RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

472 APPROACHES TO QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS
emergence of specific units of meaning and
themes later on.
Delineating units of general meaning: this entails
a thorough scrutiny of both verbal and
non-verbal gestures to elicit the participant’s
meaning. ‘It is a crystallization and condensation
of what the participant has said, still using
as much as possible the literal words of the
participant’ (Hycner 1985).
Delineating units of meaning relevant to the
research question: once the units of general
meaning have been noted, they are then
reduced to units of meaning relevant to the
research question.
Training independent judges to verify the units
of relevant meaning: findings can be verified
by using other researchers to carry out the
above procedures. Hycner’s own experience in
working with graduate students well trained in
this type of research is that there are rarely
significant differences in the findings.
Eliminating redundancies: at this stage, the
researcher checks the lists of relevant meaning
and eliminates those clearly redundant to
others previously listed.
Clustering units of relevant meaning: the
researcher now tries to determine if any of
the units of relevant meaning naturally cluster
together; whether there seems to be some
common theme or essence that unites several
discrete units of relevant meaning.
Determining themes from clusters of meaning: the
researcher examines all the clusters of meaning
to determine if there is one (or more) central
theme(s) which expresses the essence of these
clusters.
Writing a summary of each individual interview:
it is useful at this point, Hycner suggests, to go
back to the interview transcription and write
up a summary of the interview incorporating
the themes that have been elicited from the
data.
Return to the participant with the summary and
themes, conducting a second interview: this is
a check to see whether the essence of the
first interview has been accurately and fully
captured.
Modifying themes and summary: with the new
data from the second interview, the researcher
looks at all the data as a whole and modifies
them or adds themes as necessary.
Identifying general and unique themes for all the
interviews: the researcher now looks for the
themes common to most or all of the interviews
as well as the individual variations. The first
step is to note if there are themes common
to all or most of the interviews. The second
step is to note when there are themes that are
unique to a single interview or a minority of
the interviews.
Contextualization of themes: at this point it is
helpful to place these themes back within the
overall contexts or horizons from which they
emerged.
Composite summary: Hycner (1985) considers
it useful to write up a composite summary of all
the interviews which would accurately capture
the essence of the phenomenon being investigated.
‘Such a composite summary describes
the ‘‘world’’ in general, as experienced by the
participants. At the end of such a summary
the researcher might want to note significant
individual differences’ (Hycner 1985).
Methodological tools for analysing
qualitative data
There are several procedural tools for analysing
qualitative data. LeCompte and Preissle (1993:
253) see analytic induction, constant comparison,
typological analysis and enumeration as valuable
techniques for the qualitative researcher to use in
analysing data and generating theory.
Analytic induction
Analytic induction is a term and process that
was introduced by Znaniecki (1934) in deliberate
opposition to statistical methods of data analysis.
LeCompte and Preissle (1993: 254) suggest
that the process is akin to the several steps set
out above, in that data are scanned to generate
categories of phenomena, relationships between
these categories are sought and working typologies