Analyzing Qualitative Data. Graham R Gibbs
as a unique case. The focus is on the interplay of factors that might be quite specific to the individual. Even though two individuals might share some aspects in common, these will inevitably be materially affected by other differences between them. Thus two heterosexual couples may have a lot in common: same ages, same culture, same number of children and similar houses in the same location. But there will be many differences too. They may have different jobs, have come from different social backgrounds, have different interests and their children may have different personalities and different relationships with their parents. A qualitative study of the couples would have to recognize that their commonalities would be crucially moulded by their differences so that each couple could be seen as unique.
In qualitative research there is a strong emphasis on exploring the nature of a particular phenomenon. The concern with the idiographic is often manifest in the examination of case studies. Such an approach stresses not only the uniqueness of each case, but also the holistic nature of social reality. That is to say, factors and characteristics can only be properly understood by reference to the wider context of other factors and features.
Both the nomothetic and idiographic approaches are common in qualitative research. The idiographic is often seen as a specific strength of qualitative research, and is particularly associated with certain analytic techniques such as biography and narrative. However, the combining and contrasting of several cases often provides the analyst with the warrant for making nomothetic claims too.
Realism and constructivism
Qualitative researchers also disagree about the reality of the world they are trying to analyze. In particular they disagree about whether there is a material world that has characteristics that exist independently of us and which acts as an ultimate reference for the validity of our analysis.
Realism. This is probably the everyday assumption of most people as they go about their lives. Those who are realists believe that in some sense there is a world with a character and structure that exists apart from us and our lives. At the most basic, and probably least controversial, this is the view that there is a material world of objects that existed before we did and would continue to exist even if we all perished. This is the world of physical objects, landscapes, animals and plants, planets and stars, and all the things that can be seen, felt, heard, tasted and smelt. The realist view gets more controversial when we start to think about things that are more theoretical and that cannot be directly sensed. These include some of the more abstract ideas of physics and mathematics, such as atoms, weak nuclear forces, neutrinos, probabilities and imaginary numbers, as well as the things that qualitative researchers might discuss, like social class, political power, learning styles, attitudes, reference groups, social mores and state laws. For a realist, such things are real and independent of us, and even if they cannot be directly seen or felt, their effects can. There is only one way the world is. Our descriptions and explanations of it are to varying degrees accurate portrayals of that world and are correct to the extent that they correspond with this real world.
Idealism/constructivism. In contrast, idealists suggest that we actually cannot know anything about such a real world. Everything we say and experience is through the medium of our constructs and ideas. Even the very idea of reality itself is a human construct. The world we experience reflects these concepts and consequently, if they are different or change, then the world is different too. People used to believe witches had supernatural powers and that the earth was flat. Very few hold either of these beliefs now, and consequently the world for us is different. Constructivism is a version of idealism which stresses that the world we experience arises from multiple, socially constructed realities. These constructions are created because individuals want to make sense of their experiences. Very often they are shared but that ‘does not make them more real, but simply more commonly assented to’ (Guba and Lincoln, 1989, p. 89). Thus a constructivist analysis tries to reflect as faithfully as possible the constructions without any reference to an underlying or shared reality. Some statements might appear to be objective descriptions of reality, but inevitably they are ‘theory-laden’ and reflect our preconceptions and prejudices arising from our and/or our respondents’ constructions of the world. For idealists and constructivists, we cannot say how the world is, only how some people see it. This view might seem easy to support when talking about people’s accounts or stories about events. It is very easy to see how these might be partial and biased and reflect their constructions of the world. But for a constructivist this applies equally to what might be claimed as objective data such as direct observation of people’s behaviour. These data, for the constructivist, equally reflect the interplay of the researcher’s and the participants’ constructions.
Critical realism. In recent years a third approach that has gained much support has tried to combine the insights of realism and constructivism. Critical realism does this by separating ontology and epistemology. Ontology is the study of what there is, what exists or what can exist. Critical realists take a realist view about what exists. There is a real world independent of anyone’s views or constructions of it and, following the work of the philosopher Bhaskar, this is seen in terms of mechanisms or processes rather than events or phenomena (Bhaskar, 2011). Epistemology is the study of how we can know about the world and critical realists take a constructivist view of this. Different people and different societies at different times may have different understandings (constructions) of the world. But for a critical realist these do not constitute independent, different and incommensurable realities but rather just different perspectives on reality. So how can they be compared? For critical realists this is not by reference to whether they correspond to reality (or not). Rather, they take a pragmatic view in appraising these different understandings of things and ask what works; that is, what can be successfully used to change the world?
In practice, few qualitative analysts are purely realist or idealist. Most are concerned to portray, as accurately and faithfully as possible, what people actually said, what they did and what they meant, and to that extent they are realists. However, all would agree that qualitative research is a matter of interpretation, especially the researcher’s interpretation of what respondents and participants say and do. A key commitment of qualitative research is to see things through the eyes of respondents and participants. This involves a commitment to viewing events, actions, norms, values, etc., from the perspective of those being studied. The researcher needs to be sensitive to the differing perspectives held by different groups and to the potential conflict between the perspectives of those being studied and those doing the studying. Thus, there can be no simple, true and accurate reporting of respondents’ views. Our analyses are themselves interpretations and thus constructions of the world.
The aim of qualitative analysis
Another thing to think about at the start of analysis is what kind of outcomes qualitative analysis can produce. Of course this might seem to be determined already because you are working on a funded research project or a policy or evaluation study with very clearly defined research aims which specify the outputs expected. But often this is not the case. Typically, qualitative projects are much more open ended, having titles like ‘To investigate the phenomenon of …’. They are also exploratory; that is, they are examining phenomena and fields where we may not be at all clear what we expect to find. So, until data analysis starts (and sometimes well into data analysis) it may not be clear what the outcomes of the research will be. Actually, even in the case of tightly defined projects or evaluations, the data we have gathered may allow us to move beyond the originally defined aims. Here are some possibilities.
In-depth description of social phenomena
At its simplest this will be appropriate if the phenomena are ones about which we know very little because they are new or have not been researched before. Typically, this is the kind of output delivered by most ethnographic research. However, it is important to realize that this is not just a summary of what people said. For a start it should be in-depth, that is to say, it will include not just a record of what people said or did but the whole context in which these things happened in considerable detail. Second, the description may go far beyond the respondent’s own accounts of what was going