Thick Description, Memos and Field Data
Everything the supplied source says about handling qualitative material sits in four paragraphs of one week's study notes. This page reproduces all of it, and marks the point at which the instruction stops.
What counts as qualitative data
The study notes give one sentence on data sources, and it carries a hedge that matters. The list is offered as the most common sources, not as the permitted set.
The trailing clause is the operational content of the sentence. If your evidence is interview transcripts, observation records and documents, no statistical package will process it for you, and the labour of analysis stays with you rather than moving to a tool.
THREE ANSWERS TO WHAT QUALITATIVE RESEARCHERS ACTUALLY USE
| Where it appears | What it lists | Overlap with the others |
|---|---|---|
| Study notes | Interviews, observations, documents | Loose overlap with the deck's five methods only |
| Slide 7, characteristics of the approach | Focus group interviews, projective techniques, depth interviews | None — shares no item with either other list |
| Slides 13-15, commonly used methods | Participant observation, direct observation, unstructured interviewing, case studies, documentation | Loose overlap with the notes (observation, documents) |
Three lists, three different answers, no cross-reference between them anywhere in the supplied material. The five methods are treated on Qualitative Methods: The Commonly Used Set.
Thick description and what makes description thick
Three attributes constitute thickness on that account, and they are worth separating because a project record can easily satisfy one and miss the other two.
- Rich detail — the particulars, not the gist.
- Meaningful social and historical contexts and experiences — where the account sits and what came before it.
- The significance of emotional content — what the material meant to the person, treated as evidence rather than as colour.
The memo as an analytical instrument
The memo is one of the few things in the week that is given a definition, a stated purpose and a stated relationship to the rest of the process. Treat it as the load-bearing item on this page.
The three terms the notes do define
- Memo
- A note, or possibly a sketch, made as data collection and analysis proceed, which traces the thinking of the researcher and helps guide a final conceptualisation.
- Analytic framework
- "A network of linked concepts and classifications", used to understand an underlying process. The source hedges its use: qualitative studies "often" use one.
- Underlying process
- "A sequence of events or constructs and how they relate" — the thing an analytic framework is built to understand.
The notes also state the goal of analysis: to uncover "emerging themes, patterns, concepts, insights, and understandings". Five targets, quoted from a 2002 text, and not one of the five is defined. That is worth registering before you plan an analysis around them.
The three analysis activities and what supports them
The memo, on the source's account, is not a separate activity but the thing that supports all of them. The activities themselves are quoted from a 1994 sourcebook, and each carries a parenthetical gloss of three or four words.
THE THREE ACTIVITIES, WITH EVERYTHING THE SOURCE SUPPLIES FOR EACH
| Activity | The source's gloss | Procedure given |
|---|---|---|
| Data reduction | "extracting the essence" | Not defined in source |
| Data display | "organizing for meaning" | Not defined in source |
| Drawing conclusions | "explaining the findings" | Not defined in source |
Preserve the source's hedge: the three are given "as suggested by" a 1994 text, not as a required sequence. The same three terms appear again, in a figure with no accompanying text at all, on The Evidence Assembly and Analysis Model.
Fieldwork is so fascinating, and coding usually so energy absorbing, that you can get overwhelmed with the flood of particulars — the poignant remark, the appealing personality of the key informant, the telling picture on the hallway bulletin board, the gossip after a key meeting
Field notes: named four times, defined never
Field notes carry a great deal of weight in this week. Participant observation lists "collection and storage of field notes" as one of its four issues; ethnography's most common approach has the researcher taking "extensive notes"; field research has the researcher taking "extensive notes that are coded and analysed in various ways"; and the notes' own quoted definition of qualitative research lists field notes first among the representations the work produces.
Collection and analysis at the same time — or not
The notes are explicit that the two run together, and hedge it once: "Qualitative data collection and analysis usually proceed simultaneously; ongoing findings affect what types of data are collected and how they are collected."
