Qualitative data analysis: An expanded sourcebook PDF

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106 Book Reviews Qualitative Data Analysis: an Expanded Sourcebook, edited by Matthew B. Miles and A. Michael Huberman. Thousand oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1994. Reviewer: Thomas A. Schwandt3 reviews. Displays are the “organized compressed assembly of information that permits conclusion drawing” (p. 11). A...

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106

Book Reviews

Qualitative Thousand

Data Analysis: oaks,

Reviewer: Thomas

Calif.:

an Expanded Sourcebook,

Sage,

edited

A. Schwandt3

A perdurable problem for all social science investigations, irrespective of methodology, is the integrity, credibility, and accuracy of the means of analysis that underlie the construction of conclusions and their verification. Two contemporary cases are the controversy that has unfolded in exchanges of letters in The New York Review of Books (Lewontin, 1995, “Sex, Lies, and Sociology”: Letters, 1995, “Sex, Lies, and Sociology”: Another Exchange, 1995) surrounding the publication of The Social Organization of Sexuality by the National Opinion Research Center as well as the critical reaction to the analyses of data presented in Herrenstein and Murray’s The Bell Curve (e.g., House & Haug, 1995). Both of these studies employed widely accepted means of survey and statistical analyses. The former study was criticized for drawing conclusions insupportable by the data; the latter for improper (at best, and, at worst devious) use of statistics. My point is simply that even with something like generally shared rules for analyzing data, the problem of the integrity of analysis and the credibility of conclusions does not evaporate. Methodology is more than strategy and tactics. This observation is critical because Miles and Huberman think that qualitative inquiry continues to be particularly vulnerable to this problem of integrity of analysis because it lacks explicit, shared rules for analysis. This, despite the near exponential growth of methodological writings which they acknowledge, has taken place in the decade since the publication of the first edition of the Sourcebook. Hence, echoing their claim of 10 years earlier, they state that qualitative inquiry lacks explicit, systematic, well-formulated methods of analysis, and that the “creation, testing, and revision of simple, practical, and effective analysis methods” (p. 3) remains the highest priority for qualitative researchers. They argue that such work is needed both to enhance the confidence researchers have in their findings and to demonstrate the cre& bility of findings to relevant audiences. To address the shortcoming and with an eye on achieving these goals, Miles and Huberman offer a cornucopia of methods for qualitative data reduction and analysis. This is not a book about how to collect qualitative data but rather what to do with qualitative data that have been collected. Central to Miles and Huberman’s preoccupation with analysis is their belief that the “usually complex, ambiguous, and sometimes downright contradictory” (p. 309) nature of qualitative data require particularly careful, thoughtful, and formalizable procedures for analysis. They are not convinced that “long narrative accounts” are the most useful means of presenting qualitative data, and hence they propose that analysis centers on “focused, organised displays that permit systematic analyses and enhance confidence in findings” (p. 311). At the heart of their vision making sense of qualitative data lies a three-fold scheme that evolves during data collection in the field and continues through post-fieldwork activities of making sense of the data and writing up, The scheme consists of data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing and verification. Reduction encompasses procedures for sorting through, ordering, simplifying, and so forth the extensive data corpus one typically acquires in field studies through observations, interviews, and document 3 Requests for reprints should be sent to Thomas A. Schwandt, Education

Bldg, Indiana

University,

by Matthew

B. Miles

and

A. Michael

Huberman.

1994.

Bloomington,

Wright IN 47405, U.S.A.

reviews. Displays are the “organized compressed assembly of information that permits conclusion drawing” (p. 11). Also, conclusion drawing emphasizes the interplay between constructing warrants for findings and checking the quality of those warrants. Three introductory chapters present Miles and Huberman’s views about important considerations in the methodology of qualitative studies. They note the considerable variety in approaches to framing qualitative studies but argue that there is a shared interest in the issues of analysis. They provide a useful discussion of the role of prior conceptual structure in focusing and bounding a study and explore critical issues in sampling within and across cases. They stress the importance of considering ways in which qualitative and quantitative data can be combined in the same study. They provide a succinct summary of logistical and management issues in field studies. Throughout this introduction, Miles and Huberman express a preference for more rather than less planning of all aspects of qualitative studies from conceptualization, through design, choice of instrumentation, and data analysis. At the core of the book are seven chapters-one devoted to issues and techniques of data reduction; five to various means of constructing displays; and one to conclusion drawing and verification. The data reduction chapter illustrates various approaches to coding, memoing, and keeping track of the evolving data corpus. The five subsequent chapters present a variety of techniques for developing data matrices and networks, the principal kinds of displays. Numerous illustrations accompany advice on how to design and use (including time required to construct) matrices and networks for the purpose of exploring, describing, and explaining qualitative data both within and across cases. Readers with a penchant for naming and formalizing techniques and procedures will find approx. 85 tables, figures, and boxes in this section of the text showing displays with impressive, scientific-sounding names like “Case-ordered Descriptive Meta-Matrix”, “Pre“Explanatory Effects Matrix”, diction Feedback Form”, “Conceptually Clustered Matrix”, “Segmented Causal Network Chart”, and its companion, “Smoothed Causal Network Chart”. These chapters on constructing displays are followed by a short chapter on providing rules of thumb on building displays. The authors then offer a chapter on drawing and verifying conclusions in which they discuss at length a variety of tactics for making sense of data as well as criteria and procedures for testing conclusions drawn. Three short chapters conclude the book: one highlights the implications of various ethical concerns in field studies for the task of data analysis; a second discusses issues in reporting including report style, format, author voice, and report audiences. The third summarizes the authors’ concerns that data analysis procedures be explicit, formalizable, and replicable. An appendix contains practical information on choosing computer software for qualitative data analysis. For evaluators who work with qualitative data, this book provides a wealth of ideas on organizing, analyzing, and presenting such data. It is, as the authors claim, a set of resources for practising researchers. It is well-organized, clearly written, and practical. I have recommended the book to graduate students seeking advice on ways to treat the data from their field studies, and they too have found it helpful. No sensible social inquirer would quarrel with Miles and Huberman’s admirable goals of enhancing researcher confidence in findings and improving understandability and credi-

