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Data Analysis

Data Analysis. Prof Brian Nicholson HISP group UiO and Alliance Manchester Business School UK. Agenda. What is analysis? Role of paradigm: Positivist, interpretivist and critical Role of theory in analysis Practical Examples: Template analysis, Hermeneutics, Inductive.

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Data Analysis

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  1. Data Analysis Prof Brian Nicholson HISP group UiO and Alliance Manchester Business School UK

  2. Agenda • What is analysis? • Role of paradigm: Positivist, interpretivist and critical • Role of theory in analysis • Practical Examples: Template analysis, Hermeneutics, Inductive

  3. DATA ANALYSIS & WRITING • How do you define analysis? • The dictionary onanalysis • "Examine (something) methodically and in detail, typically in order to explain and interpretit” • “Discover or reveal (something) through close examination”(en.oxforddictionaries.com) • Difficult to separate "writing"and "analysis" • Writing and thinking is intertwined (van Maanen2006) • Reworking and re-re-re…-working is quiteusual

  4. WHAT IS ANALYSIS ? • Can be conducted in positivist, interpretivist, critical paradigm • Looking for interesting patterns in the material • To make formal sense of empirical material generated through fieldwork by reconsidering it, looking at it carefully and critically (Crang & Cook 2007, p 133). • "It’s about translating a messy process into a neat product" (Crang & Cook 2007, p 133) • View relationships between patterns as ‘structures’ in the data which create explanations (Madden 2010, p 148‐149)

  5. Analysis as a grinder Empirical material Analysis

  6. What is a paradigm? All research is based on some (explicit or implicit) underlying philosophical assumptions about what constitutes valid research andwhich research methods areappropriate. These assumptions are calledparadigms.

  7. PHILOSOPHICALASSUMPTIONS • All research can be classified into three categories: positivist, interpretive, and critical • Qualitative research can adopt any one of these perspectives • For example, case study research can be positivist, interpretive, or critical • These have different epistemologies: what is (considered to be) knowledge? Ontology - How do I know the world?

  8. Qualitative research Influences / guides positivist interpretive critical Underlying philosophical assumptions

  9. Assumptions of positivist research • Social reality is objective, testable and independent of theoretical explanation • The researcher should be objective and unbiased • The researcher should be a detached value-free spectator, only an observer of the objects of study • Theories and hypotheses can be tested independently of an understanding of meanings and intentions • Lawlike relations can be discovered in organizations, and the purpose of research is to increase our predictive understanding of phenomena • Scientific research should have formal propositions, quantifiable measures of variables, and hypothesis testing - cases are of interest only as representative of populations

  10. Freedom fighter? Terrorist? Ruler? Legend?

  11. Assumptions of interpretive research • Social reality is socially constructed - The aim is to understand phenomena through the meanings people assign to them. Access to meaning is through social constructions • Focuses on the full complexity of human sense-making as a situation emerges. Not predefined dependent and independent variables. • Interpretive methods of research in IS are "aimed at producing an understanding of the context of the information system, and the process whereby the information system influences and is influenced by the context" (Walsham 1993, p.4-5). • The hermeneutic circle – the ‘logic’ of interpretation is irreducibly circular: parts cannot be understood without the whole, data and concepts cannot be understood without theory and context

  12. Assumptions of critical research • Similar to interpretive research except that in addition: • A focus on critique – critique of the prevailing social conditions and system of constraints • Consider the complex relationships between human interests, knowledge, power and forms of social control. • Challenge prevailing communities of assumptions, Challenge established social practices, Have an ethically based stance; suggest individual emancipation and/or improvements in society

  13. Role of theory • A priori, formed or perceived beforehand, deductive, top down • Emergent • Inductive / bottom up

  14. Example 1 Top down : Yin’s positivist case and King’s template analysis Nigel King template analysis https://research.hud.ac.uk/research-subjects/human-health/template-analysis/technique/ Yin, R., 2002. Case Study Research: Design and Methods. Sage, London.

