‘Integrating’ Qualitative Data

Here we are addressing the potential innovative integration of qualitative methodological approaches, data types and analytical strategies. This includes developing, evaluating and disseminating multimodal and mobile approaches to qualitative research practice and generating new approaches for the recording, display and dissemination of complex qualitative datasets.

One way of accomplishing this is through Qualitative GIS (QGIS). QGIS is an emerging field and the nascent literature points to ways of using GIS technology to capture local knowledge and provide a better understanding of people’s everyday lives (Cope and Elwood, 2009).  QGIS accomplishes this by incorporating non-numerical data into GIS, which may include digital images, video, sound, sketches and text (from transcripts, say).  Thus QGIS is inherently a mixed method approach and the analysis of these data within a spatial framework can provide insights into people’s perceptions, preferences and values and how these play out and interact locally.

This will allow multi-modal qualitative data (e.g. digital images, sound, text) to be contextualised in the place it was collected and, by linking it more strongly to statistical data via the meta-data base, will move towards a framework that gives these data a place in everyday, official and expert discourses, such as those used in community planning practice.