Qualitative_data_analysis

INTRODUCTION 5
qualitative methods. This is a topic I address explicitly in Chapter 4, but it also forms
a recurrent theme throughout the discussion of analytic procedures in the rest of the
book.
On the other hand, software development has also provoked concerns about the
potentially damaging implications of new technological forms for traditional
methods of analysis. Some developers have emphasized the potential danger of the
software they themselves have produced in facilitating more mechanical approaches
to analysing qualitative data, displacing traditional analytic skills. This concern has
highlighted the need to teach computing techniques within a pedagogic framework
informed by documented analytic principles and procedures. Paradoxically,
however, existing accounts of qualitative methodology and research are notoriously
deficient in precisely this area. Burgess (1982), for example, in his review of field
research, complains that there are relatively few accounts from practitioners of the
actual process of data analysis or from methodologists on how data analysis can be
done. The literature is littered with such complaints about the lack of clear accounts
of analytic principles and procedures and how these have been applied in social
research. Perhaps part of the problem has been that analytic procedures seem
deceptively simple. The conceptual aspects of analysis seem frustratingly elusive,
while the mechanical aspects seem embarrassingly obvious. Thus Jones suggests that
qualitative data analysis involves processes of interpretation and creativity that are
difficult to make explicit; on the other hand, ‘a great deal of qualitative data analysis
is rather less mysterious than hard, sometimes, tedious, slog’ (Jones 1985:56).
The low status and marginality of qualitative research generally have fostered
defensive posturing which emphasizes (and perhaps exaggerates) the subtleties and
complexities involved in qualitative analysis. It has also led to a heavy emphasis on
rigorous analysis. The resulting analytic requirements can seem quite intimidating,
even to the experienced practitioner. There has also been a tendency to dress
methodological issues in ideological guise, stressing the supposedly distinctive
virtues and requirements of qualitative analysis, by contrast with quantitative
methods, for example in apprehending meaning or in generating theory. At its
worst, this aspires to a form of methodological imperialism which claims that
qualitative analysis can only proceed down one particular road. As Bryman (1988)
argues, more heat than light has been generated by the promulgation of
epistemological canons that bear only a tenuous relation to what practitioners
actually do. To borrow an apt analogy, we need to focus on what makes the car run,
rather than the design and performance of particular models (Richards and Richards
1991).
This lacuna has been made good to some extent in recent years (e.g. Patton 1980,
Bliss et al. 1983, Miles and Huberman 1984, Strauss 1987, Strauss and Corbin
1990), though not always in ways accessible to the firsttime practitioner. This book