Qualitative_data_analysis

20 QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS
Figure 2.2 Category relating two similar observations
for a class of objects or events. Where we fail to reach a measure of agreement on
how to define these boundaries, conflicts may arise. This happens, of course, when
teachers ‘define’ school as a place to work but children treat school as a place to
play.
It follows that our observations are concept-laden abstractions from the flow of
experience—and we should be wary of taking these products of our thinking as
enjoying an existence independent of it. We have no independent access to reality
apart from our conceptualizations of it. That does not mean that reality or
experience is reducible to how we observe it—as though, if we were all to shut our
eyes, the world would disappear. Experience is mediated but not determined by the
concepts we use.
We can think of this conceptual process as ‘categorizing’ data. In Figure 2.2 two
similar observations in the stream of experience are related in terms of a unifying
category. Clearly categories can refer to a potentially unlimited series of similar
observations.
Even at this level of measurement, where we are only defining the limits or
boundaries of objects or events, we are implicitly using both qualitative and
quantitative measures. To answer the question ‘what counts as a school’ we refer to
our idea of what a school is, i.e. to the meaning of the concept. But these meanings
are typically articulated in relation to a number of observations (or experiences)
through which we define the boundaries of our concept. Concepts are ideas about
classes of objects or events: we decide whether to ‘count’ an observation as belonging
to a category, in terms of whether it fits with a number of similar observations. We
compare this observation with similar examples. So we are already ‘counting’ in
both senses of the word, if the meanings we ascribe to an object or event are stable over
a range of experience.
When we categorize data in this way, we make a distinction between this
observation and others. We want to know what makes this observation ‘stand out’
from others. Often this is through an implied contrast—e.g. this is school, not