Category: Research Interviews

Excel & Word for qualitative data analysis

6/16/2019

I have continued to experiment with the use of MS Excel and Word to analyze qualitative date -- in this case, interview data for my PhD dissertation. The method described by Ose (2016) is amazing, although it has a few disadvantages.

Disadvantages include having online one major code for each interviewee quote. In my spreadsheet, I have an additional column for a secondary code, but I do not include that column when going through Ose's (2016) steps to convert the Excel file for Word. I use the added column as a reference as I work with the Word file during my secondary coding, categorizing, and creation of themes.

If you use her method as described in her paper, you will need to enlarge the Figure 10 and 11 screen shots. The concatenation instructions are complex, but trust what she writes, and pay special attention to the following on page 9:
F1 cell: =CONCATENATE(D1;"(";A1;"_";B1;"_";C1;")")
The "_" underscore symbols represent spaces, not use of the symbol, and in my instance of Excel, the semicolons were commas when I used the Function feature to create this string.

This is what the formula looks like in my file:
=CONCATENATE(D1,"(",A1," ",B1," ",C1,")")

The screen shot below is Ose's (2016) Figure 6 image on page 9. Keep in mind that there are additional "Text" boxes that aren't visible in this image.

Reference
Ose, S. O. (2016). Using Excel and Word to Structure Qualitative Data. Journal of Applied Social Science, 10(2), 147–162. https://doi.org/10.1177/1936724416664948

#dataanalysis #qualitativedata #interviewdata

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Analyzing qualitative data - excel & word (QDA)

6/2/2019

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I have struggled to find the best way to compile and structure my interview data for analysis. The analytic methods will follow the direction provided by Saldaña (2015, pp. 14-15). These methods will include transcription of the recorded interviews, coding the transcribed data, categorizing the data, and developing themes and concepts. See Figure 3 below from Saldaña (2015, p. 14) for a graphic illustration of the process. The written report on the data will follow the recommendations of Saldaña (2015) and Seidman (2013). See the first figure below. This shows the process of developing categories and themes following coding of the interview data.

The challenge is in the process of finding an efficient method to analyze as many as 38 interviews, comprising first and second interviews from 19 participants. For researchers with similar challenges, I am sharing an article by Solveig Ose (2016) that provides a process to convert the MS Word transcripts of the interviews into tables in Excel for coding and analysis. See the second figure below. This is an illustration of the data copied from Word to Excel. This is part of the qualitative data analysis (QDA) process.

Figure 1. A model for moving from data through codes to themes and theories (Saldaña, 2015, p. 14).

Figure 2. Example of transcribed text in Excel (Ose, 2016, p. 5).

Ose, S. O. (2016). Using Excel and Word to Structure Qualitative Data. Journal of Applied Social Science, 10(2), 147–162. https://doi.org/10.1177/1936724416664948

Saldaña, J. (2015). The coding manual for qualitative researchers (Third ed.): Sage.

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Interview Highlights

5/23/2019

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Following are highlight quotes from my experiential learning research interviews.

Instructor
Talking about the comments in student evaluations of the course at the end of a semester:

"I always have a student or two who are like, 'She didn't teach anything. We just discussed things in small groups. Why do I pay to have discussion?'"

I'll add to this list as work through my analysis.

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Writing my Experiential Learning Dissertation

4/22/2019

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The research for my PhD dissertation is almost complete. The analysis starts in one week, along with starting to write. The research subject and questions are:

Exploring definitions and perceived value of experiential learning at an American university in Asia.

1) What definitions of experiential learning are expressed by students, faculty, and administrators?

2) Within a classroom learning context, how do participants describe teaching and learning related to experiential learning? Specifically, how do:

a. students describe their own classroom experiences with experiential learning?

b. instructors describe their experiences with experiential learning?

c. administrators describe their understandings of the ways in which instructors and students experience and engage in experiential learning?

3) What value, if any, do students, faculty, and administrators ascribe to experiential learning?

During this research, which involved interviews of students, instructors, and academic administrators, I was impressed by the insights and thoughtfulness of many of the students. Interview questions included asking about the value of experiential learning, its challenges, and definitions from the students' perspectives. Here is one student's statement of value:

"I think it enables me to ... be more adaptable. Yeah, because it puts me in a situation likes there's no predictability. I have no idea what I'm going to face next. So it keeps me on my toes ... enables me to think fast and be more ... malleable, yeah."

Here is another quote from a student who is defining experiential learning:

"I think experiential learning is ... a more active form of learning ... it doesn’t involve just like the lectures and the spoon-feeding that most Asian education systems are like ... Asian education system is ... it’s very common to have the lecture style of teaching in Asian schools, but I feel that the program [I am in now] is more of interactive ... We did class group projects and discussions in class. So it’s more about like an active engagement in the content that we’re learning. It’s not simply just memorizing from the textbooks. So I feel that yeah, it’s like we get to interact first hand with practicalities of the content that we’re learning."

Several students identified social loafers among the challenges of experiential learning. For example:

"I guess one of those would be social loafer where people do not put in as much effort as you do, and perhaps also the level of motivation, because maybe some people are not as motivated to accomplish this task."

There is so much more. For the next two months, I will be analyzing the interview data to code and categorize the interviews, and then to identify themes. Listening to the students during the interviews was a treat. I look forward to revisiting the interview transcripts and the recordings to conduct the analysis. More updates will follow.

Image reference
Bergsteiner, H., et al. (2010). "Kolb's experiential learning model: critique from a modelling perspective." Studies in Continuing Education 32(1): 29-46.

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amazing Students

1/5/2019

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I've conducted my Ph.D. dissertation interviews with seven students, with one interview each for four, and two interviews for three. My methodology involves conducting two interviews about a week apart. This allows the students to receive a transcript of their first recorded interview, review it, and comment on it if they wish, prior to the second interview. That is called member checking in the methodology I am using.

More importantly, the time between interviews allow the students to reflect on their first conversation. The always expand extemporaneously on what they had previously discussed at the start of the second interview. The time allows me to review the first transcript and ask follow-up questions for clarification and to gather more information.

Interviewing these students, and then reading their transcripts has been a high-point in my brief educational career. I only started teaching in 2012, and of course I brought a lot of assumptions and baggage to the teaching process. The first reason for pursuing a Ph.D. in Education was to unpack the baggage and to learn more about teaching and learning processes.

Having just scanned a transcript of a recent interview, I decided to share some excerpts that illustrate why I am so amazed at our students. I selected these from several transcripts, so they are not from only one student. The "Q" is my question, and the "A" is the student's response. Here you go . . .

Q - How many languages do you speak?
A - Four.
Q - What are they?
A - Portuguese, Japanese, English and Spanish.

Q - [Following up on the student's explanation of experiential learning:
A - It's a lot more personal. [Same student contrasting lecture-based courses with experiential courses:] So like it or not, it will just leave us some lingering impression. We will not revisit it again.

Q - What value do these experiential learning activities hold for you?
A - Experiential learning environments . . . make me feel a lot more like I'm actually working. They give me a sense that I'm actually, uhm, maybe not contributing to an industry, but I'm getting a grasp on it in a way that I wouldn't . . . just through lectures.

There is so much more, and it will have to go into my dissertation because the students' observations need the context of the conversation. I'll return to this post as I analyze the data and add a few more comments.

Image Reference
Bergsteiner, H., Avery, G. C., & Neumann, R. (2010). Kolb's experiential learning model: critique from a modelling perspective. Studies in Continuing Education, 32(1), 29-46.

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Qualitative Research Tech Tools

7/15/2017

As I write my analysis of active and experiential learning in my 2016 student surveys and 2017 instructor and student interviews at a STEM university in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, I am trying to use technology tools. What I have discovered is that the learning curve is steep. There are three tools I am using:

NVivo from QSR International - www.qsrinternational.com/
1. This is a powerful analytic system that I am finding difficult to use. The issue I am facing is formatting and importing interview transcripts. I have decided to bypass this software until after my paper is done, and then return to it when I do not have time pressure to finish.
Voyant Tools - voyant-tools.org/
1. This is a free online tool for frequency and associated analysis. It works, and it is easy to use. There are some issues with the way I collected my data that limit the utility of the results from this tool, but I will use it and explain the limitations.
EndNote - endnote.com/
1. Anyone who has written research papers has at least tried to use EndNote. This is for citations and references and works within MS Word. Because I want to ensure that I have properly cited everything, I'm going to tough it out and figure out how to use this properly

I share this for my academic friends. If you have suggestions, please post them in response to this blog update. If you are going through similar learning processes for these tools, get in touch. Maybe we can help each other.
Back to the writing grind ...
Paul

Learning How To Conduct Research Interviews

7/1/2017

I have realized two important things about my 2017 interview process.

First, I asked too many closed-ended questions. The results are too many short Yes or No responses. These types of responses require me to analyze my questions, more than the interviewees’ responses. In a sense, I created a closed-ended data set that depends on my questions, and on how I posed the questions. This limits the depth and richness of the respondents’ answers.

For my dissertation interviews, I will need to capture the desired demographic and other closed-ended data at the start of the interview, and then more to an almost entirely open-ended interview process.

The other realization is that the nature of the responses, with many of them being very short, inhibits analysis of what the respondents were thinking and feeling. Also, the questions used key phrases, such as experiential learning, the use of this type of descriptive language prompted the respondents to use the same phrases and words. This complicates the effort to assess word frequencies and other aspects of meaning from the interviews. Too many responses include the words I used in the questions.

For my dissertation interviews, I will need to carefully construct my questions to open the discussion by the respondent in a way that he or she will use his or her own words. This will be a difficult task, but the analysis of these 2017 pilot interview data will help me to design the interviews for the dissertation research.

The image below is the setting for all of the student and instructor interviews I conducted this spring in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. This is in the Nikko Saigon Hotel. The setting provided a comfortable environment. Although there was background noise, such as music and the voices of other patrons in the lobby, the background served as white noise, giving my interviewees and me privacy.

Excel & Word for qualitative data analysis

Analyzing qualitative data - excel & word (QDA)

Interview Highlights

Writing my Experiential Learning Dissertation

amazing Students

Qualitative Research Tech Tools

Learning How To Conduct Research Interviews

Paul mcafee

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