Classtime exercises and handouts

Note to teachers: These exercises contain research analysis techniques that are not explained in the sections above. The tasks complete the description of data analysis by offering insights into other important data analysis techniques. To facilitate this, each task contains a short description of the data analysis technique and then proceeds with the task. Exercise 1 can be stem over one classtime (preparation) and homework (data collection and analysis), while Exercise 2 can be conducted in class.

Exercise 1: Content Analysis

Content analysis may be an apt technique of to assess our data in case of many texts that must be examined, for example newspaper articles, online posts, blog postings, reports, speeches or other texts. Analysis can be both, quantitative and qualitative.

Step 1: Identify a research question for analysis. For example: “What were the attitudes towards minorities in the interwar period in Central and Eastern Europe?”

Step 2: Identify the source of data collection; ask students to use the local archives or online archives of libraries that have historical, publicly available data. Narrow down the newspapers to be analysed based on 1) timeframe; 2) location; 3) topic; 4) newspaper title or any other category. For example, in the case of students who study history, the teacher can give an assignment of finding 10 newspapers that came out in the interwar period form a given region (town, county or country).

Step 3: Ask students to select a sample set of text(s) from the population of texts for analysis. This should be done by identifying texts that have particularly pertinent content. For example, if there is a town or region where multiple minorities co-existed in the interwar period, a newspaper covering events of that town should be selected.

Step 4: The selected text can be divided into segments; a process that is called unitizing. For example, within a newspaper these units can include the thematic areas – culture, sports, politics, etc.

Step 5: Students should construct a coding scheme, which can also be proposed by the teacher at the beginning of the assignment. The coding scheme should have themes of importance for this assignment. In the case of this task, such themes can include concepts such as ‘cooperation’, intermarriage’, ‘pogroms’, ‘assimilation’ and others.

Step 6: Ask students to analyse the data based on the coding scheme, which can be done in some (or all) of the following ways:

  • Frequency, or the number of times a particular code occurs (e.g., if the word ‘pogrom’ occurs many times, we can conclude that there is a tension among the population)
  • Sentimental value in which the coded content appears (e.g., positive or negative), which may be useful in case of political speeches are described
  • Images and their significance

Finally, students are asked to compose a short summary of their research based on the handout attached. If more information is needed on the steps above, students are advised to consult the description of content analysis by Yan Zhang and Barbara M. Wildemuth, available at https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~yanz/Content_analysis.pdf or a study by Kleinheksel AJ, Rockich-Winston N, Tawfik H, Wyatt TR. Demystifying Content Analysis. Am J Pharm Educ. 2020 Jan;84(1):7113, available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7055418/

PDF icon Worksheet 1

Exercise 2: Narrative Analysis

A narrative analysis can be an apt choice for analysing interviews. A narrative analysis involves making sense of your interview respondents’ individual stories in order to highlight important aspects of their stories that gives an insight about a research question. Considering that transcribing interviews may be extremely time consuming (some estimate that each hour of recorded interview will take 5 hours of transcription time, Burnard (1994)), if students conduct interviews in class, short answers are preferred, allowing students to take notes rather than record. Alternatively, teachers may ask students to record interviews in one class time and transcribe them at home, to return to this exercise the next class.

Setting the scene: students watch the following video about Narrative Analysis:

It should be highlighted that narrative analysis should be used in particular when we are trying to understand how research participants (interviewees, in our case) construct a narrative from their own personal experience. The task of the researcher is then to interpret and analyse this narrative. Propose further resources to students if needed, such as Delve’s “What is Narrative Analysis?” article or Philip Burnard’s “Searching for meaning: a method of analysing interview transcripts with a personal computer” article.

Setting up a research question: To what extent early childhood education determine future educational goals? (Students may collectively choose a different question based on the subject or their own interests.)

Data collection:

Conducting interviews: students can pick one or more classmates who will be interviewed. The interviewees will be asked to reflect on their pre-school years, without specific guiding questions in order not to influence their thinking. This is called a personal narrative.

Then, students are asked to transcribe interviews, at home or in class.

Data analysis

Although there are many ways of analysing interviews, for this assignment teachers may propose analysing certain themes or areas of influence, such as:

  • Role of pre-school teachers
  • Role of peers in pre-school institutions
  • Role of home environment at pre-school age
  • Role of parents at pre-school age
  • Role of infrastructure in pre-school institutions

Results of research:

Students must present their analysis based on the following instructions in 2-3 paragraphs

  • use at least 5 quotes from the interview illustrating their interpretation
  • pay attention to the non-verbal messages and describe them when interpreting data (e.g., pauses, discomfort about some topics, sarcasm, etc)
  • ask students to use self-reflexivity, thinking about how their role (as a classmate) may have influenced the respondent’s answers
  • identify any possible bias in research