by Gery Ryan
Bernard, H. Russell
1994 Research methods in anthropology: Qualitative and
quantitative approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. An
excellent review of a wide array of data collection and analysis
techniques. The best methods book in anthropology. Clearly
written.
1996 Qualitative data, quantitative analysis. Cultural
Anthropology Methods Journal 8(1):9-11. Distinguishes between
qualitative & quantitative data and qualitative &
quantitative analyses.
Dey, Ian
1993 Qualitative Data Analysis: A user-friendly guide for social scientists. London: Routledge.
The simplest how-to-do-stuff on the market. Gives an even
overview of all the different perspectives in qualitative
research from grounded theory to building matrices and knowledge
maps. Combined with the Miles & Huberman book, you can make a
good start on basic analysis.
Glaser, Barney G. and Anselm Strauss.
1967. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for
Qualitative Research. New York: Aldine. The classic citation
for grounded theory, but a terrible book to read if you want to
understand how to do grounded theory. Read the Strauss &
Corbin (1992) book instead.
Krippendorff, Klaus
1980 Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology.
Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. The most detailed book on
context analysis. Includes excellent discussion of intercoder
reliability and validity issues.
Lancy, David F.
1993 Qualitative research in education: An introduction to the
major traditions. New York: Longman Publishing Group. A good
source book for qualitative studies in education. Examines the
different questions and methodologies that anthropological,
sociological, and biological perspectives bring to education
research. Excellent chapters on ethology, case studies, and
cognitive studies. Provides helpful guidelines for setting up and
doing qualitative research.
Miles, Matthew B. and A. Michael Huberman
1994 Qualitative data analysis: An expanded sourcebook. 2nd
ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. A very clear set of
introductory chapters do data analysis (pp., 1-47). The best
reference book for seeing how to use matrices to analyze and
display qualitative data. A must have reference.
Roberts, Carl W.
1997 Text Analysis for the Social Sciences: Methods for
Drawing Statistical Inferences from Texts and Transcripts. NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. An edited volume that examines
the latest developments in content analysis. It has excellent
chapters on semantic network analysis, and provides helpful
insights on the types of data matrices that can be created from
texts and how these matrices can be analyzed.
Tesch, Renata
1990 Qualitative research: Analysis types and software tools.
New York: The Falmer Press. A clear description of the
fundamental issues in qualitative data analysis: the selection of
units, and the nature of categorization processes (pp., 113-146).
Despite a bias toward interpretivism, Tesch provides a solid
review of the history of qualitative research in the social
sciences (pp., 9-112).
Strauss, Anselm and J. Corbin
1990 Basics of Qualitative Research. Grounded theory
Procedures and Techniques. Newbury Park: Sage. The clearest
book on how to do grounded theory.
Spradley, J. P.
1979 The ethnographic interview. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston. The classic guide to conducting ethnographic
interviews.
1980 Participant observation. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston. The key guide for understanding participant
observation.
Weber, Robert Philip
1990 Basic content analysis. 2nd ed. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. A simplified and more up-to-date version of Krippendorff's (1980) work on context analysis. Part of Sage's Quantitative Series.
Weller, Susan and A. Kimball Romney
1988 Systematic data collection. Newbury Park, CA: Sage
Publications. The most comprehensive book for understanding
how to collect and analyze free lists, pile sorts, triads, frame
substitution, and other systematic data collection techniques.
Part of Sage's Qualitative Research Methods Series.
Weitzman, Eben A. and Matthew B. Miles
1995 Computer programs for qualitative data analysis: A
software sourcebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Reviews
23 software programs that help you analyze text. A very good
introduction on how to choice software (pp., 9-25). Worth
purchasing if you plan on doing a lot of text analysis in your
career.
