Analysis and Interpretation of Ethnographic Data

Treating analysis as both a mechanical and a cognitive process, Book 5 begins by describing why analysis and interpretation of data are necessary. In the first two chapters the book points out the importance of beginning ethnographic analysis in the field, during the earliest stages of data collection, and how to move between induction and deduction, the concrete and the abstract, in a process informed by an emerging and increasingly refined conceptual model. The middle section tackles the challenge of transforming huge piles of text, audio, and visual information into an ethnographic whole through generic and specific coding and quantification of qualitative data, using multiple extended examples. Chapters show how to use computers in analysis of qualitative data and ways to integrate the results of quantitative and qualitative data into a comprehensive picture of a complex whole. Chapter 9 presents a rare and comprehensive description of the statistics regularly used by ethnographers to analyze ethnographic surveys. Chapters 10 and 11 show how researchers create and then fine-tune preliminary results into an integrated whole, display them for multiple audiences, and write them up. The final chapter illustrates how ethnographers can share the meaning of results with local communities and constituents and with other professional researchers.