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Handout from session at 2011 AEA/CDC Summer Evaluation Institute

Description: Ray Maietta's ‘Sort and Sift, Think and Shift’ qualitative method informs the content of this session. Qualitative evaluations are often defined by pre-determined goals and questions to pursue in analysis. However, issues emerge in initial document reviews that both confirm and challenge these goals. This session addresses ways to use qualitative data analysis software to facilitate serendipitous discovery and to balance new ideas with pre-existing questions for the study. We will discuss ways to ensure that software, with ATLAS.ti and MAXQDA as examples is always a tool that supports your exploration rather than it being a driver that defines where you are to go.

Audience: Researchers in any discipline who have collected qualitative data in the form of interviews, focus groups or fieldnotes

Raymond C. Maietta is president of ResearchTalk Inc., a qualitative research consulting company. A sociologist from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Ray's interests in the art of qualitative research methods motivated him to start ResearchTalk in 1996. ResearchTalk Inc. provides advice on all phases of qualitative analysis to university, government, not-for-profit and corporate researchers. Work with ResearchTalk clients using qualitative software informs recent book chapters: Systematic Procedures of Inquiry and Computer Data Analysis Software for Qualitative Research (with John Creswell) and State of the Art: Integrating Software with Qualitative Analysis. More than 15 years of consultation with qualitative researchers informs the methods book Ray is writing. Sort and Sift, Think and Shift will be completed in 2012.

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