Transforming Qualitative Data: Description, Analysis, and Interpretation

by Harry F. Wolcott

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 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.

Genres: Anthropology

440 pages, Paperback

First published February 18, 1994

About the author

Harry F. Wolcott taught at the University of Oregon, serving on both the faculties of education and anthropology. He authored several ethnographic texts that included his experiences among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia and with the African Beer Gardens of Bulawayo, Rhodesia, as well on ethnographic method and on writing itself, with a focus on qualitative research.

Reviews

[Spacek Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book helped me understand qualitative research data description, analysis, and interpretation. The book was written using basic concepts, then illustrative chapters. Wolcott was an expert in this field and was present as qualitative research became more prominent in research.