Book Reviews bility of conclusions through more careful attention to issues and procedures of data analysis. But it is misleading to convey implicity the message that thoroughness, explicitness, and formalization of methods for analysis holds the key to the integrity of qualitative inquiry. To use the book properly, in my judgement, it must be placed in the context of ways of thinking about the nature and purpose of qualitative inquiry. Miles and Huberman imply as much in contrasting their preferences for analysis to those who favor more intuitive approaches and “long narrative accounts”. But the issues should be made more sharply, not because it is important to draw clear boundaries around different approaches to qualitative studies, but because the alternative to Miles and Huberman’s concern for rigorous analysis is not unchecked intuition and muddleheadedness. Given their objectives in the book, it is perhaps unreasonable to ask Miles and Huberman to develop this idea. But individuals planning to use the book in teaching qualitative methodology should attend to the issues of different, quite legitimate ways of conceiving of qualitative studies. Qualitative inquiry has both scientific and hermeneutic strands, so to speak. The former defines qualitative inquiry as one among many systematic, methodical processes for acquiring genuine, positive, scientific knowledge of social phenomena. The development and refinement of method is a central preoccupation of this strand, for it is believed that method offers a kind of clarity on the path to understanding that can be had no other way. Miles and Huberman cite approvingly here George Homan’s remark that methodology is a matter of strategy not morals; Wolcott’s (1994) recent discussion of approaches to making sense of qualitative data underscores this observation. He distinguishes between description, analysis, and interpretation as ways to transform data. He points out that the commitment to analysis “suggests something of the scientific mind at work: inherently conservative, careful, systematic” (p. 25); “it is more orderly, less speculative side of data transformation” (p. 26). Miles and Huberman are clearly working in this scientific strand where cautious, controlled, methodical, formal, and objective procedures are thought to hold the key to the integrity of claims made from qualitative data. Also, the authors do an excellent job of articulating that viewpoint. But practising qualitative inquirers, and those seeking to become the same, ought to be exposed to an alternative tradition for approaching qualitative studies. The (ontological) hermeneutic strand of qualitative work does not venerate scientific method as the key to genuine understanding of social

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phenomena. Method, as has been argued elsewhere (Schwandt, 1994; forthcoming), takes on an entirely different meaning in this strand. Further, in a hermeneutic approach to interpretation issues of methodology cannot be sharply distinguished from issues of morality (e.g. Taylor, 1985, 1987). However, neither of these conditions mean that qualitative inquirers persuaded of this approach view making sense of qualitative data as an intuitive nearly incommunicable act. The Sourcebook should be used to expose students to an excellent explication of the importance of the scientific strand in qualitative work, but it should not stand alone as the only approach to thinking about either the purpose or the integrity of qualitative studies.

REFERENCES HOUSE, E.R. & HAUG, C. (1995). Riding The Bell Curve: A review. Educational Evaluarion and Policy Analysis, 17(2), 263-272. LEWONTIN, R.C. (1995) Sex, lies and social science. The New York Review of Books, XLII(7), 24-29. SCHWANDT, T.A. (1994) Constructivist, interpretivist approaches to human inquiry. In N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (pp. 118-137). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. SCHWANDT, Inquiry, 2(l),

T.A. 58-72.

(1996).

Farewell

to criteriology.

Qualitative

“Sex, Lies and Sociology” Another Review of Books, XLII(13) 55-56.

Exchange

“Sex, Lies and Sociology”: Books, XLII(I0) 68-69.

(1995). The New York Review of

Letters

(1995). The New York

TAYLOR, C. (1985). Philosophy and the human sciences: Philosophical papers (Vol. 2). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. TAYLOR, C. (1987). Overcoming epistemology. In K. Baynes, J. Bohman & T. McCarthy (Eds.), After philosophy: End or transformafion? (pp. 459488). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, WOLCOTT, H.F. (1994). Transforming qualitative data: Description, analysis, and interpretation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage....