Qualitative Researching with Text, Image and Sound: A Practical Handbook for Social Research

384 Pages·2000·0.55 MB·English

by  Martin W Bauer

QUALITATIVE RESEARCHING
WITH TEXT,
IMAGE AND SOUND

QUALITATIVE RESEARCHING
WITH TEXT,
IMAGE AND SOUND
A Practical Handbook
Edited by
Martin W. Bauer and George Gaskell
(«)SAGE Publications
^55^ Los Angeles • London • New Delhi • Singapore
© Martin W. Bauer and George Gaskell 2000 Compilation and Introduction
© Martin W. Bauer, George Gaskell and Nicholas Allum 2000 Chapter 1
© Martin W. Bauer and Bas Aarts 2000 Chapter 2 © George Gaskell 2000 Chapter 3
© Sandra Jovchelovitch and Martin W. Bauer 2000 Chapter 4
© Uwe Flick 2000 Chapter 5 © Peter Loizos 2000 Chapter 6
© Gerhard Fa6nacht 2000 Chapter 7 © Martin W. Bauer 2000 Chapters 8 and 15
© Miltos Liakopoulos 2000 Chapter 9 © Rosalind Gill 2000 Chapter 10
© Greg Myers 2000 Chapter 11 © Joan Leach 2000 Chapter 12
© Gemma Perm 2000 Chapter 13 © Diana Rose 2000 Chapter 14
© Udo Kelle 2000 Chapter 16
© Nicole Kronberger and Wolfgang Wagner 2000 Chapter 17
© Robert W.D. Boyce 2000 Chapter 18
© George Gaskell and Martin W. Bauer 2000 Chapter 19
First published 2000
Reprinted 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007
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Contents
List of contributors vii
Introduction 1
Martin W. Bauer and George Gaskell
1 Quality Quantity and Knowledge Interests: Avoiding Confusions 3
Martin W. Bauer, George Gaskell and Nicholas C. Allum
Part I Constructing a Research Corpus
2 Corpus Construction: a Principle for Qualitative Data Collection 19
Martin W. Bauer and Bas Aarts
3 Individual and Group Interviewing 38
George Gaskell
4 Narrative Interviewing 57
Sandra Jovchelovitch and Martin W. Bauer
5 Episodic Interviewing 75
Uwe Flick
6 Video, Film and Photographs as Research Documents 93
Peter Loizos
7 Bemetology: towards Continuous (Self-) Observation and
Personality Assessment 108
Gerhard Fafinacht
Part II Analytic Approaches for Text, Image and Sound
8 Classical Content Analysis: a Review 131
Martin W. Bauer
9 Argumentation Analysis 152
Miltos Liakopoulos
10 Discourse Analysis 172
Rosalind Gill
11 Analysis of Conversation and Talk 191
Greg Myers
vi Contents
12 Rhetorical Analysis 207
Joan Leach
13 Semiotic Analysis of Still Images 227
Gemma Venn
14 Analysis of Moving Images 246
Diana Rose
15 Analysing Noise and Music as Social Data 263
Martin W. Bauer
Part III Computer Assistance
16 Computer-Assisted Analysis: Coding and Indexing 282
Udo Kelle
17 Keywords in Context: Statistical Analysis of Text Features 299
Nicole Kronberger and Wolfgang Wagner
Part IV Issues of Good Practice
18 Fallacies in Interpreting Historical and Social Data 318
Robert W.D. Boyce
19 Towards Public Accountability: beyond Sampling, Reliability
and Validity 336
George Gaskell and Martin W. Bauer
Glossary 351
Index 368
List of Contributors
Bas Aarts is Reader in Modern English Language and Director of the
Survey of English Usage at University College London. His main research
interest is present-day English syntax. His publications include Small Clauses
in English: The Nonverbal Types (1992, Mouton de Gruyter), The Verb in
Contemporary English: Theory and Description (1995, edited with C.F. Meyer,
Cambridge University Press) and English Syntax and Argumentation (1997,
Macmillan).
Nicolas C. Allum is a Research Officer at the Methodology Insitute, London
School of Economics and Political Science. He is currently investigating
public perceptions of biotechnology with George Gaskell and Martin Bauer.
His doctoral research focuses on risk perception, trust and moral reasoning
in respect to controversial technologies. Other interests are voting behav-
iour, computer-assisted textual analysis, and philosophies of science and
probability. Recent publications include 'Worlds Apart? The Reception of
Genetically Modified Foods in Europe and the US', Science, July 16 1999;
and 'A Social Representations Approach to the Analysis of Three Textual
Corpora using ALCESTE', MSc thesis, LSE, 1998.
Martin W. Bauer read Psychology and History at the University of Bern,
and has a PhD from the London School of Economics. He is Lecturer in
Social Psychology and Research Methodology at the LSE and Research
Fellow at the Science Museum, London. He researches science and tech-
nology in public perceptions and media reportage, and the functions of
resistance in organisational and societal transformation. Recent publications
include 'Towards a Paradigm for Research on Social Representations',
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, (vol. 29, 1999), 'The Medicalisation
of Science News - from the Rocket-Scalpel to the Gene-Meteorite Complex',
Social Science Information (vol. 37,1998); Resistance to New Technology: Nuclear
power, Information Technology, Biotechnology (1997, Cambridge University
Press).
Robert Boyce teaches International History at the London School of
Economics where he specialises in the politics of international economic
relations. Among his recent publications are studies of the interwar economic
viii Contributors
crisis, central bank relations, the development of high-speed communica-
tions, the economic origins of the Second World War, the British beverage
industry inside Europe, and French monetary policy.
Uwe Flick is a sociologist and psychologist and Professor for Empirical
Nursing Research at the Alice-Salomon University of Applied Sciences,
