Qualitative_data_analysis

32 QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS
Figure 3.1 Qualitative analysis as a circular process
DESCRIPTION
To describe is ‘to set forth in words’, to ‘recite the characteristics’ of a person, object
or event. Description has a low status in social science. Descriptive studies can be
contrasted unfavourably with more analytic and theoretically oriented research, as
though description is a ‘low level’ activity hardly worth attention. This is somewhat
ironic, since description permeates scientific theory and without it theories could
have neither meaning and nor application. Ironically, the physicists, who spend
much of their time absorbed in efforts to ‘describe’ the origins and evolution of the
universe or the characteristics of the ‘subatomic’ world, seem to have no such
aversion to description; indeed, they seem to approach the task with relish.
The first step in qualitative analysis is to develop thorough and comprehensive
descriptions of the phenomenon under study. This has become known as ‘thick’
description (Geerz 1973, Denzin 1978). In contrast to ‘thin’ description which
merely states ‘facts’, Denzin suggests that a ‘thick’ description includes information
about the context of an act, the intentions and meanings that organize action, and
its subsequent evolution (Denzin 1978:33). Thus description encompasses the
context of action, the intentions of the actor, and the process in which action is
embedded. Qualitative analysis often aims to provide ‘thorough’ descriptions (to
adopt a more apt adjective than ‘thick’) in each of these areas. Thinking of
observation as an abstraction from the flow of experience, these various aspects of
description can be depicted as in Figure 3.2.