Ph.D Update Of Work Part B: A Shift In Data Analysis

Long term blog followers will probably remember my discussions about grounded theory and discourse analysis, and the reasons why I shifted towards thematic analysis following the identification of their unsuitability. Whilst thematic analysis has been very useful for achieving certain purposes of the research, thematic analysis had not provided a complete picture of the phenomena of research interest. In fact, I came to realise that some of the problems encountered with grounded theory were also encountered with thematic analysis.

Thematic analysis was used in this research to develop a coding framework that can be used to code for particular and similar patterns across the data with reference to specific characteristics of social learning processes. From the codes, themes have been developed that characterises the process of social learning. However, a problem that was encountered was that, similar to grounded theory, whilst thematic analysis was able to identify the key concepts and conceptualisations of social learning process, it could not enable a full understanding of the process of learning itself. In other words, thematic analysis can describe and present the key essences of social learning in accordance to the specifics of the research question and research objectives. It cannot, however, explain how learning takes place within the context of a social and cognitive process. In order to achieve this, I had to go deeper into not just the essences that describes and captures essential social learning, given particular conditions and contexts, but also deeper understanding of the process of learning itself. Learning is a process, not a product, regardless of the context of this learning and it is arguable that to understand learning within any context is to understand it as a social and cognitive process.

In order to achieve this level of understanding, along with thematic analysis I also used basic quantitative approaches, and patterned-based approaches. From the use of thematic analysis, I developed several assumptions about the process, but could not use thematic analysis to test these assumptions. The use of basic quantitative analysis and pattern-based analysis led to the testing of these assumptions and further explorations of the data in order to better understand social learning as a process and as a pattern between individuals. This has added considerably to the research not just in terms of better understanding the essences of the phenomenon, but also of understanding its process. The addition of multiple methods has, not surprisingly, also led to the need to rethink of some aspects the research design to ensure compatibility and cohesion between the research design components. These considerations are important, because without these careful considerations the research design is going to appear disjointed and illogical, with incompatible parts that could generate incorrect or inappropriate data leading to unreliable and unverifiable interpretations of the data.

What actually happened during this process is the observation and construction of insights of the learning process that I had not previously anticipated, and that which I had no idea I considered possible to perceive. I shall explain this further in the next blog post.

Alex Darracott : 07 Nov 2019 22:06 |  Tags: Data Analysis Multi Methods Reflections Thematic Analysis Thesis |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem