Naturally occurring data

1. Naturally occurring data What counts as data?

2. Data cannot be inherently unsatisfactory: depends what you want to do with it. • No data ‘untouched by human hands’. • Difference between natural & non-natural should be investigated

3. Data production 1 Choices • Distant measures vs face-to-face • Research instrument vs researcher as instrument • Single source vs multiple sources (but cannot simply aggregate data to arrive at ‘whole’ picture) • Pre-determined data vs ‘everything is data’

4. 2 Continua • context free, acknowledge context or context bound • wholly, semi- or unstructured • Formality & transparency of data: wholly, partly or not at all auditable • Position of researcher in relation to researched: informants, participants, co-researchers

5. Evaluating samples • Appropriateness • Informant characteristics • Type of information needed

6. Adequacy of data Sufficiency and quality of the data • Informational adequacy • Relevance • Completeness • Amount of information obtained • Theoretical saturation

7. Four fundamental tasks • Selecting participants/material to study • Interacting with to produce data • Avoiding arbitrary findings • Convincing others of what you have found Technical decisions have theoretical import

8. Qualitative data production HIGH LOW Interviews--Focus Groups--Participant Observation • Control over production • Specificity of data for research question • Scalability of production • Amount of data that can be produced • Intrusiveness of production • Range of addressable questions

9. Starting reflexive points • Data: produced in the course of the research • Analysis: does this interpretation make sense in this context? • Account: responsibility for creative activity marked by use of the first person • Interpretation of qualitative data: bringing together two sets of assumptions (guesses of researcher at outset & preoccupations expressed by material)

10. Analytic process: 4 stages • ‘Giving a voice’ Stage 1: applies specifically to interview data, retell story with eye to empathy & empowerment. • Generation of categories • Thematic analyses • Discourse analysis

11. Stage 2: Generation of categories Complete range of qualitative data, look for emergence of categories by careful, repeated reading of texts. Grounded theory Glaser & Strauss 1967 Works from base up, systematically builds up conceptions of what issues seem to be important and what categories structure the text.

12. use categories drawn from respondents themselves, aim is not to build a different account/uncover hidden motives, but to make explicit what is implicit in the text. • Theory developed inductively from corpus of data: emergent – sets out to find what theory accounts for the research situation as it is • Comparative orientation: constant comparison – initially comparing data set to data set, then data set to theory

13. Category • A theme or variable which makes sense of what your informant has said, • interpreted in the light of the situation you’re studying, and other interviews, and the emerging theory • Core category – emerges with high frequency of mention, & is connected with many other emerging categories

14. Case orientation: whole case, not variable (not additive model, like ANOVA) • Theoretical sampling: to increase diversity in sample • Literature also emergent, not privileged over data, same status

15. Coding • Categories which sum up key underlying ideas of text are generated. • Saturate the categories. • Each category label should operate as a good descriptor of each of the instances/quotes included. • Collapse, drop, split headings. • Interrelationships (links & contrasts) between different headings operate as connections to organise material to be presented in analysis section – theoretical sensitivity.

16. Stage 3: Thematic Analysis • List set of assumptions underlying research alongside categories that emerged in grounded theory part of analysis. • Themes will be an accommodation of text’s version to issues investigation set out to address. • Accommodation – production of something new – change in category as it absorbs & contains new material (assimilation – material is fit into pre-established schema)

17. Stage 4: Discourse Analysis Discourses = sets of statements which construct an object (any category of thing or person that is spoken about by an interviewee) Variability; construction; function • how language changes, how it works, how it is put together.

18. Definition (Ruth Wodak ) (Greek v) Ana-lyein ‘deconstruct’ (Latin v) Discurrere ‘running back & forth’ DA penetrated many disciplines: sociology, philosophy, history, literary studies, cultural studies, anthropology, psychology, linguistics… distinct meanings in each of these, from a social science methodology to the label for a whole field, a subdiscipline of linguistics, a critical paradigm… Discourse analysts come from a variety of intellectual traditions and work in a variety of ways. a particular uptake of the ideas within psychology, mostly DP in social psychology.

19. No single definition of DA as a research method - can be characterized as a way of approaching and thinking about a problem.  • a manner of questioning the basic assumptions of research methods, enables access to the ontological and epistemological assumptions behind a project, a statement, a method of research.  • Every text is conditioned and inscribes itself within a given discourse, thus the term Discourse Analysis.  • Will not provide absolute answers to a specific problem, but enable us to understand the conditions behind a specific "problem" and make us realize that the essence of that "problem", and its resolution, lie in its assumptions; the very assumptions that enable the existence of that "problem".

20. Discursive Psychology - comprising the set of social constructionist approaches within social psychology mainly (Potter, Wetherall, Billig) • Various kinds which all share the field of social constructionism: share views on language and subjectivity, also the very important aim of ‘carrying out critical research, that is, • ‘to investigate and analyse power relations in society and to formulate normative practices from which a critique of such social relations can be made with an eye on the possibilities for social change’ (Philips & Jorgensen).

21. No longer a marginal perspective, for an increasing number of academics discourse analysis is the main way of doing social psychological research (LSE, Cambridge, Loughborough). • Also a proliferation of forms of discourse analysis - from CA to post-structural and Foucauldian thinking.

22. Antaki, Billig, Edwards & Potter 2006 • Identify things that might superficially give the appearance of conducting discourse analysis but do not in fact do so. • Burman - list of ‘mistakes and errors’ actually highlight with particular clarity ideological as well as conceptual and methodological features of the discipline.

23. 6 non-analyses. 1. Under-analysis through summary 2. Under–analysis through taking sides 3. Under-analysis through over quotation or through isolated quotation. 4. Circular identification of discourses and mental constructs 5. False survey 6. Analysis that consists in simply spotting features.

24. Burman (commenting on antaki et al. ) • Elaborates • Under-analysis occurs when the analysis substitutes detailed examination of the text for the adoption of a theorized position. • A way out of circular reasoning would be to elaborate the analysis or categories to relate to structures outside the detail of the text, e.g., via analyses of institutional practices and systemic patternings. • Proper analyses should also include consulting theoretical analyses of a historical and cultural kind that inform how such conversational moves come to be possible and how they function. • Don’t stop at what they say, ask why?

25. 3 further points to add to Antaki’s 6: • Under-analysis through decontextualisation • Under-analysis through uncontested readings • Under-analysis through not having a question

26. DA is a form of action rather than of reflection Not only does doing discourse analysis mean doing analysis BUT discourse analysis means analyzing discourse. Must have a theory of discourse (or text or transcript) as well as of analysis to do discourse analysis - and this also includes having an analysis of the technologies of one’s own analysis.

27. van Dijk (1997) An analysis of discourse is a scholarly analysis only when it is based on more or less explicit concerns, methods or theories. Merely making “common sense” comments on a piece of text or talk will seldom suffice in such a case. Indeed, the whole point should be to provide insights into structure, strategies or other properties of discourse that could not readily be given by naïve recipients. (p. 1)

28. Levels of (discourse)analysis? • Where to draw the boundaries? Or what should be included? The linguistic, social, political, historical, material, institutional … • What is discursive and what counts as extra-discursive? (Willig’s paper on critical realism in DA) • What is context?