Data Collection & Management
General
Bernard, H. Russell, Peter Killworth, David Kronenfield and Lee Sailer
1984 The problem of informant accuracy: The validity of
retrospective data. Annual Reviews in Anthropology 13:495-517. What
people say is not what they do. Beware of using recall data as
proxies for actual behavior patterns. A review of the accuracy
literature pre-1984.
Bernard, H. Russell, Pertti J. Pelto, et al.
1986 The construction of primary data in cultural
anthropology. Current Anthropology 27:382-396. All data is
constructed. Reviews different types of data commonly collected
by social scientists.
Scrimshaw, N. and G. Gleason
1992 RAP: Rapid Assessment Procedures: Qualitative
Methodologies for Planning and Evaluation of Health Related
Programs. Boston: International Nutrition Foundation for
Developing Countries (INFDC).
Weller, Susan and A. Kimball Romney
1988 Systematic data collection. Newbury Park, CA: Sage
Publications. The most comprehensive book for understanding
how to collect and analyze free lists, pile sorts, triads, frame
substitution, and other systematic data collection techniques.
Freelists
Borgatti, Stephen
1989 Using ANTHROPAC to investigate a cultural
domain. Cultural Anthropology Methods Newsletter 1(2):11. Simple
steps for entering and analyzing freelists using ANTHROPAC.
Smith, J. Jerome
1993 Using ANTHROPAC 3.5 and a spreadsheet to compute
a free-list salience index. Cultural Anthropology Methods Journal
5(3):1-3. Explains how the salience index is created in
ANTHROPAC and its uses in research.
Frame Substitution, Pile Sorts, Triads, & Paired Comparisons
Boster, James
1994 The successive pile sort. Cultural Anthropology Methods
Journal 6(2):11-12. Describes how to conduct successive pile
sorts. To be used when you want to compare across informants.
Boster, James S., Brent Berlin and John O'Neill
1986 The correspondence of Jivaroan to scientific ornithology.
American Anthropologist 88:569-583. Uses pile sort task to
collect data on the similarity of bird species.
Burton, Michael and Sara B. Nerlove
1976 Balanced designs for triad tests: two examples from
English. Social Science Research 5:247-267. Designs lambda
designs for reducing the number of triads in a triads test.
D'Andrade, Roy G. et al.
1972 Categories of disease in American-English and
Mexican-Spanish. In Multidimensional scaling: Theory and
applications in the behavioral sciences, Vol. 2: Applications,
Vol. 2 A. K. Romney, R. N. Shepard and S. Nerlove, eds. Pp. 9-54.
New York: Seminar Press. Uses frame substitution techniques
to query informants about illness terms.
Verbatim Cases
Werner, Oswald
1996 Short take 18: Notation for transcribing conversations
and interviews. Cultural Anthropology Methods Journal
8(February):11,12. Simple transcription notation for verbatim
interviews.
Werner, Oswald et al.
1995 Short take 15: The case for verbatim cases. Cultural
Anthropology Methods Journal 7(1)6-8. The usefulness of short
verbatim anecdotes.
Fieldnotes
Bolton, Ralph
1984 Computers in ethnographic research: Final report. NIE
Grant # G-78-0062. Washington, DC.: National Inst. of Education. A
barebones account of how to take and manage fieldnotes. A hidden
classic.
Johnson, Allen and Orna R. Johnson
1990 Quality into quantity: On the measurement potential of
ethnographic fieldnotes. In Fieldnotes: The makings of
anthropology R. Sanjek, ed. Pp. 161-186. Ithica, NY: Cornell
University Press. A clear account of how to systematically
collect and analyze fieldnotes.
Sampling
Johnson, Jeffrey C.
1990 Selecting ethnographic informants. Newbury Park, CA: Sage
Publications. The best book on how to identify key informants
when working with small samples. Part of Sage's Qualitative
Research Methods Series.
Werner, Oswald and H. Russell Bernard
1994 Short take 13: Ethnographic sampling. Cultural
Anthropology Methods Journal 6(2):7-9. Deals with issues of
"typicality" versus "range" of phenomenon.
