Part 1The Analysis and Interpretation of Qualitative Data Th.docx

Part 1
The Analysis and Interpretation of Qualitative Data
The purpose of this Major Assignment is to immerse you in the
qualitative research process. The process includes hands-on
opportunities for you to collect, organize, analyze, and interpret
qualitative data. This qualitative research process begins with
some items that have already been identified for you:
1. The research topic for this effort is the meaning of social
change for Walden graduate students. You have been examining
videos and reading about social change as part of the course
study.
2. The knowledge you have gained plus your reflections on the
meaning of social change will form the beginning of the
inquiry. That is, the research question you will explore is “What
is the meaning of social change for Walden graduate students?”
3. The description of your efforts of gathering, organizing, and
analyzing data will form the basis of your methods section.
And, the results of those efforts—the analysis and interpretation
of those data—will be summarized.
This Major Assignment 2 is composed of four parts, each of
which will be completed over four weeks. These parts include:
Part 1: Introduction; Part 2, Role of the Researcher; Part 3:
Results; and Part 4: Summary.
For this assignment you will complete Part 1. In this Part 1, you
will begin to examine social change from a Walden graduate
student perspective, explore positive social change as a research
problem, and explore the gap in research.
My study is: The Social Security Administration and the

Generational Gap among its Employees
Part 1: Introduction
1. Write a background statement of approximately 1–2 pages
that includes:
a. What you have learned about social change as a social issue.
b. What you have learned about social change as a research
problem. Support your insights with academic citations from the
Learning Resources (Attached).
c. Describe the gap that your study will address.
2. From the gap, create a brief purpose statement that is aligned
with the following research question:
What is the meaning of social change for Walden graduate
students?
Be sure to support your research with reference to the week’s
Learning Resources and other scholarly evidence in APA style

From Content to Coding
Program Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SUSAN MARCUS: Hi. My name is Dr. Susan Marcus. And
today, we're going to be
looking at the process of going from content to coding for
qualitative data analysis.
So what you're seeing now is a transcript of an interview done
with a graduate student
about her experience with social change and the meaning of
social change. And we're
going to prepare this transcript for coding. So the first thing to
do is to go to Layout and
line numbers and add Continuous line numbers. And see how
they appear down the
left--hand column so that when we start the process of moving
this content onto our
Excel spreadsheet, you'll be able to, if need be, go from this
spreadsheet back to the
transcript and locate where you are.
The next thing to do is to locate the questions that are going to
be analyzed. Now, this
interview was about 32 minutes long and has a number of

questions. For the purposes
of this demonstration, we're going to focus on the first four
questions. But it's really hard
to find them in the text. So I'm going to highlight those
questions and number them.
So for example, if we look down here, we can see here's the
very first question. Could
you tell me what program did you graduate from at Walden?
And I'm going to highlight
that. And here is the next question---- and what year? And
that's really part of the first
question, finding out when they were in graduate school.
So let's scroll down to find the next question. And you'll notice
that as I'm scrolling down,
I can see in the content that she and the interviewer are having
a conversation that's
sort of a side conversation relevant to understanding the
interviewees experience. But
it's not about the first question or the next question that we're
looking for.
So here we are. So here's our second question. And I'm going
to highlight that. And
then I would do the same for the rest of the questions that I'm
going to be transferring.
And now we have the same document with all four questions
highlighted. You can see
here, for example, why it's important to highlight so that when
the question is embedded
in something that the interviewer is saying, it's easy to see.
You can also see here
below at 4a where the interviewer asked, "can you give me
some examples," that's an

example of the interviewer asking a probing question which is
related to the question
above.
So here, the interviewee answers the question. And then the
interviewer follows up and
says, well can you tell me more about it? Can you give me more
examples? We want to
make sure that when we're coding, we have those two questions
clearly identified.
© 2016 Laureate Education, Inc.
1
So now we're going to go to our next document---- an Excel

