SOCI 211 Chapter Notes - Chapter 14: Word Processor, Qualitative Research, Grounded Theory
Document Summary
Most qualitative researchers want to summarize and generalize from their data. This chapter presents some of the common practices on how researchers bring order to their data. We will discuss grounded theories and the processing of qualitative data, focusing on coding and memoing. The nonnumeric examination and interpretation of observations, for the purpose of discovering underlying meanings and patterns of relationships. This is most typical, for example, of field research and historical research. Qualitative data analysis is concerned with how you determine what"s important to observe and how you formulate your analytical conclusions based on those observations. A major goal in analysis of qualitative data is to reveal themes that emerge from the data. This process is largely a search for patterns of similarities and differences followed by an interpretation of those patterns. What is the pattern researchers are searching for: similarities: patterns of interaction and events that are general common.