Debates of Qualitative Tools

In the section of size of database, Taylor and her co-authors mentioned that it was not qualitative research tools that lead to the trend of collecting large data. Sometimes, it is the research project which aims for having large dataset. This is quite true and seen in my daily research experiences. Our project adopted a concept called design based research, through which we assessed students' learning not only from growth shown in pre-to-posttest, but we are more cared about their learning process and treat classroom as an ecology. This requires us to have multiple sources of data, such as students’ participation pattern, students’ artifacts, videos, which record their learning experiences. Having large data set doesn’t necessarily mean we would adopt a shallow analytical method. We used pre-test and posttests to examine students’ overall learning pattern and process data, such artifacts and classroom video data to unveil the journey students took to arrive the destination. The qualitative research tools do a nice job to organize different kinds of data and link between them, which would be time-consuming if there had been no analytical tools. However, it is still researchers who do analytical work. Analytical tools perform clerical and technical tasks.

Another feature that qualitative tools amaze me most is it would be easier to add new codes to existing coding system if it is necessary. Comparing to the tedious work in manual coding, going back to raw data as new codes been added is not uncommon. However, using qualitative tools would expedite this process.

I agree that qualitative research tools make the analytical process more transparent. This is especially true when researchers need to link multiple datasets or make sense of a large dataset. For example, without tools, either I need to remember the linkage between files or I need to write them down. Given the importance of triangulation of data source, linking between files is important. 

I am not worried that qualitative research tools could create distance between researchers and data. although using qualitative research tools tend to popularize one analytical method, coding, sometimes, doing coding and segmenting is a first step towards doing more advanced analysis. Therefore, technological tools should not be blamed. If one researcher wants to adopt simple "coding and counting" as his/her method, s/he would do that without technology.