Qualitative Data Analysis

Description: Qualitative data present challenges to evaluators seeking to analyze textual, visual, and aural data from interviews, diaries, observations, and open-ended questionnaire items. Analysis of qualitative data can range from simple enumeration and illustrative use to complex analysis more expertise and time. In this class, participants will work through a structured approach to analyzing qualitative data based on an iterative process of considering the purpose of the analysis, reviewing suitable options, and working through interpretations. Techniques include grouping, summarizing, finding patterns, discovering relationships, and developing and testing relationships. The session will address practical and ethical issues in analyzing and reporting qualitative data-particularly who participates in interpretation, how confidentiality can be maintained, how analysis can be tracked and checked, and standards for good practice in qualitative data analysis. Hands-on exercises for individuals and small groups will be used throughout the class. Manual analysis of data will be used in exercises and participants will also be introduced to NVivo and other computer packages to assist analysis.

Instructor: Dr. Patricia Rogers is Professor in Public Sector Evaluation and leader of the research program in Evidence-Based Policy and Practice in the Sustainable Health and Well-Being Research Institute at RMIT University (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology), Australia . She has more than 25 years of experience in research and evaluation using qualitative data, including projects on attitudes toward money, implementation and impact of educational evaluation, a home visiting service for maternal and child health, a criminal offender support project, and grain farmers' decision making processes. Much of her work has involved combining qualitative and quantitative data, including a research project into impact evaluation for the Victorian Department of National Resources and Environment, exploring how qualitative accounts of causal processes could inform building, and testing program theories.

Dr Rogers has presented keynote addresses at conferences of the Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australasian, European, South African, Swedish and United Kingdom evaluation societies and associations and delivered evaluation workshops in the USA , the UK , Australia , New Zealand , South Africa , Japan , Singapore and Malaysia . Her work has been recognized by the American Evaluation Association's Myrdal Award for Evaluation Practice, presented to an evaluation practitioner who has made a substantial and cumulative contribution to the professional practice of evaluation, and whose work brings to life the AEA's Guiding Principles for Evaluation, the Australasian Evaluation Society's Evaluation Training and Services Award for outstanding contributions to the profession of evaluation, the AES' Caulley-Tulloch Prize for Pioneering Literature in Evaluation, and the AES Best Evaluation Study Award.

Certificates: CEP IB.g or CAEP IIB.g

Fee: $795