Problems and dilemmas, manifested during past projects, as well as in planned current qualitative research, inspired me to bring up this question.
Could you please, highlight the key problems, during secondary data analysis, from any perspective ?
Could you give the names of researchers from the areas of health sciences, sociology or anthropology who methodologically refined the issue of secondary data analysis?
Share your opinions, knowledge and experiences.
Here are links to two "special issues" of the journal Forum: Qualitative Social Research that were devoted to the topic of secondary analysis of qualitative data:
http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/issue/view/13
http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/issue/view/38
Analysing secondary data requires the researcher to consider any observer bias in the primary research. Any secondary data has already gone thorough a selection process that may have not been thorough or may even have been deliberately biased. Where researchers use secondary data they need to very carefully check the provenance of it and for any indication that the data may have been used for commercial purposes. This is very important where qualitative studies have been done on drug efficacy.
this is very interesting but not easy to give a clear answer yet. It's about the field I work in, it 's all new so I have to find my own method. I keep contact with the first experience and see what kind of information can be transferred and how it can be presented.
Dera Beata:
When you do qualitative research, normally secondary data is used to support your formulations, or is used as a supplement to give a holistic picture of the scenario you are studying. The attempt should be that the secondary data being used is from a highly reliable source. I understand sometimes, even the so-called reliable agencies themselves provide widely different figures about the same phenomenon. Then one is in a quandary as to which data to consider as reliable. Often, there is none to even certify as to which one is more reliable. I have faced such situations.
Here are links to two "special issues" of the journal Forum: Qualitative Social Research that were devoted to the topic of secondary analysis of qualitative data:
http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/issue/view/13
http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/issue/view/38
Great links David! I would definitely recommend reviewing those. Additionally, as with much of the great qualitative work from fields of anthropology and social sciences in particular, the more you can explain the reasons for your choices (e.g., in using secondary qualitative analysis, why you chose that particular type, how you are integrating, etc.) the better insight it provides for the reader and the scholarly community in general. Looking forward to hearing how your work progresses.
Dear @Kamal, @David @Anna, @Debi and @Rita thank you for sharing paper, links, thoughts and professional suggestions. I appreciate it.
Happy to help Beata and thanks for your willingness to ask a question.
Dear Anna please feel invited to join my other questions on my profile.
Hi Beata. I have extensively used quantitative data in all my ethnographic work. I typically use it for "scene-setting" so for instance prevalence data related to a particular phenomenon or identifying determinants and then use qualitative and ethnographic methods to complicate those findings and work out the mechanisms by which certain problems could be approached. For example there are many statistically significant correlates of domestic violence (a problem that is persistent across cultures); it is important to identify these to develop a corpus of factors - however the ways in which these correlates are manifested can be uncovered only through qualitative techniques. If you are using secondary data sets I would rely on large representative samples (Census or Demographic Health Surveys) rather than small sample surveys because of the known problems with sample size, selection etc. Also the types of questions one asks in quantitative versus interpretive approaches are very different and you don't have to feel that you need to use numbers just to justify your paper. I think they can be extremely useful and enriching so long as they are used in relevant areas of your study. Hope this helps!
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