Qualitative_data_analysis

Figure 6.1 Case documents kept in a hierarchical file system
MANAGING DATA 83
helps to improve the former without unduly sacrificing the latter. Where we want to
treat questions as part of the data, however, obviously they must be recorded fully.
Apart from reference data, we may have other information about the case which
we want to record. For example, the interviewer in the above dialogue is male.
Suppose we want to record this as a ‘face-sheet’ variable (so-called because this kind
of background information is often recorded on the first page of an interview). We
should only need to record such information once. Then, when we want to analyse
all cases where the interviewer is male, the computer can identify these cases for us,
and create a subset within the data.
It will probably be most convenient if all this information—the case references,
the data references and the ‘facesheet’ variables, and the data itself—is held
separately by the computer, but filed together in one place. How can it be held
separately and yet kept together? The computer operates a hierarchical filing system,
which allows files to be ‘nested’ together within ‘folders’. So cases can be kept in
folders, with the data and related information stored in a family of documents or
files within the folder (Figure 6.1).