UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN
TRINITY COLLEGE
Department of Sociology
Data Analysis, Modelling and Research
Methods: Qualitative Methods II
MSc in Economic Policy Studies
Dr. Daniel Faas
13th March 2015
Agenda
• Interviews, observations and focus groups
• Thematic and discourse analysis
• Ethical issues in social science research
• Introducing mixed method approaches
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
2
1. Interviewing (summary)
• One of the most powerful ways we use to try to understand our fellow
human beings. Interviewing is a paramount part of sociology because
interviewing is interaction and sociology is the study of interaction
• Location/setting is very important in interviews
• Different degrees as to the structure of an interview: unstructured,
semi-structured, and structured (quantitative). But there are many more
types of qualitative interviews as we shall learn today.
• Building rapport is important (just like with participant observation) and
also the ways in which you present yourself (‘strategies’ you adopt)
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
3
Semi-structured interview: an example
D.F.: What role would you say does your Turkish Cypriot background play in
your life today?
Safak: Well, it plays a big part cos that’s my origin, but I don’t think of it as a big
part where everything I do is revolved around that. I think cos, you know, I don’t
live there and I don’t know people – I do know some people but they’re not like
the people I know here, that I like, all my friends are here, and my close family’s
here, so obviously I care more about them than I do distant family who I only see
once a year. But it plays a big part as to who I am, because of the way, cos that’s
just who I am, cos I am Turkish-Cypriot, but I don’t make my whole life go around
that. I kind of just, I just try to stay in between and care about both things just as
much, like, just as equally, but obviously that’s harder cos I do a lot of things here,
like watch British TV, that makes me learn more about England and London, than I
do about Turkish, because, well, I watch Turkish TV less.
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
4
2. (Participant) Observations
Advantages:
- directness should greatly enhance validity
- not dependent on actors’ consciousness, memory, understandings of
research or their motivation to reveal the truth
- observation means directly gathering evidence about what people do
and say in their normal activities.
Limitations:
- observations are slow and do not give access to minds,
- validity depends on observer’s understanding of what is observed
- validity depends on what the observer is in a position to observe.
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
5
Choosing the type of observation
• Are you seeking a reliable description of what happens?
- need for decisions in advance about what it is to be observed; how
to categorise
- probably need to be a detached (non-participant) observer
- probably need to understand in advance what is happening
- likely to give a quantitative account generalising about the extent to
which different things happen and relate to one another.
• Are you seeking to understand what is happening?
- need to learn from participants what it is all about
- possibly need to share in their lives (participant observation)
- probably need to ask questions as well as observe
- need to decide gradually what to observe and in what terms
- likely to give a qualitative account about what seem to be especially
significant kinds of things that happen.
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
6
Interviews versus participant observations
Qualitative
interview
- finding out about
issues resistant to
observation
Participant
observation
- learning the native
language
- more ethically
defensible than
observations
- aim to understand,
not generalize
(structured)
- less intrusive
- Unstructured or semistructured, life stories
- greater breadth of
coverage, rich detail
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- seeing through
others’ eyes, ‘going
native’
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
- time consuming and
very difficult to
replicate
- sensitivity to context
of action
- flexibility in
encountering the
unexpected
- naturalistic emphasis
Dr. Daniel Faas
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3. Documentary sources
• personal documents (e.g. letters, diaries, photographs) vs. official
documents (e.g. company, government reports)
• primary sources form the basic and original material for providing the
researcher’s raw evidence whereas secondary sources copy, interpret
or judge material to be found in primary sources
• mass media outputs (e.g. newspapers, magazines, radio, TV)
• virtual documents (e.g. private emails, personal webpage, official
online documents, forums and mailing lists)
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MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
8
4. Focus groups
• Form of group interview involving several participants and a moderator,
main role of the researcher is organising the event and interpreting issues
• Study interaction between group members (group dynamics)
• Enables researchers to discuss issues with participants at a fairly high
level of generality and allows insights into collective perspectives
• researcher defines the discussion topics; more controlled than
participant observation but less controlled than individual interviews
because of the participant-defined nature of group interaction
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
9
Focus groups
• can be used to explore new research areas or to examine well-known
research questions from the research participants’ own perspective
• can be used either in the opening stages of the research to guide the
later construction of interview questions or a questionnaire, or as followup research to clarify findings in the other data.
• Running more groups increases data volume and complexity of analysis
• Average 5-10 members per group; over-recruit in anticipation of ‘noshows’; use smaller sizes when the topic is more controversial or sensitive
and larger group sizes when you want to hear brief suggestions.
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
10
Advantages and limitations of focus groups
Advantages
- focus groups produce
a large amount of data
in a short period of
time
Limitations
- data emerges from
group interactions
- insights into what
people think or feel,
and why and how these
thoughts and feelings
were developed
- they are
comparatively easy to
conduct
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
- data are difficult to
analyse (large volume
of data)
- difficult to organize
and risk of no-shows
- very time consuming
to transcribe
- ‘groupthink’ (Janis,
1982) and social
desirability
- potential to cause
distress but you could
organise friendship
groups
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Focus group: an example
D.F.: What sorts of things do you know about Europe and the European Union?