spreadsheet. So you're using
the most current version of Excel. So even if you're using a PC,
that it should look fairly
similar to what you see on your video. And what we want to do
is prepare this so we'll
be able to easily move both content and questions into the
spreadsheet.
So I'm going to set up a template. And it looks like this. In the
first box up here, I'm
going to put Q because the first line is going to hold the
question. In the second row
right underneath, I'm going to identify this as where we'll put
the line numbers, then the
interviewees actual response, and then columns for where
we're going to put our codes.
You do have to spell correctly. So in your spreadsheet, you'll
be doing the same thing.
You'll also notice that I'm going to put a column in here called
memo. Memos are a very
important part of the qualitative data analysis process. Here,
because you're going to be
doing multiple things at once, this is a great place to put very
short notes which you can
expand and place in your analytic memo notebook.
So now let's just adjust this so it becomes more user friendly
for the data analysis
process. We're going to go under Page Layout and adjust the
orientation so we're in
Landscape. In fact, I'll make this a little bit bigger so it's
easier to see.
Now, the response is each of the participants actual content.
So we're going to make

that a little bit bigger. And then some room for your coding
here. And then your memo
notes here. And then I'll just create a line so that I'll be able to
distinguish each question
and each question's response.
So the only other thing to do here before we start is to label
the tabs of the sheet for
each participant. So in this worksheet you'll be having each
participant's answers in
each of the tabs. And I'm going to save it just onto the desktop
for now. And we'll save it
as First Cycle. OK.
So the next step here is using the two documents at once----
moving from the Word
document back and forth between the Word document and the
Excel document. Let's
go back to our Word document and go back up to the top.
Now we're going to be
moving the questions and the content from the interview
transcript to the Excel coding
sheet.
And the process of doing this is a bit laborious. But it also
prepares you for looking at
the transcript and the interview in finer, more component parts.
So instead of looking at
the document holistically and the feeling that it creates, you're
looking at each of the
little bits of text to see what individual meanings might come
through.
So this is the process. We Copy and Paste the questions
above the template. And if I
merge these cells for the question, then I can highlight each

question so that as I add
the content, the questions will still be visible.
2
And here is the follow up question. But it still belongs with
question 1. So we'll put it in
the same line.
Now let's move the content underneath the question. So I go
back to the interview
document and I Copy and Paste and put the content there. Now
you can see that this

would be a little bit hard to read. It runs past the column. So I
use the Wrap Text
function. And now the text is all in one place.
I also want to remember to put the line numbers for where the
text was located. So it
starts here. And you'll see that's line number 9. So I'll put that
here. And I'll do this for all
of the content for each of the questions that we'll be
examining.
Here it's interesting that the interviewee has mentioned a date
that she graduated and
then corrected herself a little bit later on. So I'm going to put
both pieces of data in there
and adjust it and put the line number in. And then I note that as
I'm looking for the next
question or the next piece of text that the interviewee tells an
interesting story about her
experience with Bill Clinton at the graduation ceremony. Now
it's not pertinent to the
interview. But as the researcher I think to myself, well that's
kind of interesting.
So as a memo, I'm going to put a note---- "interesting story
about Bill Clinton at
graduation." So if it becomes relevant to the data analysis or
my reflection later on, I'll
know what part of the text it came from and what I was
thinking about at the time.
So it looks like that's about it for the first question. That was
pretty straightforward. Now
we're going to get into some of the meatier parts of the
interview. So I scroll down and
find the next question about social change.

