Kuckartz - Qualitative Text Analysis: A Guide to Methods, Practice and Using Software

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Udo Kuckartz 2014
Anne McWhertor 2014 (English Translation)

First published 2002

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013939874

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List of Figures

List of Tables

About the Author

Udo Kuckartz is a Professor of Educational Research and Social Research Methods at Philipps University Marburg, Germany. He teaches courses on qualitative and quantitative methods, general research designs, and mixed methods research. He also taught at the Free University Berlin, the Technical University Dresden, and the Humboldt University Berlin. He received his Masters degree in Sociology and Political Science from RWTH Aachen, Germany. With a doctoral dissertation on Computer and Verbal Data, he obtained his Ph.D. in Sociology from the Technical University Berlin, Germany. Some years later he earned his habilitation, a second qualification common in many European countries, in Educational Research from the Free University Berlin.

He authored 17 books and more than 180 articles in journals and as contributions to books. Most of his books are focused on qualitative and quantitative methodology, e.g. textbooks on qualitative evaluation, on-line Evaluation, computer-assisted qualitative data analysis, and an introduction into statistics. Since the 1980s, he has worked on computer-assisted methods of qualitative data analysis (QDA). In connection with his doctoral dissertation on computer and verbal data, he was a pioneer in the field of QDA-software and developed the software MAX (later winMAX, which is known worldwide today as MAXQDA).

He is currently working on his 18th book, a textbook on Mixed Methods. At Philipps University Marburg, he founded the Magma Research Group, which organizes the annual CAQD Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Conferences.

Dr. Kuckartz applied research focuses on environmental issues, particularly on environmental attitudes and behaviour, as well as perceptions of climate change. He has served as a leader for many nationwide surveys on environmental attitudes on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety. He has also completed other research projects in this field for the UBA, the German Environmental Protection Agency, and for the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation.

Acknowledgements

This book is the result of many seminars and workshops that I gave at the Philipps University of Marburg, where I am teaching since more than ten years, and other places around the world. To that extent, I am indebted to many students and colleagues who have helped me to develop the concept of systematic qualitative text analysis and to examine its practical application and implementation. For the constructive discussion of the manuscript in its various stages, I am especially grateful to Stefan Raediker, Claus Stefer, and Thomas Ebert and to Uta-Kristina Meyer, Julia Busch, and my wife Anne Kuckartz. Mailin Gunkel, Gaby Schwarz, and Patrick Plettenberg have eagerly helped with the layout, bibliography, and technical drawing. A special thanks goes to John Creswell, who has encouraged me again and again to translate my books, which were previously published only in German, into English and thus make them known in the English-speaking world.

As always, the writing of this book was a long process, from recording my first ideas to submitting the final camera-ready draft. It was great fun and often challenging and I thank everyone who has supported me.

Preface

This book is the result of a long-standing plan of mine to write a hands-on guide to systematic analysis of qualitative data. As a university professor, I observed how unsure graduate students and doctoral candidates felt when analysing qualitative data. At a loss, they searched for an appropriate analysis strategy and, specifically, for methods described as accurately as possible as well as techniques they could apply to the practical implementation of their analysis. This book will help to satisfy this need. It presents the central steps of the process of qualitative text analysis in a straightforward way and describes three main methods in detail: thematic, evaluative and type-building analysis.

Qualitative text analysis, as described in this book, derives from many sources thematic analysis, grounded theory, classical content analysis, and others. It is a sort of hermeneutical-interpretive informed systematic analysis. In European countries, very often, the term qualitative content analysis is used for that kind of analysis. In the Anglo-Saxon world, however, the method content analysis is strongly associated with the quantitative paradigm. There, the term qualitative content analysis seems like a contradiction in itself. To avoid misunderstandings, I will therefore use the term qualitative text analysis in this book instead of qualitative content analysis. Three distinct forms of qualitative text analysis are described in detail in this book, with particular regard to complex types of analysis and the presentation of results. The possibilities for qualitative text analysis have expanded greatly because of modern computer technology; thus, this book will also present possibilities for practical implementation using QDA software (QDA stands for Qualitative D ata A nalysis).