Book Review
Qualitative research: Analysis types and software tools
Renata Tesch
ISBN: 1 85000 609; 1990; 330 pages; Falmer Press, London;
Bruce Johnson
School of Education Studies, University of South Australia, Adelaide SA
Talk to most nurses, teachers, or even research students about qualitative research approaches like phenomenology, hermeneutics, or ethnography, and their eyes glaze over. And rightly so. Too much of the discourse about these and other qualitative research approaches is shrouded in mystical terminology emanating from 19th century central European philosophy.
I often get the same response when discussion turns to computers and the range of 'software' products available to make them do whatever they do. So, when I came across a book that attempted to explain and demystify both qualitative research and computer software designed to help us make sense of qualitative data, I had an immediate respect for its author, Renata Tesch.
In her book, Qualitative Research: Analysis Types and Software Tools, Tesch achieves what I thought was an impossibility. She actually makes sense of the often turgid and complex field of qualitative research methods. She gently eases readers into the field by offering a highly readable account of the evolution of qualitative research as an alternative to positivist research regimes borrowed from the physical sciences. She cleverly defines qualitative research as a process of knowledge production that generates information that is not expressed in numbers. From such simple beginnings Tesch builds a sophisticated, but still understandable, conceptual framework in which most of the major qualitative approaches are located. This model is Tesch's most valuable contribution to our understanding of the field. It enables links to be made between similar research approaches, as well as making explicit the major differences between approaches.
Having constructed a plausible theoretical framework for a range of qualitative research approaches, Tesch enters the slippery area of data handling and analysis using computers. As she points out, many researchers who deal with qualitative data - words mostly - doubt the capacity of computers to deal with the nuances of non-numerical information. However, she mounts a strong case for the use of computers in analysing text data, arguing that text analysis programs are simply tools replacing the manual filing and 'cut and paste' procedures of earlier qualitative research.
In the final chapters of her book, Tesch describes and assesses several commercially available programs designed for use on personal computers (eg, Ethnograph, HyperQual, Qualpro). This information would be particularly useful for beginning researchers who may not be familiar with the range of text analysis programs available, or with their basic functioning. Disappointingly, she only gives fleeting attention to the Australian developed NUDIST program, one of the most exciting 'software tools' now available to Apple Macintosh and IBM users. While due to the relatively recent development of the program, the under treatment of NUDIST demonstrates the need to update the book only two years after its publication.
Overall, Tesch's book is an important work that provides a very useful overview of a complex field. It will be of particular use to those who have an interest in qualitative research and for those about to embark on research that will produce text data. While already somewhat outdated in terms of its technical information about specific text analysis programs, the theoretical contributions made in the book make it well worth closer scrutiny.
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