What the study notes say
- Collection and analysis proceed simultaneously
- Ongoing findings change what data is collected
- Ongoing findings change how it is collected
- Memos are made as both proceed
What the deck's design checklist says
- Determine analysis approaches at design time
- "Anticipate analysis — design the data collection to facilitate analysis"
- Make major design decisions before fieldwork
- Determine data collection options in advance
The creativity problem
The notes concede the hardest part of the work plainly: "The entire process of making sense of qualitative data requires creativity. Patterns and themes among complex data don't usually pop out." Having conceded it, they answer it with six suggestions quoted from a 2002 text.
- "being open to multiple possibilities or ways to think about a problem"
- "engaging in 'mental excursions' using multiple stimuli"
- "'side-tracking' or 'zigzagging'"
- "changing patterns of thinking"
- "making linkages between the 'seemingly unconnected'"
- "'playing at it'"
Working with what is actually here
The material supports some decisions well and others not at all. The separation below is this handbook's, not the source's, and it is offered so you can tell which parts of your method you can cite and which parts you will have to source elsewhere.
What to cite, what to source elsewhere
Analysis moves from named to procedural
The three analysis activities this page records — carrying glosses and no procedures — now have a later week behind them: a step sequence, a recovered three-stage model, and ten questions to put to a body of data.
What to carry forward
- Interviews, observations and documents are the source's three most common data sources — offered as examples, not as a closed set.
- Thickness has three stated attributes: rich detail, social and historical context, and the significance of emotional content.
- The memo is the week's one properly defined analytical instrument: notes or sketches made as work proceeds, tracing the researcher's thinking towards a final conceptualisation.
- Data reduction, data display and drawing conclusions are named and glossed in ten words, with no procedure attached to any of them.
- Field notes and coding are used repeatedly and defined nowhere; both need a second source, and neither should be presented as taught here.
Frequently asked questions
Is a field note the same thing as a memo?
The supplied material does not say. It defines the memo — notes or sketches tracing the researcher's thinking — and uses field notes four times without defining them once. Treat any distinction you adopt as your own, and state it as yours in your method section.
How thick does a description have to be?
No threshold is given. The source lists three attributes of thickness — rich detail, meaningful social and historical context, and the significance of emotional content — and supplies no example, counter-example or test. You will need a second source if you have to defend a standard.
Does the source explain how to code qualitative data?
No. Coding is used three times across the week: inside a quoted passage about fieldwork, on the slide claiming qualitative data can be coded quantitatively, and inside the definition of field research, which says notes are "coded and analysed in various ways" without naming any of the ways.
Should I analyse as I collect, or plan the analysis first?
The week tells you to do both. The study notes state that collection and analysis usually proceed simultaneously and that findings change what is collected; the design checklist requires analysis to be anticipated and collection designed to facilitate it. Pick one, record the choice, and be ready to justify it.
What is an analytic framework, as this material uses the term?
The notes define it as "a network of linked concepts and classifications" used to understand an underlying process, which they define in turn as "a sequence of events or constructs and how they relate". The hedge is the source's: qualitative studies "often" use one.
References and source attribution
- Supplied teaching source, Week 9: The nature of qualitative research — study notes (two files supplied, textually identical) and slide deck.
- Patton, M. 2002, Qualitative research and evaluation methods, 3rd ed., Sage. Cited in the study notes for the three most common data sources, the five targets of analysis, and the six creativity suggestions (pp. 514, 544).
- Miles, M. & Huberman, M. 1994, Qualitative data analysis: An expanded sourcebook, 2nd ed., Sage. Cited for the three analysis activities and for the "flood of particulars" passage at p. 72.
- Denzin, N. 1989 — cited in the study notes as the source of "thick" description. No title or publisher is given and the work does not appear in the week's reference list.
- Denzin, N. & Lincoln, Y. (eds) 2005, Handbook of qualitative research, 3rd ed., Sage. Cited in the notes for the definition of qualitative research that names field notes and memos among the representations the work produces.
Suggested questions for Ask KEVOS
- What exactly does the supplied source say a memo is for?
- Which parts of qualitative analysis does this material define and which does it only name?
- How do the three lists of qualitative data sources in this week differ?
- What would I need a second source for before running a qualitative analysis?
- Show me the conflict between simultaneous analysis and the design checklist.