Repositories for teaching and learning qualitative analysis

This week I was reminded of this excellent teaching guide by Victoria Clarke and Virginia Braun on Teaching Thematic Analysis (TA). Not only is it helpful in unpacking how to teach others to undertake thematic analysis, but it’s also useful if you’ve qualitative data and aren’t sure where to begin in making sense of it. Clarke has an additional TA resource that is also worth consulting.

By coincidence, on a qualitative research JISCmail list I’m on, a discussion took place on open access qualitative datasets where students could practice immersing themselves in and subsequently analysing qualitative data.

Numerous resources were suggested which I’m listing here as these may be helpful if you are:
– Teaching qualitative analysis
– Looking for datasets for which to undertake secondary qualitative analysis (either as an activity in itself or to integrate with additional data you may have collected in your own work)
– Learning how to do qualitative analysis but do not have your own data to work with

Daniel Turner from Quirkos has completed recent research on the recent referendum for Scottish Independence made open access for teaching and learning process (participants have consented for their interviews to be used for this purpose).

The UK Data Service have an archive of around 350 qualitative collections and also recommend Qualibank.

There’s a selection of small datasets to work with on in the web resources that go with Victoria Clarke and Virginia Braun’s book ‘Successful Qualitative Research’.

Michael Forrester’s edited book Doing qualitative research in psychology has a selection of open resources for analysis

To these I’d also recommend

Qualitative Data Repository has archives and the opportunity for you to share your data.

StoryCorps has a huge archive of audio and visual stories that can be used for practice transcription and analysis direct from audio.

Healthtalk have a large library of interviews, transcripts and patient stories all available for teaching and learning

The Mass Observation Archive contains interviews and diaries from 1937 onwards. Wellcome also has diaries, letters and other documents suitable for learning how to organise and analyse qualitative data.

SAGE Research Methods datasets are excellent for teaching and practising analysis.

Georgia State University has a useful guide to using and lists of data repositories and sharing services. As has the University of California LA

Ipsos MORI have a searchable research archive from past public polls.

This guide on the ethics of secondary analysis of qualitative data is also well worth reading.

If you know of other archives not listed here please add them in the comments. While it seems there are a variety of repositories available most appear linked to UK/UK institutions and databases in English so if you are aware of repositories and resources in diverse languages that would be useful add to this list also.

Further Reading
Fink AS. 2000. The Role of the Researcher in the Qualitative Research Process. A Potential Barrier to Archiving Qualitative Data. Forum: Qualitative Social Research. 1 (3)

Qualitative Strategy Tree image used at the start of this post from Wolcott, H. F. (1992). Posturing in qualitative inquiry. In M. D. LeCompte, W. L. Millroy & J. Preissle (Eds.), The handbook of qualitative research in education (pp. 3-52). New York: Academic Press.