  15. Data analysis process • Interviewing in India and UK using a “template” derived from transaction cost theory • Multiple cases (client – provider) • Interviews recorded, transcribed and printed out • Responses coded and data sorted into categories (in MSWord – NVivo would have been useful) • Data displays (tables and diagrams) visually depict the findings • Cross case analysis – tables useful to provide data display • Theory acts as a template and framework for reasoning, the concepts of the theory are key See Yin R (2014) Case Study Research Design

  16. Example 2 interpretivist analysis using hermeneutics & emergent theorisation

  17. Data analysis process • Single longitudinal case study of a failed subsidiary, interviews over time in India & UK • No apriori theoretical frame • Interviews used a broad frame for data collection starting with historical reconstruction of events & ongoing challenges in managing the relationship between UK and India • Recorded and transcribed verbatim • Summary of themes of the interviews after each “round” including my interpretation, intensive discussion • Produced a timeline of events (not included in the final paper) showing critical incidents • Embeddedness theory helped “make sense” of the case ie. causal explanation of the failure

  18. Doing interpretivist analysis • Analysing field material, you can ask the following questions: • What are people doing? • What are they trying to accomplish? How, exactly, dothey do this? What specific means and/or strategies do they use? • How do members talk about, characterize, and understand what is going on? What assumptions are they making? • What do I see going on here? What did I learn from these notes? • Why did I include them? (Emerson et al. 1995:146)

  19. Analysis and theory • Theory and the generation of data cannot be separated. • We bring theory to the field ‐ data do not stand alone, analysis unfolds in all phases of field research (observations, when recording fieldnotes, when coding the notes in analytical categories, and when developing theoretical propositions). • Emerson, R. M., R. I. Fretz and Shaw, L. (1995): Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. The University of Chicago Press.

  20. Geoff Walsham’s approach Walsham(2006): "I write impressions during the research, after each interview forexample.Igenerate more organized sets of themes and issues after a group of interviews or a major fieldvisit.I then try to think about what I have learnt so far from my field data. If this sounds a rather subjective and relatively unplanned process, well it is. I believe that the researcher’s best tool for analysis is his or her own mind, supplemented by the minds of others when work and ideas are exposed to them"(p.325). About software foranalysis:“The software does not remove the need forthought”

  21. Analysis starts early & not at the end • Analysis starts early in the research process: • Focusing and refocusing of research aims andquestions • Phasing and addressing specific issues with specific people • Who you choose to involve • Issues in the interview guide • The way you made sense of research experiences in your diary • During breaks between interviews (useful if you are in a pair)

  22. Coding in practice • A code is "a term that tells the ethnographer that a theme or issue of interest is to be found at this point in their fieldnotes."(Madden 2010, p 142) • Thematic indexing: “With a color pen I marked out (circled or boxed in) events of interest. These color marks are attended by comments, explanations and references to similar and other events of interests. All of this is written in the margin or on blank back pages of my field material. Sometime I made notes on the cover of a piece of field material to indicate thematic events in the text” (Finken2005)

  23. Analysis as a grinder • With theory: • Theoretical concepts as sensitizing • Grounded theory– without theory Empirical material Analysis

  24. Example 3 : Inductive theoretical development

  25. Data analysis process • Interviewing in India school and an outsourcing vendor in UK, no apriori theory, interview guide using “shared value” CSR framework • Interviews recorded, transcribed and printed out • Thematic analysis writing a conference paper; the question of how the CSR project benefitted the vendor a priority theme • During intensive discussion data sorted into categories suggested by the data to generate 3 mechanisms that explain the positive outcome

  26. Example 4: interpretivist & emergent analysis using a critical theory

  27. Data analysis process • Interviewing in UK and India on outsourcing relationship, interview guide focussed on processes and practices of outsourcing (Willcocks & Lacity) • Interviews recorded, transcribed by me and printed out; ethnographic field notes (hanging around, random conversations; smoking) • Report for the company; summary report to PhD supervisor; conference paper, reviewer comments; hundreds of conversations while cooking, drinking etc.; thoughts, feelings, emotions, dreams recorded in a diary • Intensive discussion; data sorted into categories suggested by the data to generate 3 mechanisms that explain the positive outcome

  28. What Kind of Artist are You? Positivist : 17th century “photographic” realism Interpretivist Munch’s “The Scream” Critical: Picasso’s “Guernica”

  29. Tracey Emin’s Unmade Bed

  30. How itconnects Researchers have different philosophical assumptions (paradigms) about the world: how we are to understand it, and how we are to study it. This has lead to different strategies of inquiry (methodologies) and to different ways of approaching how we gather empirical material and analyze it(methods). paradigms methodologies methods Philosophicalassumptions Methodology Method Analysis/design data Researchquestions

  31. Researcher’sreflexivity • Do we see the same regardless of who we are and where we comefrom? • Positivist paradigm: We will see thesame if we use proper methods for data collection andanalysis. • Interpretive and critical paradigms: Knowledge about how people make sense of and experience the world can only be accessed through representations (e.g.,language). • Your previous experiences willinfluence • how you interpret what youencounter. • How you appear to the informants will influence how they relate to you as a researcher.

  32. Exercise: In groups • Explain your approach to data analysis • Justify the decision based on paradigm, role of theory

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