Using Computer Software for Qualitative Data Analysis
The single constant factor reported by qualitative researchers is that their studies generate very large amounts of raw data. A small ethnographic study is likely to generate many pages of field notes including records of observations, informal interviews, conversations and discussions. This is likely to be supplemented by copies of various documents you have had access to, notes on your own thoughts and feelings, etc. A multimethod case study will produce a similar range and amount of material. Even a strictly limited grounded theory study relying solely on interviews leaves you with twenty or more tapes to be transcribed and subsequently analysed.
Before getting on with any of Miles and Huberman’s ‘analytic moves’, you need to ensure that you know what data you have available and that they are labeled, stored and, if necessary, edited and generally cleaned up so that they are both retrievable and understandable when you carry out the analysis. The first analytic task of coding the materials (i.e. deciding that a particular part or segment of, say, an interview transcript falls into the category of ‘requesting information’ or ‘expressing doubt’) involves not only assigning that code but also having a way of seeing it alongside other data you have coded in the same way.
In the pre-computer era, these tasks were accomplished by means of file folders containing the various sources of data, markers and highlighters, and copious photocopying. One strategy was to make as many photocopies of a page as there were different codes on that page, then to file all examples of a code together. It is clear that much of the drudgery of this task can be eliminated by using a word processor. Many data sources will either be directly in the form of computer files or can be converted into them without difficulty. It may be feasible to enter field notes directly into a notebook computer. An interview tape can be entered into the word processor as it is being transcribed. Incidentally, if you have to do this yourself, there is much to be said for the use of speech recognition software for this task (listen to each sentence on the tape through headphones, then repeat it out loud to activate speech recognition). Similarly, if you have access to a scanner with optical character recognition (OCR) software, it is now straightforward to convert many documents into word processor files. There are, however, some types of data for which this will not be feasible (e.g. handwritten reports and very long documents).