And again, here, we see that the question was asked, the
interviewee was a bit
confused, and the interviewer had to clarify. And we can see
that right here is where the
actual answer starts. So I go to my Excel spreadsheet and
Copy and Paste so now I've
got the next question ready to go.
I place the question just like we did before. I merge the cells,
highlight it, and then start
to put the text in. So she answers the question, "yes, it was."
And I put that here. But
then she explains in more detail.
Then here we have the interviewer having a conversation about
the degree. So we have
to scroll through and see if the interviewee is saying something
else that's relevant to
the question. And she is. She tells a little story on the side
which is relevant to the
question. Not directly addressing it, but we want to put that in
as well.
OK. So this should give you a good idea of the process that it's
going to take to get from
moving your content into the Excel spreadsheet. And you can
see what I end up with is
units of conversation for each question.
3

And now here's an example of what a finished coding
spreadsheet looks like. We've
transferred all of the questions that we're going to be analyzing
and all of the content for
this particular interviewee. We would do the same for each
person that we interview.
And again, as I said earlier, it's a little bit laborious. But you
can see now we've got a
good working document. We've moved from the individual
transcript to moving the data
and the questions to our coding sheet. And now we're ready to
begin the coding.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
4

Introduction to Coding
Program Transcript
SUSAN MARCUS: Hello. My name is Dr. Susan Marcus, and
this is an introduction to
coding qualitative data. Before we get started, I'm going to give
you a definition and
some visuals of what we mean by coding qualitative data. A
code in qualitative inquiry is
most often a word or a short phrase that symbolically assigns
a summative, a summary,
a salient or essence--capturing attribute, for some portion of
language, or visual data.
So what does that mean? With these certain words, short words
or phrases, we're trying
to capture a meaning that's been attributed to, or contributed to,
by another source. So
the process of coding means we identify distinctive features
of a piece of text, and see if
there are similar features to other pieces of text from other

sources.
What this also means is you can code just about anything.
You can code transcripts
from videos. You can code transcripts from written, or
phone, or live, interviews. You
can also code observations of a field experience. Or code
observations of a photo.
So once you get anything that you have observed, and want to
include, in your
qualitative data analysis into a language--based form, typically
in the form of a transcript
in a word processing document, you can then start the process
of coding. What we're
doing is we're looking for patterns, similarities in features,
similarities in order of
presentation, similarities of context, similarities in meaning.
So what these marbles represent are the different thoughts, and
feelings, and
experiences, each person has about being in nature. And my
quest as a qualitative
researcher to see if I can understand each individual's
experience, and then look for
shared meaning across those experiences. So here's person A.
And each type of
experience they share is noted by a different marble.
And as a qualitative researcher beginning to code, I say, hmm,
maybe I can first
organize them according to a distinctive feature. Let's try
color. And as I'm organizing
the marbles, I see, well, some of the colors are really distinct,
and some of them are not
quite as distinct as I thought. But I'm going to group them

together anyway. So in a
sense, I've created a code for this person according to color.
Now I'm going to do it with the next person's---- marble's----
experiences. And I'm going to
organize them and sort them so that they line up with, to the
best that I can surmise, the
preceding person. And I'll do the same for the other two
individuals. And as I'm doing
this, I'm also reflecting in my mind---- but if I was doing this
as a qualitative study, I would
be taking notes, writing memos---- about the choices I was
making about where to group,
or where to put, which marble with which group.
So, obviously, color is a really easy way to sort. We could
sort on size. We could sort on
clarity. We could sort on whether some of the marbles were
colored, or solid, or cat's
eyes. And voila. So I've sorted, I've coded each individual's
experiences by color. And
1

now, as a qualitative researcher, I want to group these
experiences---- and again, we'll do
it by color just for the purposes of illustration---- into larger
patterns to see if there are
similarities across these different individuals.
And one of the things, for example, I would note, is that while
most of the group share
this experience, indicated by the red marbles in color, this
person has a similar kind of
experience, but it's not quite the same. So as a qualitative
researcher, I would make a
note---- I'm grouping these codes together into a category that
I could call red. Noting that
some of the codes are approximations, but not identical, to the
final category. And then I
can do that with the other marbles as well.
So again, you can see that I have made groups of like objects
some of them---- Oh,
here's another. Look at this. I had one set of objects over
here, but they actually can go

