Context-oriented qualitative data analysis

Abstract: 
The paper reports a structural development of the coding and retrieval functions that constitute a core of Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis. A result of proposed development is referred to as context-oriented coding tools that are composed with two main structural components. The first one, called thesaurus, is a set of concepts linked to one another by a collection of elementary relationships, each having the same structure and called context-fixed elucidation (CFE). CFE is a unit that provides an analyst with a means for denoting by a new notion a change of terms already incorporated by him in the thesaurus. The concept change is modeled within the CFE body by a relationship “one-to-many”. The thesaurus is to be drawn up by an analyst in a man-computer mode. The second component occurs as compiling algorithms that can compose unified tree-like graphs with concepts as nodes out of structurally unlinked CFEs gathered in the thesaurus. The graphs demonstrate the visibility and multiple inheritance relationships between the thesaurus’ concepts. The compilation of the conceptual graphs is considered a tool aimed to check up analyst’s reasoning. The proposed coding tools are thought of as a core of context-oriented qualitative data analysis. A conceptualization of an informant’s textual evidence is carried out by the author with help of a package that represents the structural and algorithmic proposals reported in the paper.

For citation: Kanygin G.V. Context-oriented qualitative data analysis. St. Petersburg Sociology Today. 2011. N. 3. P. 336-365.

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