Qualitative_data_analysis

212 QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS
Figure 13.2 Map of relationship between two concepts
Figure 13.3 Map of complex relationships between four variables
MAPPING
‘The Admiralty sent HMS Beagle to South America with Charles Darwin on board
not because it was interested in evolution but because it knew that the first step to
understanding—and with luck—controlling—the world was to make a map of it.’
(Jones 1991). Whether or not the Admiralty had such insight, making maps is
certainly a useful way of making sense of data. Because they deal with the
relationship between one point and another, maps are particularly useful in
analysing the connections between the categories we have used in our analysis.
Unlike matrices, maps do not conform to any particular format. The
geographer’s map of an area will differ significantly from a five-year-old’s map of her
house, but they may both prove useful representations of reality. We can devise all
sorts of ways of mapping data—we are limited only by our imagination. Drawing
maps can be fun as well as illuminating, though there is a temptation to get carried
away with the task and become needlessly elaborate.
For mapping, we require only two things. First, we need some way of
representing the ‘points’ of our analysis. Second, we need some way of representing
relations between these points. Let us start with a simple map with which we are
already well acquainted—the diagram of a relationship between two concepts
(Figure 13.2). We have represented each concept by a box, and the relationship
between them is represented by a line. What could be simpler? Yet we can use such
simple tools to represent quite complex relationships between the concepts used in
our analysis (Figure 13.3).
In Figure 13.3 we have represented in a simple diagram quite complex
relationships between four concepts. We have shown that concept A is related