Qualitative_data_analysis

16 QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS
another. Similarly, between the ‘structured’ and ‘unstructured’ interview are a
variety of interviewing forms which resist such ready classification. Take open and
closed questions in interviewing as an obvious example. With the closed question,
the respondent must choose from the options specified by the researcher. With an
open question, respondents are free to respond as they like. But these alternatives
are not really so clear-cut. For example, questions which indicate a range of response
categories may still include the option: ‘Other—please specify’. And even the most
non-directive interviewer must implicitly ‘direct’ an interview to some extent if it is
to cover certain topics within the time available. It would be naïve to discount the
role played by the researcher as participant observer or unstructured interviewer in
eliciting and shaping the data they obtain.
The point is that any ‘data’, regardless of method, are in fact ‘produced’ by the
researcher. In this respect, the idea that we ‘collect’ data is a bit misleading. Data are
not ‘out there’ waiting collection, like so many rubbish bags on the pavement. For a
start, they have to be noticed by the researcher, and treated as data for the purposes
of his or her research. ‘Collecting’ data always involves selecting data, and the
techniques of data collection and transcription (through notes, tapes, recordings or
whatever) will affect what finally constitutes ‘data’ for the purposes of research.
A method of data collection may in any case produce various types of data. The
most obvious example is the questionnaire survey, where we can design a wide range
of questions, more or less ‘open’ or ‘closed’, to elicit various types of data, The same
holds true of fieldwork methods, such as document searches or observation; while
the data produced through these methods may be predominantly qualitative in
character, there is no reason to presume that it will be exclusively so. Sometimes of
course we simply do not get the kind of data we expected.
What’s the main difference between
students of 1960s and the 1990s?
Thirty years.
What result would you get if you laid
class of 30 students, average height
5’5”, end to end?
They’d all fall asleep.
In practice, research often involves a range of methods producing a variety of data.
We would do better to focus on the data which has been produced, rather than
implying rigid distinctions between styles of research and methods of data collection.
If qualitative research is equated with the use of unstructured methods, it follows
that qualitative data is therefore seen as ‘unstructured’. The difference between
‘structured’ and ‘unstructured’ data turns on whether or not the data has been