General text management
Bernard, H. Russell
1991 About text management and computers. Cultural
Anthropology Methods Journal 3(1):1-4, 7, 12. Clear
description of different types of text management, including
issues associated with indexing, coding, and text retrieval.
Working with Word Processors
Carney, John H., Joseph F. Joiner and Helen Tragou
1997 Categorizing, coding, and manipulating qualitative data
using the WordPerfect Word Processor. The Qualitative Report
3:1-8.
Cohen, Alex
1995 Using word-procesing software for analysis of fieldnotes
and other research materials. Cultural Anthropology Methods
Journal 7(1):11-12.
Gillespie, Gilbert W., Jr.
1986 Using word processor macros for computer-assisted
qualitative analysis. Qualitative Sociology 9:283-292. Early
paper advocating the use of word processors to help with simple
text analysis.
Harris, Robert
1996 Variation among style checkers in sentence measurement.
Text Technology: The Journal of Computer Text Processing
6(2):80-90.
Koester, David and Matthew Thorn
1993 Programming in WordPerfect to aid in text
analysis. Cultural Anthropology Methods Journal 5(2):4,5. Describes
a macro for searching and pulling blocks of text associated with
multiple words.
Ryan, Gery
1993a Using styles in WordPerfect as templates for
your field notes. Cultural Anthropology Methods Newsletter
5(3):8,9. Shows how to use styles in WordPerfect to organize
field notes.
1993b Using WordPerfect macros to handle fieldnotes
I: Coding. Cultural Anthropology Methods Journal 5(3):10,11. Outlines
simple macros for inserting point codes into text.
Truex, Gregory F.
1993 Tagging and typing: Notes on codes in anthropology.
Cultural Anthropology Methods Journal 5(1):3-5. Describes
coding conventions for marking blocks of text. Also reviews how
to use DtSearch to retrieve the blocked units.
Analysis - Text
Word Counts
Bernard, H. Russell
1995 Counting words in documents: WORDS 2.0. Cultural
Anthropology Methods Journal 7(3)11-12.
Jehn, Karen Ann and Oswald Werner
1993 Hapax Legomenon II: Theory, a thesaurus, and
word frequency. Cultural Anthropology Methods Journal 5(1):8-10. Suggests
developing a list of key words for theme constructs, then using
the key words to test specific hypotheses.
Ryan, Gery and Thomas Weisner
1996 Easy ways to analyze words in brief descriptions: How do
fathers and mothers describe their adolescent children? In Press,
Cultural Anthropology Methods Journal 8(3):?? Outlines how to
use word counts to compare qualitative text across groups.
Werner, Oswald
1992 Short take 8: Hapax Legomenon: First steps in
analyzing your interviews. Cultural Anthropology Methods
Newsletter 4(3):6-8. Advocates doing word counts as first
step in exploratory analysis.
Johnson, Eric
1995 Counting words and computing word frequency project
report: WORDS. TEXT Technology 5:8-17. Describes the program
WORDS 2.0 that counts word frequencies in text documents.
Building Cultural Models/Folk Definitions
Garro, Linda Young
1982 The ethnography of health care decisions. Social Science
& Medicine 16:1451-1452.
1988 Explaining high blood pressure: Variation in knowledge
about illness. American Ethnologist 15(1):98-119.
Werner, Oswald
1993 Short take 11: Constructed folk definitions from
interviews. Cultural Anthropology Methods Journal 5(3):4-7. A
step-by-step guide for creating cultural models from interview
transcripts and fieldnotes.
Exploratory Analysis with Words
Jehn, Karen A. and Lorna Doucet
1996 Developing categories from interview data: Text analysis
and multidimensional scaling. Part I. Cultural Anthropology
Methods Journal 8(2):15-16. Describes a series of steps for
exploratory analysis, including word counts, pile sorting tasks,
calculating category scores.
