Summary
In the past decade a variety of computer-aided techniques have been developed to aid the qualitative analysis of unstructured textual material in interpretive sociology and ethnography. This contribution gives an overview of these techniques, focusing especially on the building of typologies. To start, some fundamentals of qualitative or interpretive research will be outlined and thereafter the specific kind of typification will be discussed that can be regarded as a cornerstone of qualitative data analysis: the “data-driven” or empirically grounded construction of descriptive typologies. In the third part the general principles of non-formatted textual database systems that can be used to support this process of data-driven typification are described. In the fourth part some of the more complex techniques of data administration fostered by this software and how these techniques relate to typification are discussed. The final part investigates to what extent computer-aided methods can stimulate progress in the field of qualitative methodology.
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Kelle, U. (1997). Computer-Aided Methods for Typification in Qualitative Social Research. In: Klar, R., Opitz, O. (eds) Classification and Knowledge Organization. Studies in Classification, Data Analysis, and Knowledge Organization. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-59051-1_36
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-59051-1_36
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