João Santos - Lisbon School of Nursing Vice President

Cristina Baixinho - Lisbon School of Nursing (WCQR2018 Coordinator)

António Pedro Costa - WCQR Coordinator

Mindsets for harnessing digital tools in qualitative and mixed-methods analysis: the Five-Level QDA® method
Christina Silver, University of Surrey - UK

Many qualitative researchers don’t use CAQDAS packages because they are concerned the software will drive the process or force them to conform to a single style of data analysis. But there are also many researchers who have mastered the art of harnessing software in the service of their analytic needs. We developed Five-Level QDA as a way of describing what these experts unconsciously do and it is a pedagogy for more quickly developing this expertise. The method recognizes that expert users of CAQDAS packages clearly distinguish their analytic strategies – what they plan to do – from their software tactics – how they plan to do it. The core of Five-Level QDA is a process of conscious translation between strategies and tactics that ensures that the needs of the data analysis, and not the capabilities of the software, drive the process. Christina will describe the genesis, development and principles of the Five-Level QDA method and discuss the heuristic mindset involved in translating between analytic strategies and software tactics. She will also outline how Five-Level QDA is being implemented by colleagues around the world and reflect on the opportunities it provides for teaching qualitative and mixed-methods in integrated curricula.

DiscoverText: Power Tools for Human & Machine Learning (Room 1.43)
Stuart Shulman,USA

Introduction to ATLAS.ti 8 Windows: Tools for Digging into your Qualitative Data (Room 1.44)
Neringa Kalpokaite and Ivana Radivojevic, Germany

How happy are your clients? webQDA as a tool for assessing customer satisfaction (Room 1.45)
Jaime Ribeiro, Portugal

User Experience Evaluation (Room 1.46)
Sónia Sousa, Estonia

(more information)

DiscoverText: Power Tools for Human & Machine Learning (Room 1.43)
Stuart Shulman,USA

Introduction to ATLAS.ti 8 Windows: Tools for Digging into your Qualitative Data (Room 1.44)
Neringa Kalpokaite and Ivana Radivojevic, Germany

How happy are your clients? webQDA as a tool for assessing customer satisfaction (Room 1.45)
Jaime Ribeiro, Portugal

User Experience Evaluation (Room 1.46)
Sónia Sousa, Estonia

(more information)

Text Mining to Improve Qualitative Data Analysis of Large Document Collections
Luís Paulo Reis, University of Porto - Portugal

Text Mining is the process of deriving high-quality information from text using analytical and natural language processing methods. Text analysis involves among others, information retrieval, lexical analysis, pattern recognition, tagging/annotation, information extraction, data mining, visualization, and predictive analytics. The main goal is, essentially, to turn text into valid information for analysis. This Talk introduces the main processes and methodologies of text mining to support qualitative data analysis of large-scale document collections. It aims to contribute to the steadily growing field of qualitative research facing the challenge to consolidate text analysis methods to be able to process vast amounts of text, in a semi-autonomous manner, using modern data and text mining algorithms. The talk will be illustrated with examples and results from recent LIACC projects on this area with emphasis on our projects on complaints analysis developed together with the Portuguese Government (Min. Economy/ASAE) and several projects developed together with large companies such as Twitómetro/TwitterEcho, VOXX, Time Machine, Financial Sentiment Analysis and Argumentation Mining.

Filomena Gaspar - Lisbon School of Nursing President

Helena Presado - Lisbon School of Nursing (WCQR2018 Scientific Committee)

Transformative approaches: synergies, distinctions, strengths and current challenges
Rosalind Edwards, University of Southampton - UK

Voices advocating radical challenges to traditional research practice have grown louder over the past decades.  They contest our conceptions of how and what sort of knowledge is generated by researchers. The transformation of research has been identified as one of the key methodological challenges of the twenty-first century. In this talk I will explore the challenges posed both by and for the disruption of conventional research practice and implementation of democratic and collaborative knowledge production. I will lay out the shared endeavours across transformative approaches such as inclusive research, co-production, indigenous, and ethics of care, but also the distinctions in these various transformative research philosophies. I will also point to some of the opportunities and challenges that may be on the horizon for transformative research methodologies in the general context of neo-liberalism and austerity, and specific developments concerning big data and computer technologies in social research.