1997 Developing categories for interview data: Consequences of
different coding and analysis strategies in understanding text.
Part 2. Cultural Anthropology Methods Journal 9(1):1-7.
Snegg, Michael and H. Russell Bernard
1996 Words as actors: A method for doing semantic network analysis. Cultural Anthropology Methods Journal 8(2):7-10. The front edge of exploratory text analysis. Looks at the co-occurrence of key words and uses network analysis to establish patterns of word associations.
Analysis - Systematic
Multidimensional Scaling
Albert, Steven M.
1991 Cognition of caregiving tasks: Multidimensional scaling
of the caregiver task domain. The Gerontologist 31(6):726-734.
Arbie, Phipps, J. Douglas Carroll and Wayne S. DeSarbo
1987 Three-way scaling and clustering. Newbury Park, CA: Sage
Publications.
Kruskal, Joseph B. and Myron Wish
1978 Multidimensional scaling. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage
Publications.
Cluster Analysis
Aldenderfer, Mark S. and Roger K. Blashfield
1984 Cluster Analysis. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
Bailey, Kenneth D.
1994 Typologies and taxonomies: An introduction to
classification techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
Johnson, S. C.
1967 Hierarchical clustering schemes. Psychometrika
32:241-253.
Correspondence Analysis
Moore, Carmella C. and A. Kimball Romney
1994 Material culture, geographic propinquity, and linguistic
affiliation on the north coast of New Guinea: a reanalysis of
Welsch, Terrell, and Nadolski (1992). American Anthropologist
96:370-391.
Weller, Susan C. and A. Kimball Romney
1990 Metric scaling: correspondence analysis. Newbury Park,
CA: Sage Publications.
Consensus Analysis
Romney, A. Kimball, Susan C. Weller and William Batchelder
1986 Culture as consensus: A theory of culture and informant
accuracy. American Anthropologist 88:313-339. The key
citation for consensus analysis.
Romney, A. Kimball, William H. Batchelder and Susan C. Weller
1987 Recent applications of cultural consensus theory.
American Behavioral Scientist 2:163-177.
Weller, Susan C.
1983 New data on intracultural variability: The hot-cold
concept of medicine and illness. Human Organizations 42:249-257.
1987 Shared knowledge, intracultural variation and knowledge
aggregation. American Behavioral Scientist 31:178-193.
Weller, Susan C. and Claibourne I. Dungy
1986 Personal preferences and ethnic variations among Anglo
and Hispanic breast and bottle feeders. Social Science &
Medicine 23:539-548.
Weller, Susan C. and N. Clay Mann
1997 Assessing rater performance without a "gold
standard" using consensus theory. Medical Decision Making
17:71-79. One of the clearest descriptions of consensus
analysis available.
General Reviews of Software Programs
Tesch, Renata
1990 Qualitative research: analysis types and software tools.
New York: The Falmer Press. Older review of various text
retrievers and text-base programs including The Ethnograph,
ETHNO, QUALPRO, and Textbase Alpha (pp. 135-305).
1991 Computers and qualitative data II: Introduction.
Qualitative Sociology 14(3):225-243. Good general review of
what different programs do.
Weitzman, Eben A. and Matthew B. Miles
1995 Computer programs for qualitative data analysis: A
software sourcebook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Reviews
23 software programs that help you analyze text. A very good
introduction on how to choice software (pp., 9-25). Worth
purchasing if you plan on doing a lot of text analysis in your
career.
See Cultural Anthropology Methods
Journal (CAM)
for more recent reviews of text management and analysis software.
Exemplars
Albert, Steven M.
1991 Cognition of caregiving tasks: Multidimensional scaling
of the caregiver task domain. The Gerontologist 31(6):726-734. Good
example of multidimensional scaling in practice.
Ash, Peter, Arthur L. Kellermann, Dawna Fuqua-Whitley and Amri Johnson
1996 Gun acquisition and use by juvenile offenders. Journal of
the American Medical Association 275:22. One way of
presenting quotes in an article.
