After the glamour of working in the field is over, you now face the daunting challenge of transforming your field notes and interview tapes into a completed study. But where do you start? In Transforming Qualitative Data, Harry F. Wolcott guides you through the process of completing your research study. Beginning with an introductory chapter that presents his views on ethnography, he explores the transformation process by breaking it down into three related activities: description, analysis, and interpretation. To illustrate each point, he critically examines his own work, using nine of his previous studies as illustrations. Then he shows you how to learn-and to teach-qualitative research by applying the three principles outlined in the volume.
Written with the usual wit and brilliance shown in Wolcott's work, Transforming Qualitative Data is a major statement on doing research by one of the master ethnographers of our time.
Something Old, Something New
Description, Analysis, and Interpretation in Qualitative Inquiry
PART ONE: EMPHASIS ON DESCRIPTION
Adequate Schools and Inadequate Education
The Life History of a Sneaky Kid
The Elementary School Principal
Notes from a Field Study
Confessions of a `Trained' Observer
PART TWO: EMPHASIS ON ANALYSIS
A Malay Village That Progress Chose
Sungai Lui and the Institute of Cultural Affairs
Life's Not Working
Cultural Alternatives to Career Alternatives
PART THREE: EMPHASIS ON INTERPRETATION
The Teacher as an Enemy
Afterword, 1989
A Kwakiutl Village and School 25 Years Later
The Acquisition of Culture
Notes on a Working Paper
On Seeking - and Rejecting - Validity in Qualitative Research
PART FOUR: TEACHING AND LEARNING QUALITATIVE INQUIRY
Teaching Qualitative Inquiry
Learning Qualitative Inquiry
Some Power of Reasoning, Much Aided