Qualitative Secondary Analysis
- Kahryn Hughes - University of Leeds, UK
- Anna Tarrant - University of Lincoln, UK
A comprehensive guide to carrying out Qualitative Secondary Analysis (QSA) that brings together expert advice and professional insight from leading researchers who have developed innovative theories and methods of QSA.
Exploring crucial components of research and analysis—such as where to find resources, how to search within a resource, and working with both paper archives and non-textual data—each chapter offers insightful case studies, links to further reading and applied helpful hints and tips to help effectively apply these innovations to further the reader’s own research.
A must read for Social Science students, early career researchers and researchers new to the field of QSA, this text will help readers through every aspect of a research process using QSA, from application to implications.
'Practical, sensible and timely guide, inspiring teachers, researchers and students to work creatively with the wealth of archived qualitative data now freely available to us'.
Rachel Thomson, Professor of Childhood and Youth Studies, University of Sussex
This book confirms the standing of QSA securely within the mainstream of social science methods. It provides detailed chapters based on recent research using QSA, such as longitudinal QSA , nuanced comparative analysis, and blending existing with newly generated qualitative data. Fundamental ethical challenges that arise when repurposing data (e.g., the absence of explicit consent for reuse) are reviewed, and possible ways forward proposed. Instructors in need of a clear, accessible introduction to QSA for use in a methodology course will be well satisfied.
Dr Libby Bishop is the Coordinator for International Data Infrastructures in the Data Archive at GESIS-Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences.
It was not adopted since too few students expressed an interest in doing secondary qualitative analysis for their thesis
This is an excellent book and very instructive on the history of QSA, the resources that can be accessed to obtain secondary data, and the best practices involved in using QSA in research. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on using quantitative data in QSA for its broad approach. While the text was not adopted, it has been recommended to colleagues in the field of qualitative and mixed methods research, where in the current climate, qualitative secondary data is fast becoming a prominent and much needed research method.
Chapters from this book (2,4,6) will make the core reading for PGT unit ( An introduction to social science research). The reasons are:
1. Relevance to the content I wish to cover in the sessions
2. Being a recent resource
3. Being able to offer students further information by referring them to only one resource (rather than chapters from different books or different articles)
very useable guide to carrying out analysis on a wide variety of data sets, practical advice given, and enough depth on rationales and theories underlying the methods.
Put on the reading list for students
An engaging text with some very interesting material.
Sage College Publishing