Berlin, Germany, and Privatdozent in Psychology at the Technical Uni-
versity of Berlin, Germany. Research interests include everyday knowledge,
social representations, qualitative methodology, individual and public health
and technological change in everyday life. Recent publications include An
Introduction to Qualitative Research (1999, Sage) and Psychology of the Social
(edited with U. Flick, 1998, Cambridge University Press).
Gerhard Fafinacht is Privatdozent at the Department of Psychology, Uni-
versity of Bern, Switzerland. His research interests include personality (in
particular social development), human ethology, observation, diagnostics,
research methodology and philosophy of science. Recent publications
include Systematische Verhaltensbeobachtung (3rd fully revised edition, 1995,
Reinhardt); and Theory and Practice of Observing Behaviour (1982, Academic
Press).
George Gaskell is Professor of Social Psychology and Director of the
Methodology Institute at the London School of Economics. He lectures
in the areas of research design, surveys and questionnaires, qualitative
inquiry, attitudes and social representations and economic psychology.
Recent research projects include cognitive aspects of survey methodology
and an international comparative study of public perceptions of modern
biotechnology He is editor of Societal Psychology (1990, Sage) with H.
Himmelweit, and Biotechnology in the Public Sphere (1998, Science Museum
Press) with John Durant and Martin Bauer.
Rosalind Gill is a social psychologist who lectures in Gender Theory at the
LSE. She is an expert in media and new technologies and is author of The
Gender-Technology Relation (with Keith Grint, 1995, Taylor & Francis) and
Gender and the Media: Representations, Audiences and Cultural Politics (2000,
Polity Press).
Sandra Jovchelovitch is a Lecturer in Social Psychology at the London
School of Economics and Political Sciences. She has worked extensively with
local communities and publishes widely in the field of social representations.
Her current research is on how transformations in public spheres shape the
production and rationality of social representations.
Udo Kelle is a Lecturer in Social Research Methods at the University of
Vechta. His main research interests cover the fields of methodology of
quantitative and qualitative research, decision theory and sociology of the
Contributors ix
life course. Currently he works on concepts to integrate qualitative and
quantitative methods in social research. He is the editor of Computer-aided
Qualitative Data Analysis: Methods, Theory and Practice (1995, Sage).
Nicole Kronberger is a Master of Psychology, University of Vienna. Her
research focus is on social psychological issues of morality, public under-
standing of science and qualitative analysis. Recent publications include
Schwarzes Loch, Geistige Lahmung und Dornroschenschlaf: Ein Metaphern-
analytischer Beitrag zur Erfassung von Alltagsvorstellungen von Depression (Black
Hole, Mental Paralysis and Deep Sleep: a Metaphor Analysis of Lay Conceptions of
Depression) and Psychotherapie und Sozialzvissenschaft (1999) 1 (2), 85-104.
Joan Leach is a Lecturer in Science Communication at the Imperial College
of Science, Technology & Medicine. She received her Arts Baccalaureate in
English Literature and Science Baccalaureate in Biology from the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her Master in Communication
and her PhD as an Andrew Mellon Doctoral Fellow in the Rhetoric of
Science from the University of Pittsburgh. She is editor of the quarterly
journal Social Epistemology, and has published on discourse ethics, the history
of the role of communicators in science and medicine, and the representa-
tions of science in the media during the BSE crisis. She teaches an under-
graduate course on Science Communication and lectures on the MSc course
in Science Communication at Imperial College.
Miltos Liakopoulos completed his PhD at the London School of Economics
on the controversy over GM food in Britain. His research is on public
attitudes to biotechnology and media coverage of biotechnology.
Peter Loizos had a first career as a documentary film-maker before turning
to social anthropology, which he has taught at the LSE since 1969. He is the
author or co-editor of The Greek Gift: Politics in a Cypriot Village-, The Heart
Grown Bitter: A Chronicle of Cypriot War Refugees; Gender and Kinship in Modern
Greece (with E. Papataxiarchis); Choosing Research Methods: Data Collection for
Development Workers (with Bryan Pratt); Innovation in Ethnographic Film: From
Innocence to Self-consciousness; Conceiving Persons: Ethnographies of Procreation
(with P. Heady), and over 50 papers, reports, chapters and articles on a
range of themes, including property transfer and class; political develop-
ment and patronage; ethnic conflict; participation in DFID development
projects (Nepal, and Nigeria), refugee adaptation to destitution, and refugee
social capital conservation; and issues in television film representation.
Greg Myers is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and Modern English
Language at Lancaster University, where he teaches on the programme in
Culture, Media and Communications. His most recent book is Ad Worlds:
Brands, Media, Audiences (1999, Arnold), and he is working on the dynamics
of opinion in focus groups. The work in his chapter was supported in part
by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (UK).