CAQDAS, Context and the Recontextualisation of Qualitative Data

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CAQDAS, Context and the Recontextualisation of
Qualitative Data

• Libby Bishop
• ESDS Qualidata-UK Data Archive, University of
  Essex
• CAQDAS 07 Conference Advances in Qualitative
  ComputingRoyal Holloway, University of London,
  Egham18-20 April 2007

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Why does context matter?

• Shift from secondary analysis to
  recontextualisation (Moore)
• Context mattersmore than ever
• (Fielding, Gillies, Hattersley, Heaton,
  HolsteinGubrium, Moore, ParryMauthner, and
  others)
• What is context?
• How much is enough?
• What about co-construction?
• Can context be preserved/archived?

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Where CAQDAS and context meet coding

• CAQDAS can produce coding that removes text from
  its narrative context
• KÖnig http//www.lboro.ac.uk/research/mmethods/res
  earch/software/caqdas_primer.html
• Bornat (2005) challenges in coding cultural
  difference across time

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What about other contexts?

• (Bishop, 2006)
• Can CAQDAS handle other contexts?

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Example 1 QL policy research

• NVivo2 (yes, a newer version is available, but in
  the real world)
• Used Word and Excel tables for tracking tried to
  import difficult.
• Fieldnotes, case histories went into NVivo maps
  stayed in Word
• NVivo file became the project
• But other materials were retained
• Macro context mostly in lit review which was
  saved, but neither coded nor linked.

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Example 2 Making the Long View (Henderson,
Holland and Thomson, 2006)

• NVivo project defined as research wave this
  made it difficult to make links across projects
  for QL analysis
• Had to rely on website and book for fuller
  treatments of context
• Dimensions of time on web
• Research project
• Biographical cases, people
• Historical cultural/institutional
• Book chapters on education, employment, drugs,
  violence, etc.

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CAQDAS features that may help to preserve context

• Memos, etc.-tools to create new textual content
• Features that capture non-digital materials,
  paper, grey lit, etc.
• Ability to point/link to resources outside the
  project
• Options to link data and context (and code
  non-data resources)
• Bundling all resources

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Before asking about CAQDAS What context should
be preserved?

• Researcher has duty to be
• Inclusive,
• But pragmatic
• Can not anticipate future uses
• Impossible, and
• A form of intellectual hubris

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• Experience of writing up this data has shown
  us that conjuring up an historical context is
  crucial to any attempt to represent the data to
  an audience, yet the nature of this context
  depends enormously on the particular purpose of
  the representation.
• (Henderson, Holland and Thomson, 2006)

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Software and context

• Not technologically determinate
• Case of non-digital materials
• If the software becomes "the project, then there
  is a risk of omitting non-digitised materials
• (As archives preserve CAQDAS outputs, what about
  things that dont fit?)
• But, existing and emerging software features can
  enhance integration of non-digital materials
  (from lists to Metadata Encoding and Transmission
  Standard, METS)

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Concluding with caution
There is no archive without outside. There is
no political power without control of the
archive No, the technical structure of the
archiving archive also determines the structure
of the archivable content even in its very coming
into existence and in its relationship to the
future. The archivization produces as much as it
records the event. Jacques Derrida, Archive
Fever, 1995
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Comments and questions?
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How future researchers might interrogate context
preserved today

• What kind of resource is it?
• Who created it?
• Is the creator credible?
• When was it created, found, modified?
• How and why was it created?
• What was its significance at the time?
• How does it fit in? (Marwick, 01)

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A vision of CAQDAS in preserving context?
One can dream or speculate about the
geo-techno-logical shocks which would have made
the landscape of the psychoanalytic archive
unrecognizable for the past century if, to limit
myself to these indications, Freud, his
contemporaries, collaborators and immediate
disciples, instead of writing thousands of
letters by hand, had had access to MCI or ATT
telephonic credit cards, portable tape recorders,
computers, printers, faxes, televisions,
teleconferences, and above all E-mail. Derrida,
Archive Fever, 1995