Assignment B2

Due: Nov. 15.

Coding 1.

The article entitled USING COMPUTERS TO ANALYZE ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELD DATA: Theoretical and Practical Considerations by Dohan and Sanchez-Jankowski is from the Annual Review of Sociology 1998. (Click on the title to download the article.)

Although somewhat dated, (for instance it could only discuss NUD.IST, the predecessor of NVIVO) the article is a good introduction to Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis (CAQDA or CAQDAS for CAQDA Software). 

There is a second article  entitled CAQDAS: A primer by Thomas Koenig.  This is a more uptodate overview of the available software pacakges. It is more basic and practical.

Both  files are in HTM format. Save them on your computer in the original format. Open them using your word processor, (Microsoft Word), and save them as a Rich Text Format (RTF) file. Then import these RTF files into NVIVO.

Start with the older, Annual Review piece.  Read the abstract, but stop there and before you read the rest of the document create a memo using DocLinks (p.46). List the questions you want this article to answer.

Read the document. When you find something important or interesting create a node and try to name the node by giving it a one or two word summary. If you have comments or questions about some words, phrases, sentences or passages, use DataBite to create an internal annotation.

Your text must have at least ten nodes and three internal annotations.

Having coded the text, return to your memo and write a summary of the article and see which of your original questions were answered.

Read the second piece by Koenig.  Code this text as well using nodes and DataBite.