Beyond Coding: Alternative Hermeneutics for Qualitative Data Analysis

Many social work researchers rely on qualitative data collection techniques to craft research projects that focus on issues of equity and justice. Qualitative methods are diverse, yet most share a common quality of using naturalistic techniques such as interviews or observations in order to foreground the voices and experiences of marginalized communities. Through techniques such as storytelling, photo-elicitation and artistic representations, researchers prompt sensitive, non-linear, and metaphor-rich stories. Unfortunately, data analysis using transcripts, field notes, or pictures is often reduced to a process of coding for similar topics in the text. This kind of manifest data analysis has been critiqued as too often finding what is already known, since it often depends on what “shows up” in the data. Truly generative work with these kinds of data must address the latent content also available in texts to illustrate the everyday nature of what is “taken for granted.” Approaches that draw on hermeneutic philosophy, narrative theory and critical discourse analysis offer alternative techniques for exploring latent content in the context of qualitative data analysis.

This research methods workshop is intended for beginning to intermediate qualitative and mixed methods researchers. Using didactic, discussion-oriented and participatory exercises, we will accomplish three primary objectives: 1) to provide theoretical scaffolding for hermeneutic interpretive approaches to qualitative data analysis; 2) to illustrate the use of these different approaches through ongoing research projects; and 3) to help participants consider how to apply these approaches to their own work.

We begin by exploring the epistemological framing of data analysis and the contrast between post-positivist and hermeneutic approaches to scientific knowledge building. This workshop will define key philosophical concepts such as the hermeneutic circle, criteria for plausible interpretations, and methods of argumentation in interpretive analyses. We will share insights from narrative theory and discourse analysis as particular methodologies that have developed systematic techniques for uncovering latent content.

In order to situate these theoretical insights, we draw on research projects that are exploring diverse social work concerns such as domestic violence, eating disorders, chronic illness, and palliative care. This workshop will review the practical decisions involved in implementing projects that utilize hermeneutic, narrative, and discursive methods, with attention to the specific ethical and IRB considerations that arise when working with people's stories. We will illustrate the use of varying techniques including narrative content and structural analyses, tools for interrogating common sense discourses and their effects, and examples of plausible argument construction as concrete strategies for circling between manifest and latent levels of information in qualitative data. We end with a discussion of how these alternative interpretive processes can be integrated into a qualitative data analysis portfolio. Participants will leave this workshop with both theoretical insights and practical tools to engage new methodologies in their work.