National Centre for Research Methods panel on ‘Innovations in Qualitative Methods and Topics’

Abstract. In this panel session, two of the co-directors and lead qualitative researchers working in NCRM, based at the Universities of Southampton and Edinburgh, will introduced participants to the work of the NCRM.  They will discuss approaches to researching innovative topics and methods, with a particular focus on researching families and sustainability, and on conducting secondary data analysis with large volumes of qualitative data from several archived qualitative studies while retaining qualitative integrity.

Brief context:
The ESRC National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) is funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council as an integrated, cutting edge centre of expertise that develops innovative research methods, advances methodological understanding and practice, and supports training and capacity building.  This mission includes developing qualitative methodological practice and innovation in social research to increase the quality and range of approaches used by social scientists.  NCRM runs a programme of ‘in-house’ and associated projects that aim to deliver valuable insights into creative qualitative research methods, from generating data in novel ways in different contexts through to reusing existing archived qualitative research data.

Topics/presenters:

An introduction to NCRM’s qualitative research
Professor Rosalind Edwards (University of Southampton)

Researching families and sustainability
Professor Lynn Jamieson (University of Edinburgh)

A skills audit for participants: interactive activity

Big data, qualitative style: a breadth-and-depth method for working with large amounts of secondary qualitative data
Professor Lynn Jamieson (University of Edinburgh) and Professor Rosalind Edwards (University of Southampton)

Tabling Tables in Qualitative Research Reports (16:00 to 16:35)
Ron Chenail, Nova Southeastern University - USA

Tables are wonderful tools for helping qualitative researchers extract findings from data and manage emergent categories, themes, and even theories, but their use in written reports to present the results from qualitative data analysis can be problematic. The trouble with tables are researchers can present names and definitions of categories along with plenty of excerpts from the data in their tables, but when researchers position cells containing names alongside cells containing data, they end up not presenting a clear explanation how the data evidence the qualitative claims researchers are claiming. This lack of clarity means readers have to provide their own analysis in order to understand and judge what the results mean; such a situation is not good qualitative research reporting. In order for reviewers and readers to judge the quality of qualitative researchers’ analytical judgements, researchers must define the quality, introduce the data, and explain the relationship between the asserted quality and the supporting data. To think of this in legal terms, persuasive evidence in qualitative research is produced when researchers juxtapose testimony and exhibits effectively so researchers make it clear how one element supports and enhances the other in a coherent fashion. In this manner, presenting qualitative analysis results is like a courtroom, tables may be useful tools to display exhibits, but they lack testimony to make a strong case. In this presentation, I will show how to use tables as effective management tools in the analysis process and as helpful scaffolding devices in the transitioning from qualitative analysis to reporting qualitative research results, but in the final report, I suggest tables should be tabled. 

Using qualitative research methods to develop and evaluate complex interventions (16:35 to 17:10)
Adriana Henriques, Lisbon School of Nursing - Portugal

The Medical Research Council (MRC) described complex interventions as interventions that contain several interacting. The interventions are complex because there are many potential sources of complexity in the relationship between an intervention and its effects. In the complex interventions are needed measure or explanation the effects of the interventions. Quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods can measure or inform the understanding of a problem, the development of an intervention, and the understanding of how an intervention is delivered by care providers and received by people.  The MRC Framework approach may facilitate researchers when developing a complex intervention in different domains of research. In all phases of developing and evaluating complex interventions are need to use different types of research methods.  This conference introduces the process of developing and evaluating complex interventions, illustrate this with different examples, and shows contribute of qualitative research in this process.

João Santos - Lisbon School of Nursing Vice President