Chavez, Leo R., F. Allan Hubbell, Juliet M. McMullin, Rebecca G. Martinez and Shiraz I. Mishra
1995 Structure and meaning in models of breast and cervical
cancer risk factors: A comparison of perceptions among Latinas,
Anglo women, and physicians. Medical Anthropology Quarterly
9:40-74. Great example of how to use free lists, rating
tasks, and multidimensional scaling to show group similarities
and differences.
D'Andrade, Roy G. et al.
1972 Categories of disease in American-English and
Mexican-Spanish. In Multidimensional scaling: Theory and
applications in the behavioral sciences, Vol. 2: Applications,
Vol. 2 A. K. Romney, R. N. Shepard and S. Nerlove, eds. Pp. 9-54.
New York: Seminar Press. An early, but very thorough analysis
of a profile matrix. Includes cluster analysis as well as
multidimensional scaling. Also has a precursor to correspondence
analysis.
D'Andrade, Roy
1976 A propositional analysis of the U.S. American beliefs
about illness. In Meaning in Anthropology K. Basso and
H. A. Selby, eds. Pp. 155-247. Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press.
Erickson, Pamela
1997 Contraceptive methods: Do Hispanic adolescents and their
family planning care providers think about contraceptive methods
the same way? Medical Anthropology 17:65-82. Another good
example of multidimensional scaling in practice.
Fabrega, Horacio, Jr. and Peter K. Manning
1979 Illness episodes, illness severity and treatment options
in a pluralistic setting. Social Science & Medicine
13B:41-51. A wonderful outline for a data collection
instrument that records behavioral sequences over time.
Garro, Linda C.
1988 Explaining high blood pressure: Variation in knowledge
about illness. American Ethnologist 15:98-119.
Helitzer-Allen, Deborah L. and Carl Kendall
1992 Explaining differences between qualitative and
quantitative data: A study of chemoprophylaxis during pregnancy.
Health Education Quarterly 19(1)Spring:41-54.
Nichter, Mark and Mimi Nichter
1994 Acute respiratory illness: Popular health culture and
mother's knowledge in the Philippines. Medical Anthropology
15:353-376.
Weller, Susan C.
1984 Cross-cultural concept of illness: Variation and
validation. American Anthropologist 86:341-351.
Yoder, P. Stanley
1995 Examining ethnomedical diagnoses and treatment choices
for diarrheal disorders in Lubumbashi Swahili. Medical
Anthropology 16:211-248. A way of presenting explanatory
models.
Intercoder Reliability
Cohen, Jacob
1960 A coefficient of agreement for nominal scales. Education
and psychological measurement 20:37-48. Cohen's alpha
(kappa). Classic formula.
Cohen, Jacob.
1968 Weighted Kappa: Nominal scale agreement with provision
for scaled disagreement or partial credit. Psychological Bulletin
70(4):213-220. Allows for some intercoder disagreements.
Krippendorff, Klaus
1980 Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology.
Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. The most detailed book on
intercoder reliability (pp. 129-154) and validity issues (pp.
155-168).
Mitchell, Sandra K.
1979 Interobserver agreement, reliability, and generizability
of data collected in observational studies. Psychological
Bulletin 86:376-390. Fantastic overview of reliability
measures. Notes that reliability in qualitative data analysis is
really about validity.
Tinsley, Howard E. and David J. Weiss
1975 Interrater reliability and agreement of subjective
judgments. Journal of Counseling Psychology 22:358-376. Detailed
overview of all types of interrater measurements.
Yelton, Ann R., Beth G. Wildman and Marilyn T. Erickson
1977 A probability-based formula for calculating interobserver
agreement. Journal of Applied Behavioral Analysis 10:127-131. Simple
explanations for calculating intercoder reliability. Comes with
nice examples.