Author: Junko Otani: Osaka University, Graduate School of Human Sciences

Working with data
Media data were collected with theoretical sampling method and discourse analysis was done. For the analysis of fieldwork data, case study analysis and discourse analysis were employed. Interpretation and analysis of the field data texts were attempted. Secondary analysis was done on the public health surveys. Narratives were used as a preliminary way of dividing the data, then the narratives were analysed into discourses.

I organized the data according to type and research site. For media data, the data were analysed by channel/stations, i.e. public and private stations, and local and Japan-wide stations. This helped me to see that each station had its own mandate and that there were biases. Changes in focus and tone over time were analysed. And a gender perspective was included. Gender was important in media and my ethnographic fieldwork but it was lacking in the original analysis of the Public Health Survey done by the Hyogo Prefecture.

By coding and searching for a person's name in all documents, I was able to compare how the tones of what was said and shown were different in various kinds of data. The same person appeared in TV video transcripts, newspaper articles, and personal interviews and observations in my ethnographic field notes.

In the course of data handling in this research, I created in the software several Document Sets (grouped items accessible for analysis as a group): Media , Haruyama TSH, Natsu-Aki PRH, and Fuyuyama PRH. The Media Document Set includes TV video transcripts, newspaper articles, and interview notes with a TV reporter and a newspaper journalist. This meant various types of data on the media were grouped into one set. I made Document sets for field notes and interviews at each research site. Since I was collecting data from various sources in parallel chronologically, creating such document sets helped me to organize vast pages of data, which might be stamped with the same date but should go to different folders. And later this set became a base idea of outline of chapters for my PhD thesis. With or without NVivo, still the outline could be the same eventually but NVivo helped me to see the chaos in more organized way at the time.

This research project was one of the first applications of NVivo in a non-English context, and is probably the first in Japanese. Japanese is a language that often skips subject and object, especially in conversational use. When a conversation dialogue sentence or phrase is cut out by coding, and separated from the paragraphs, it is clearer in the English translation than in Japanese what the word or sentence means in the context. NVivo enabled me to locate content not only in the same set of data, but in other types of data, i.e. TV, newspaper, ethnography and interviews, and so to make comparisons.

I started with the media data. I coded these documents by In-Vivo coding. The In-Vivo coding tool is to select a word from the text data and to apply it as a code. (In NVivo, this is done by making and naming a 'node'.) It was a convenient way to start. Also it was a good way to learn the words used which reflected the new concepts born after the Earthquake, the new words created. I am a native speaker of Japanese, especially with dialects of the Osaka-Kobe area, but there were new words used that I did not know. If I use those words while talking with people from Tokyo or other outside areas in Japan, they do not know or asked if such a word exists! Prof Lyn Richards advised about coding, "Bother with the naming. Use terms that occur in the data (in-vivo codes) only if they accurately name the category." But I got this advice after finished most of the primary coding.

From the beginning, I used the In-Vivo coding tool mostly. This was convenient and helped me start thinking analytically. Yet one result was that some nodes, which could be grouped under one node at the first coding stage, were not combined. I was able to merge these nodes and rename them. While coding, I also used the software to link from the text to memos and started to write up memos.

I used colour coding to enjoy its fun functions. I colour-coded words pointed out by my English supervisor in London, e.g. "What does 'loneliness' mean in the Japanese context?" It was used to develop a discourse of loneliness in the Japanese context. Looking at Japan with Western views is an important aspect in my research.

Different people code data differently. I would like to share with you an interesting experience. My supervisor also thought it was a good example and shared with her other students at the London School of Economics in her class. I participated in the qualitative research approach seminar by University of Western Sydney in Australia for one week in November, 1999. They kindly used my data at the seminar. Prof Lyn Richards made all the participants code my data. It was very interesting to see how differently the coding evolves. Prof Richards is a family sociologist. She picked up a word like "burden". She also said "Kodokushi (Isolated death)? You have a word for this?" My answer was, "Yes, it is a very sad and miserable thing if one dies when no one is attending." This is an interesting example of looking at Japanese values with Western views. She also stopped at the sentence by the Director of Health of Kobe city, "Women are doing OK. The problem is men. Imagine. What will become of me if my wife dies!" Dr Pat Bazeley is a community psychologist. She has done research on housing and care in Australia. She picked up and laughed to read "Community development through Origami class." I did not realise that may be something weird until I heard her laugh. It is to me a rather common practice.

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