Anne: Not much!
Victoria: It’s really difficult,Anne: I don’t know anything.
Victoria: -totally out of my depth.
Elizabeth: It’s quite confusing cos it changes so much, that peopleAnne: The Euro.
Sophie: There’s places part of it [indistinct]
Elizabeth: Oh, isn’t there a referendum or coming up for something or other?
Victoria: A what? What’s that?
Elizabeth: I dunno. I just heard it, walking through my house and the news was on
somewhere, this whole thing aboutVictoria: What’s a referendum?
Elizabeth: I don’t know.
Anne: I know about the euro because I was in Ireland when it was going through.
Victoria: They don’t have it in Ireland.
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
12
Focus group: some suggested readings
Barber, R. (2007) Doing Focus Groups. London: Sage.
Morgan, D.L. (1988) Focus Groups as Qualitative Research. Beverly Hills:
Sage.
Peek, L. & Fothergill, A. (2009) Using focus groups: lessons from studying
daycare centers, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina. Qualitative Research 9(1):
31-59.
Wilson, V. (1997) Focus groups: A useful qualitative method for
educational research? British Educational Research Journal, 23(2): 209-24.
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
13
Basic steps in qualitative data analysis
• ‘Coding is analysis (…) and this part of analysis involves how you
differentiate and combine the data you have retrieved and the reflections you
make about this information’ (Miles and Huberman, 1994).
• Other researchers say that coding is simply a stage to getting to analysis (e.g.
Lonkila, 1995)
• Steps and considerations in coding
- code as you go along, and start early
- read through transcripts/field notes/documents more than once (make
notes the second time)
- review the index of codes you have generated
- multiple coding of data items
- do not worry about producing too many codes
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
14
Basic steps in qualitative data analysis
• Turning data into fragments
- cut and paste / code and retrieve
- 3 levels of coding (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996)
• basic coding
• content and language
• broad analytic themes
- coding helps to generate ideas and build theory problems with coding
• Problems with coding
- losing the context of what was said (extracting sections of data)
- fragmentation of data - loss of narrative flow
- narrative analysis as solution?  life history interviews
- risk of only providing descriptive account of data rather than theorizing
Source: Silverman, D. (2005) Doing Qualitative Research, London: Sage.
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
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Data analysis I: Thematic analysis
• One of the most common approaches to qualitative data analysis
• Not an approach to analysis that has an identifiable heritage or that
has been outlined in terms of a distinctive cluster of techniques
• For many, a theme is more or less the same as a code. But it can also
be built up out of a group of codes.
• After transcribing, start coding (i.e. look for themes emerging from
your data/transcript) and finally interpret the data.
• Other types of analysis: discourse analysis, conversation analysis
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
16
Data analysis II: Discourse analysis
• Discourse is never neutral, includes all forms of linguistic communication (e.g.
written, spoken) and is constitutive of the social world
• locates contextual understanding in the situational specifics of talk
- avoid making reference to ‘ethnographic particulars’ (Potter, 1997)
• skills of critical analysis rather than codification
• ‘sceptical reading’ of intended meanings behind speech acts
• four themes in discourse analysis (Gill 2000):
- discourse is a topic, not just a resource
- language is constructive
- discourse is a form of action
- rhetorically organized
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
17
Discourse analysis: linguistic approach
• Linguists look for grammatical cohesion and discourse coherence as in the
following example:
A: Can you go to Cork tomorrow?
B: Yes, I can.
 Coherent and cohesive
A: Can you go to Cork tomorrow?
B: Aer Lingus flies to Cork
 Coherent but not linguistically cohesive.
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
18
Foucauldian power/knowledge
• Understanding the relationship between power/knowledge is a key goal of
Foucault’s work
• Knowledges created in and creating discourses
• In discourse, power and knowledge are joined together.
• complex interplay of knowledges and productive power, the nuances of
these become the object of enquiry.
• Critical discourse analysis, which draws heavily on Foucault, emphasizes the
role of language as a power resource that is related to socio-cultural change
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
19
Foucauldian subjectivation
• The subject, or self (or I), is not the rational, abiding actor of the
Enlightenment project or thought
• Instead, the subject is formed and constrained, but not determined, through
the productive power of discourse. This is subjectivation.
• This is not a once and for all production. It is ongoing and liable to change
and contestation. For example, people negotiate and renegotiate their
identities and are positioned and repositioned discursively.
• The opposite is if people are a priori assigned to ‘ingroups’ and ‘outgroups’
of society (e.g. In relation to migrants, ‘othering’/‘newcomers’)
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
20
Foucauldian discourse
• Discourses are systems of knowledge
• Discourse does not report external facts
• Discourse produces the ‘facts’ it appears to report
• Across and within time and contexts, discourses compete, contradict and/or
complement each other
• Discourses are made and remade through discursive practices. These
practices include written and spoken language, non-linguistic representations
and non-verbal utterances and bodily gestures (what we say, write, think, do)
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
21
Foucauldian discourse
• The meanings of discourses are not fixed
• Foucauldian discourse analysis analyses language, representations, and
practices to identify the discursive frames that underpin these.
