Using New Methods with Qualitative Data

Heather M. Rackin, Louisiana State University

I use methods adapted from social network techniques to aid-in and add to qualitative research. I use NTA to simplify qualitative research and help researchers figure out where to look to make the process less time consuming. However, my hope is that the methods described in this abstract will become a tool to examine schemas that bridges the gap between quantitative and qualitative analysis. This method gives the tools to use qualitative data to map out schemas, quantitatively describe and test hypotheses with text data, and to combine the thick description of qualitative analysis with the replicability and formal hypothesis testing that quantitative research offers. NTA gives contradictory and thick descriptions with numerical representation while being much less time intensive and allows for the use of larger resources of text than has ever been possible. With NTA new research questions and themes emerge which broaden research methodologically and theoretically.