IQRN Webinar Series: Data Collection Episode Profiles - Working Visually with Quotations

Sort and Sift, Think and Shift, developed by ResearchTalk, is an approach to qualitative analysis that emphasizes the importance of “power” quotations, text segments from a transcript or other document that are especially instructive or evocative. In the Sort and Sift approach, researchers often construct diagrams of these quotations, called “data collection episode profiles,” whereby each transcript is analyzed holistically before we assess patterns across them. The ATLAS.ti Network View provides a tool that is well suited for these episode profiles through the use of quotation titles or the quotations themselves. The position of quotations in the diagram reinforces the meaningful relationship among them—for example, a centrally located quotation suggests its shared relevance to surrounding quotations. Hyperlinks available in ATLAS.ti, including user-defined relationships, can further illustrate dynamic links between and among quotations.

Researchers interested in coding can move from the episode profile to coding quotations based on the larger contextual meaning of clusters of text segments as well as the more nuanced meaning of individual segments. Memos and comments can also be incorporated in these diagrams. This session will use data from interviews with immigrants from the Archive of Immigrant Voices.