• Links to notions of deconstruction
e.g. ‘foreigner’: (1) different citizenship status between majority and minority
ethnic communities; (2) oppressive term implying minority communities not
part of society; (3) linguistically, the word ‘foreigner’ can mean someone who
comes from a foreign country or someone who is not a member of a group.
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
22
Deconstruction of ‘turkey’
D.F.: Have you experienced any form of prejudice or discrimination?
Yildiran: Well yeah, they did actually. They said I’m a ‘F … ing Turk’, which
hurts me, it’s in a way, like, ‘you’re a Turk, you’re not with us, you’re just odd’,
you know?
Muhammad: Some people sometimes take the piss by like saying, you know
the Turkey, they say like ‘I’m going to go and buy a turkey and cook it’.
Yildiran: Oh yeah –
Muhammad: – and they’re taking the piss like that.
Yildiran: Yeah, at Christmas. They –
Muhammad: they go, they go, we’re going to buy a Turkey –
Yildiran: They pee you off! They go ‘I wanna go and get a turkey and eat it’.
Muhammad: And I then I get really pissed.
Yildiran: And this in Turkey, it’s actually what you eat at Christmas.
Muhammad: Like, when it is Christmas, they go we’re going to get a turkey
and eat it tonight, and that really pisses me off sometimes but I have to take
it.
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
23
On the importance of deconstruction
• e.g. ‘turkey’: (1) refers to an ugly, large, hybrid bird grown for its white and
brown meat; (2) refers to notions of festivity and Christianity as a turkey is usually
eaten at Thanksgiving in the United States and during Christmas in England. The
size of the bird has a symbolic or even hierarchical meaning as Yildiran said that
‘they [e.g. Christian, white, African Caribbean] wanna go and get a turkey [e.g.
non-white, Muslim]’. (3) Thirdly, a turkey can also be a stupid or silly person which
further puts the students in an inferior position.
• Questions you need to ask yourself:
1. What discourses are being produced/deployed?
2. What contradictions or incoherencies might be inherent in or between these
discourses?
3. What sorts of subjects do these discourses constitute?
4. What spaces for resistance or alternative meanings might be identified?
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
24
Secondary analysis of qualitative data
• Compare different researchers’ interpretations of the same data
• Problem of second researcher’s lack of ‘insider’ understanding of social
setting
• Ethical issues
- difficult to maintain anonymity/confidentiality
-participants may not have given informed consent to secondary
analysis
• Not just the analysis but also the collection of qualitative data by more
than one researcher can pose difficulties.
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
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Irish qualitative data archive (www.iqda.ie)
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MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
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Ethical principles in social research
• Most professional codes of ethics stress the importance of five
ethical responsibilities towards research participants:
(1) voluntary participation
(2) no harm (experimental studies)
(3) informed consent
(4) anonymity and confidentiality
(5) privacy
You also have an ethical responsibility toward your colleagues, the
wider public as well as research sponsors and funders (e.g.
acknowledgements)
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MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
27
Political issues in social research
1. Taking sides can be problematic
Hammersley (2000) critiques critical social approaches as politically
framed and distorted: ‘partisan researchers’ who adopt the side of the
less powerful; the label ‘critical’ is an empty rhetorical shell and its use
amounts to an attempt to disguise a particular set of substantive political
commitments as a universal position.
2. Attracting research funding
Vested interests of government, organizations and funding bodies;
decisions about which research projects to fund; calls for tender:
encourages proposals for research in particular areas; preference for
quantitative, policy-oriented research (Morgan, 2000)
Source: Hammersley, M. (2000) Taking Sides in Social Research: essays on partisanship and bias. London: Routledge.
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
28
Introducing mixed-method approaches
• Qualitative methods tend to provide an understanding of a focused
phenomenon within a specific context
• Quantitative methods tend to identify broad relationships between
or among phenomena without digging beneath surface
• Mixed methods designs can provide a more nuanced understanding
by illustrating broad relationships and focusing on particular aspects
• concurrent vs. sequential data collection strategies: many mixed
studies begin with an exploratory qualitative component followed by
confirmatory survey research (opposite also possible)
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
29
Reflecting on mixed-method approaches
• Increasingly common in social science research
• Not inherently superior to single-method research
• Success depends mainly on four factors:
(a) well designed and conducted
(b) methods appropriate to research questions
(c) effects of spreading limited resources
(d) skills and training of researchers
Source: Hantrais, L. (2005) ‘Combining methods: a key to understanding complexity in European societies?’,
European Societies 7(3): 399-421.
.
18.03.2016
MSc in Economic Policy Studies:
Qualitative Methods II
Dr. Daniel Faas
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