I found Konopasek's discussion what CAQDAS afford generally, and what atlas.ti affords specifically intriguing and refreshing. I appreciated that the author celebrated the visible thinking a CAQDAS tool can provide, as many of our readings have focused on how the tools cannot "do the work" for the researcher. Konopasek also cautions that a researcher should not "believe in magic," but stresses that a tool like atlas.ti can provide the researcher with oppportunities to see their data in new ways.
I'd like to focus on the way a researcher chooses to pull out and mark quotations as new analytical objects, and how and whether the researcher chooses to link the quotes to other quotes and data.
Jesssica recently asked me a fairly straightforward question about how I chose certain quotes to be included in my paper. I thought it was a simple question with a fairly simple answer: I have kept track of relevant quotes as they emerge. I do an immediate annotation when I hear it, and then do a deeper analysis later, linking it to other quotes. I do this all in Microsoft Word, and Iseem to have a good memory for these particularly significant events. However, I realize that I am not going back through systematically and tagging or extracting other elements that may be relevant. Using a tool like atlas.ti would aid in the systematic nature of the process, and may bring out more insights than I am seeing when I am so immersed in the data. It seems that these tools could let me step back and visualize how different pieces of data connect (or do not) and an even clearer and more impactful story may emerge.
Konopasek does caution that pulling too man quotes may distance them from each other, but the separation and systemaic linking between quotations may allow a narrative emerge that is not visible when one is marking quotations as they hear and experience them.
The author begins and concludes with the notion that thinking is inseparable from doing. This is something I wholeheartedly believe, and I think it needs to be stressed that context is everything. The context in which a particular quotation or event occurs gives it meaning, and the reasearcher's understandings, biases, and positionality directly affect both what is extracted and how it is interpereted. Context is key, and while there may be a danger in losing that contextual factor in a CAQDAS, when used well, it may actually illuminate nuanced facets of an emerging narrative.
Yes and yes! I really like the idea of CAQDAS being a means by which to make our thinking visible. It is a tool for tracking all of our analytical decisions, which allows us to return again and again (and evaluate) to our decisions. Further, this whole idea of "context' being key is something that I have come to see as something that CAQDAS tools supports in beautiful ways. In ATLAS.ti, for example, I may have coded a series of related passages across multiple data sources. When I return to these quotes/passages, I do not simply read the passage as a stand alone, but ATLAS brings me to the passage in the context of the broader data source (e.g., interview, etc.). In other words, I'm staying close to the context. This is something that I think is really powerful in relation to CAQDAS tools. Something we'll be exploring over the next few weeks!
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