over here. And I also have a couple of discrepancies that don't
really fit in any particular
category. And so as a qualitative researcher, I also have to
make a decision. Do I want
to force, or try and make, every bit of information fit into a
category, or do I want to use
these as what we call discrepant cases, to explore what these
individual items or codes
mean?
So I hope that helps illustrate what we mean by the process of
coding. Taking individual
bits of information, grouping them. I could also try grouping
them with another approach.
For example, some of these marbles have two different colors.
So I could also see what
pattern emerges if I take marbles with two different colors
and put them all in one group.
And marbles with single colors and another group. Looks
different.
So that's the idea of approaching coding from different
perspectives. That is, if you code
just one way, you get one picture. But if you code taking
another approach, you may get
an entirely different picture.
The other point I'd like to share with you is the choice of
doing manual coding. What we
mean by manual coding is using basic word processing and
spreadsheet tools to move
bits of data around in order to create codes, categories, and
themes.
The other alternative, is computer--assisted qualitative data
analysis software. There are

many, many choices available. And of course, the advantage of
using a computer
application is that you have a bit more efficiency. They have
lots of great visual displays,
and other ways to manipulate data. The challenge is, most of
these software programs
have a very steep learning curve. So you're learning both how
to code qualitative data
and learning a software program.
The other issue is that because there are so many different
kinds of programs to choose
from, you, as you become a more experienced qualitative
researcher, and if you choose
to go on and do a qualitative dissertation, you may, after
looking at different programs,
develop your own preference. Or your chair may have a
preference for which one to
use. You'll have a chance to work with smaller data sets in
this course, and so using
2

Excel and Word are more than acceptable. And, towards the
end of the course, you'll
also have a chance to explore software alternatives.
The other thing you'll need to do is create a notebook. It can
be in electronic form, like a
Word document, or an actual notebook for handwriting notes.
In qualitative research, we
call these memos. Which contain your reflections, your
thoughts, your descriptions of
your process, of going from the data sources, the transcripts,
to codes, to categories,
and writing up your results.
As a final note, I just want to encourage you to use this as an
opportunity to explore,
and develop new skills, and consider whether or not this type
of research is something
that you would like to pursue for your dissertation. The act of
qualitative data analysis
can be laborious, intensive, and repetitive. But it's also the
opportunity for discovery, for
something new, that's been generated by your participants, for
the data that you've
collected, and perhaps even the opportunity to discover
something about yourself.
3
DirectionsVideo Code #Student GenderStudent Program of
StudySubject matter/topicWhat happened in the Video? (2) 1st
Cycle Descriptive1st Cycle Concept2nd cycle PatternsQuick
MemosDirection12356678My NotesTranscriptThe

TranscriptDirections: For each video you chose, type in the
following information, extracted from your video field notes
guide. Put the data of one video per tab. The numbers above
correspond to the directions below. 1. Create a video code
number, so the identifying information will not be visible in
this record.2. Indicate speaker's gender3. Indicate speakers
program of study4. Briefly describe the subject matter or topic
of the video.5. (a) Under the sub-heading "My Notes", copy
each sentence describing a "fact" of the video (#2 from your
Notes guide) into one cell of the spread sheet. Use the "wrap
text" function for readability.5 (b) Under the sub-heading
"Transcript", select sections of text from the video transcript,
again placing each one in a cell of the spread sheet. 6-7. Using
the techniques from your Saldana text and the coding videos,
code each line with two 1st cycle and one 2nd cycle codes.8.
Create a short statement or phrase summarizing your reflexive
notes (#4 from your guide).
Video 1Video Code #Student GenderStudent Program of
StudySubject matter/topicWhat happened in the Video? (1)1st
Cycle Descriptive1st Cycle Concept2nd Cycle PatternsQuick
MemosMy NotesTranscript
Video 2Video Code #Student GenderStudent Program of
StudySubject matter/topicWhat happened in the Video? (2) 1st
Cycle Descriptive1st Cycle Concept2nd Cycle PatternsQuick
MemosMy Notestranscript
Website SourceWebsite SourceType of Page/SourceSubject
matter/topicWeb page/report content1st Cycle
CMC: CMC:
Cell alignment differs from the Video 2 tab. Suggest uniform
alignment.
1st cycle2nd cycleMemosDELETE THE RED CONTENT AND
PUT IN YOUR OWNURL: [insert here]E.g., home page,
.pdftranscriptEXAMPLEhttps://www.waldenu.edu/about/social-
change/global-day-of-serviceGlobal Days of ServiceDescribes
2015 Global Days of ServiceGlobal Days of Service, celebrated

