Being in conversation with qualitative data can include identifying ideas that spark meaning, insight, and sense-making. This two-day course focuses on a range of selected methods of coding qualitative data for analytic outcomes that includes patterns, processes, causation, categories, and diagrams. The course will address:

• Various coding methods for qualitative data (with an emphasis on social media data)
• Analytic memo writing
• Heuristics for thinking qualitatively and analytically

Manual (hard copy) coding will be emphasized with a discussion of available analytic software and programs for future use. Course content is derived from Saldaña’s The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers (4th edition, 2021, Sage Publishing).

After qualitative data have been collected and initially analyzed, we are faced with the larger task of making meaning across numerous narratives and expanding ideas. This course provides strategies for data synthesis—that is, moving into advanced qualitative data analysis and integrative theory development.

The course will address:

• Analytic heuristics (categories, themes, assertions, propositions, concepts)
• Analytic write-ups (memos, vignettes)
• Data analytic display-making (matrices and diagrams)
• Theory development

We will make use of an analytic synthesis matrix that outlines approaches for integrating meaningful ideas and making sense of data. These methods are transferable to any discipline including business, education, the social sciences, and health care.

Course content is derived from Saldaña’s methods texts including The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers (4th edition, 2021, Sage Publishing), the co-authored Qualitative Data Analysis: A Methods Sourcebook (4th ed., 2020, Sage Publishing), and Saldaña & Omasta’s Qualitative Research: Analyzing Life (2nd edition, 2022, Sage Publishing).

Course participants will learn a flexible approach to qualitative analysis that is driven by research participants’ words and experiences.

The course presents the Sort and Sift, Think and Shift qualitative data analysis approach, created by Ray Maietta and the consulting team at ResearchTalk Inc. The approach is an iterative process in which analysts dive into data to understand its content, dimensions, and properties, and then step back to assess what they have learned to bridge findings with current conversations in the field. The approach is a data-driven process that is both flexible and fluid. Data content is directive as it helps researchers determine what to do when. The goal of the process is to arrive at an evidence-based meeting point that is a hybrid story of data content and researcher knowledge.

Five principles direct the Sort and Sift process

1. Principle 1 is to adopt and maintain a flexible posture to facilitate the evolution of your thinking and your use of analytic tools.

2. Principle 2 is to let the data be your guide; qualitative data content directs project decisions from fieldwork to analysis to final presentation.

3. According to Principle 3, the holistic picture of each data collection episode is of paramount importance.

4. In Principle 4, topics that direct analysis emerge and evolve throughout the life of a project and should be monitored actively by diagramming and memoing.

5. Principle 5 reflects that, through iterative phases, the Sort and Sift toolkit focuses on where and how key concepts integrate and work together (i.e., bridge and thread) to define participants’ lived experience.

The Process

Data engagement is defined by an iterative and synergistic feedback loop between the “diving in” and “stepping back” phases of analysis, using three types of tools: reflecting, engaging, and integrating. We encourage you to dive into data early and often. The diving in phase is designed to privilege the holistic narrative of each data file (i.e., data collection episode). During the stepping back phase researchers reflect, re-strategize and re-orient after the diving in phases of analysis.

The course draws on material from:

--Maietta, Raymond C., Reifsteck, Erin J., Petruzzelli, Jeff, Mihas, Paul, Swartout, Kevin, & Hamilton, Alison B. “The Sort and Sift, Think and Shift Analysis Method” (chapter 16), in Richards, K. A., Hemphill, M. A., & Wright, P. M. (Eds.). (2024). Qualitative research and evaluation in physical education and sport pedagogy. Jones & Bartlett Learning. Book available for purchase at: https://www.jblearning.com/catalog/productdetails/9781284262391

--Maietta, R., Mihas, P., Swartout, K., Petruzzelli, J., & Hamilton, A. B. (2021). Sort and Sift, Think and Shift: Let the Data Be Your Guide An Applied Approach to Working With, Learning From, and Privileging Qualitative Data. The Qualitative Report, 26(6), 2045-2060. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2021.5013