July 23

• Are you mired in data analysis and worried that you are not making progress?
• Have you coded your data, but now feel like you have fallen an analytic black hole?
• Do you feel like you are missing something in your analysis?

Drs. Maietta and Swartout will introduce you to a set of data analysis tools that you can introduce to any qualitative data analysis project. The tools introduced in the course are part of ResearchTalk’s Sort and Sift, Think and Shift analytic approach. Each tool can be used separately in any qualitative project or in combination. The focus of the course is on learning the what, when, why and how of each tool.

Integrating these tools into your work will help you reconnect with the depth of meaning in your data documents and re-ignite your motivation for the work.

Engagement with the tools will result in the following benefits:

1. Improve the quality of your work – Our emphasis on careful “reads” of data with a focus on the intentional language participants present to you improves your ability to accurately understand and represent their lived experiences. The authenticity of your work increases when you understand participants’ words and actions before you discuss your thoughts and interpretations of what you observed and read.

2. Pursue different analytic pathways as you look at data from different angles and vantage points – To emphasize the power of performing analytic tasks that examine the content within and across data documents, we introduce creating and analyzing episode profiles, mining data and analytic work, and exploring threads that tie core ideas together.

3. Bring new elements to your discoveries – Topic monitoring, memoing and diagramming are tools that direct you to the entire/holistic story of each data collection episode, expose themes that run within and across data documents, and uncover how themes integrate to shape more complex stories presented by your participants. These stories will guide you to shape project products, inform potential applied products, like program design, and present content to build follow-up research projects

4. Assess alignment with what you have found to date – The tools can serve as a quality check as you compare what this new work yields to the work you initially did.

The following articles inform the content of this course:

• Maietta, Raymond C., Reifsteck, Erin J., Petruzzelli, Jeff, Mihas, Paul, Swartout, Kevin, & Hamilton, Alison B. “The Sort and Sift, Think and Shift Analysis Method” (chapter 16), in Richards, K. A., Hemphill, M. A., & Wright, P. M. (Eds.). (2024). Qualitative research and evaluation in physical education and sport pedagogy. Jones & Bartlett Learning.
• Maietta, R., Mihas, P., Swartout, K., Petruzzelli, J., & Hamilton, A. B. (2021). Sort and Sift, Think and Shift: Let the Data Be Your Guide An Applied Approach to Working With, Learning From, and Privileging Qualitative Data. The Qualitative Report, 26(6), 2045-2060. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2021.5013