Qualitative_data_analysis

Figure 2.6 Interval variable with fixed distance between values
WHAT IS QUALITATIVE DATA? 25
terms of the distance travelled by light in 0.000000003335640952 seconds
(Hawking 1988:22). This measurement depends upon conceptual assumptions
about the nature of light. Quantitative measurement applied to the world can only
be achieved on the basis of qualitative assessment. With many everyday physical
measures, such as of distance, time or temperature, we may have only a vague (and
perhaps erroneous) notion of the qualitative concepts upon which they are based:
we take these measures for granted. In social research, with relatively few wellestablished
measures, we cannot afford to do likewise.
We can rarely establish in social research comparable conventions fixing the
distance between values (or categories), let alone specify this distance with accuracy.
Measures in social research such as those of age and income are the exceptions
rather than the rule. Social scientists do not have standard units in terms of which to
measure things like poverty, health or quality of life. The prime reason is that we
cannot agree in the first place about the meaning of what we are trying to measure.
For example, the definition of poverty remains a bone of contention between a
variety of rival political and academic perspectives. Many of the concepts used in
social research are similarly contestable.
Qualitative assessments can easily become eclipsed by standard measures, which
seem to offer simple but powerful tools for quantifying data. But despite their
undoubted appeal, standard measures which ignore qualitative meaning can easily
mislead. Let us consider a couple of simple examples, age and family size. These may
easily but mistakenly be taken as quantitative variables whose meaning is selfevident.
Take a mother who is forty years old and has three children. Surely here we
have such clear-cut quantitative data that we can focus quite legitimately on the