Working with large amounts of qualitative data

Working with large amounts of qualitative data

YouthLife webinar delivered on 20.4.21

How can researchers who are working with large amounts of qualitative data manage and analyse their data?  Can qualitative researchers work with secondary data drawn from across multiple small qualitative data sets? 

As part of the YouthLife programme of activities, Ros Edwards and Susie Weller, from the University of Southampton YouthLife project team, delivered an open webinar on their Breadth-and-Depth method for working with large amounts of qualitative data: primary or secondary, and snapshot or longitudinal – often referred to as ‘big qual’.  The PowerPoint presentation that they used can be accessed here.

Doctoral and early career researchers from Tallinn University and their YouthLife partner institutions, University of Bamberg and the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, as well as the University of Southampton, attended the online seminar. 

Ros and Susie explained the four-step Breadth-and-Depth Method that researchers can apply flexibly whatever the theoretical logic, substantive topic, and nature of the large amounts of qualitative data that they are working with.  The steps combine extensive coverage with intensive illumination, moving between the breadth of ‘big qual’ analysis and the depth of detailed qualitative engagement.  

The steps move from (1) constructing a new corpus by ‘fitting together’ multiple data sets; (2) undertaking a breadth analysis of the corpus using data analytic software to identify keywords (high frequency words) and keyness (concordance, co-location and proximity, and clustering); (3) cursory readings of small data extracts on the basis of their keyness to identify cases; and (4) in-depth analysis of the data from the identified cases.  Ros and Susie stressed that the method is iterative, where previous steps can be revisited in the light of new issues, and the depth understanding of step 4 can be placed in the context of the structural breadth findings from previous steps. 

Working with large amounts of qualitative data enables researchers to scope out new research questions that allow for comparison and claims to generalisability while still retaining the distinctive order of knowledge about social processes that is the hallmark of rigorous qualitative research, with its integrity of attention to nuanced context and detail. 

Ros and Susie illustrated the Method with an overview of two ‘big qual’ research projects using multiple data sets.  First, their research on ‘home moves’, identifying patterns in gender and generation comparisons, and a range of small stories about interdependent home moves.  Second, Susie’s involvement in an international project on food choice in transition, making age and food environment comparisons, and exploring young people’s agency and autonomy in different food environments. 

 A range of resources for, respectively, using and teaching the Breadth-and-Depth Method can be found at https://bigqlr.ncrm.ac.uk and https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/resources/online/all/?id=20727