October 12–18, inspired more than 20,500 faculty, staff,
students, and alumni, as well as their friends and family, to
participate in community service projects around the
world.Members of the Walden and Laureate communities in
more than 15 countries contributed more than 125,000 volunteer
hours in more than 240 service projects. Projects
included:Cleaning and organizing the Minneapolis American
Indian Center in the U.S.Building houses for hedgehogs and
performing general cleaning and maintenance at a nature reserve
in Gdansk, Poland.Painting, assembling furniture, beautifying a
courtyard, and organizing a food pantry at a middle school in
Baltimore, Maryland, in the U.S.Launching a program to engage
with and provide physical and artistic outlets to refugee
children and their families in Germany.Serving orphans in Saudi
Arabia.Thank you to all of our volunteers for helping make a
positive impact in communities around the globe.
Sheet 2
Learning Resources
Note: To access this week’s required library resources, please
click on the link to the Course Readings List, found in the
Course Materials section of your Syllabus.
Required Readings
Saldaña, J. (2016). The coding manual for qualitative
researchers (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
· Chapter 1, “An Introduction to Codes and Coding” (pp. 1–42)
· Chapter 2, “Writing Analytic Memos About Narrative and
Visual Data” (pp. 43–65)
Ravitch, S. M., & Carl, N. M. (2016). Qualitative research:
Bridging the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
· Chapter 7, “An Integrative Approach to Data Analysis” (pp.
215–236)
· Chapter 8, “Methods and Processes of Data Analysis” (pp.
237–270)
Rubin, H. J., & Rubin, I. S. (2012). Qualitative interviewing:
The art of hearing data (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications.
· Chapter 12, “Data Analysis in the Responsive Interviewing
Model” (pp. 189–211)
The following articles are examples of literature reviews on the
aspects of social change. Choose one of the articles for this
week’s Discussion 2.
Thomas, E. F., McGarty, C., & Mavor, K. I. (2009).
Transforming “apathy into movement”: The role of prosocial
emotions in motivation action for social change. Personality &
Social Psychology Review, 13(4), 310–333.
Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.
Kezar, A. (2014). Higher education change and social networks:
A review of the research. Journal of Higher Education, 85(1),
91–125.
Aguinis, H., & Glavas, A. (2012). What we know and don’t
know about corporate social responsibility: A review and
research agenda. Journal of Management, 38(4), 932–968.

Walden University. (2015). Social change. Retrieved from
https://www.waldenu.edu/about/social-change
As you review this website, think about Walden’s meaning of
social change and how this website will guide you as you
consider positive social change for your Major Assignment 2.
Document: Excel Video Coding Document Template (Excel
spreadsheet)
Review this Excel template as you view this week’s media
programs. Also, you will use this template for organizing your
transcripts and preparing them for coding.
Required Media
Laureate Education (Producer). (2016). Introduction to coding
[Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Note: The approximate length of this media piece is 10 minutes.
In this media program, Dr. Susan Marcus, Core Research
Faculty with the School of Psychology at Walden University,
introduces you to the world of coding using Word or Excel
documents. In this first video, you will learn how to organize
your data.

Accessible player
Laureate Education (Producer). (2016). From content to coding
[Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Note: The approximate length of this media piece is 12 minutes.
In this media program, Dr. Susan Marcus, Core Research
Faculty with the School of Psychology at Walden University,
introduces coding and how to move from content to codes. This
video focuses on what Saldaña (2016) calls “first cycle” coding.
Three different approaches are presented. Analytic memos will
also be discussed.
Accessible player
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_1586327683.unknown

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