Back in February I talked about looking at my dissertation research as an instance of secondary qualitative research. Since then, that aspect of the project has grown, and I am now a full convert to the benefits of secondary qualitative analysis as a way to take full advantage of the rich data set I have available to me. A metaphor describing my approach that has stuck in my mind is "second wind." In other words, I am taking open-ended interview data that was collected to answer other questions and breathing new life into it. As a result, instead of the knowledge being "exhausted," it is set to offer up a fresh round of insights.
Now, secondary quantitative methods are long standing and accepted research methodologies. (For an overview see Hofferth, S. L. [2005]. Secondary data analysis in family research. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67, 891-907. Also see my colleagues over at Family Research Quantitative Methods for general information on quantitative methods in family science.) But from what I have read, explicit secondary methods in qualitative methods are fairly recent. It can be considered, then, an emerging research methodology.
This is good news. This is bad news. The bad news is that there is not a lot of guidance out there about what makes for rigorous secondary qualitative work. But the good news is that I have been able to locate a handful of sources and a couple dozen examples that have been extremely helpful. Plus, by using an "emerging" methodology I have the opportunity to help define just what high quality work in this area will look like.
In my previous post I mentioned the new Sourcebook resources about secondary qualitative research. An early article about this topic is the following:
Thorne, S. (1994). Secondary analysis in qualitative research: Issues and implications. In J. M. Morse (Ed.), Critical issues in qualitative research methods (pp. 263-279). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
My bible, however, has become a thin lavendar book released this year. I'll give you the reference, but you'll have to promise not to recall it from the U of MN library from me! (Just kidding: I've already ordered my own copy, so recall away.) The book is:
Heatin, J. (2005). Reworking qualitative data. London: Sage.
I have only been able to find one substantial on-line resource: Issue 22 from the soc department at the University of Surrey's Social Reseach Update (also written, btw, by Janet Heatin).
It has been exciting to develop my secondary qualitative procedures through my pilot research. I have been paying special attention, for instance, to issues of "match" between the original research questions that resulted in the specific interview questions being asked, and my own research questions. I have been thinking about the broader conceptual lenses that I have adopted to think about my research, and how my secondary procedures fit in with these. I have been considering such issues as "credibility" and "trustworthiness" in qualitative research, and how these issues are manifested differently in secondary approaches. I have been struck by the mental stretching involved in going back and forth between deductive and inductive approaches to analysis, and between analysis of cases and exploration of variables. I have toyed with the idea that my approach to secondary analysis might parallel how laypeople come to "analyze" life data all around--which is kinda what my whole project is about in the first place...
Anyway, I'll have more to say about the specifics of these issues as my project moves forward.
In any dissertation project there is an ebb and flow to the dissertator's motivational level. My embracing a secondary approach came at a good point in my own motivational cycle, just when I was becoming frustrated with the lack of fit between my research and more "traditional" means to conduct it. Now I feel like, not only is the data experiencing a second wind, but I am too.
Posted by perry032 at November 21, 2005 02:07 PM | TrackBack