, qualitative researchers have developed particular quality standards that help them to establish the quality of qualitative research.

The meetings of the course are interactive, allowing you to both get a better understanding of what is known about qualitative data analysis and to delve into issues they find important. The meetings include discussions of:

• the theory of qualitative data analysis through texts on qualitative research methods,
• exemplary studies from the field of Public Administration and Organisation Science that help to understand the quality of qualitative studies (what is convincing, what is trustworthy, etc.), and
• (practical) aspects of doing analysis through assignments you make.

During the meetings you are expected to work on your skills as a critical, analytic researcher. Consequently, you are expected to discover, fail, comment, reflect and repeat.

The grading of this course will be based on group work and an individual paper.