Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches

ANALYSIS OF QUALITATIVE DATA

buyer, financial official, surveyor, buyer’s attorney,
advertising firm/realtor, seller, seller’s attorney).^29

Multiple Sorting Procedure

Multiple sorting is a technique similar to domain
analysis found in field research or oral history. Its
purpose is to discover how people categorize their

experiences or classify items into what is similar or

different. Cognitive anthropologists and psycholo-

gists often use a multiple sorting procedure. You can

use multiple sorting to collect, verify, or analyze

data. Here is how it works. You give the people you

are studying a list of terms, photos, places, names of

people, and so on, and ask them to organize the lists

into categories or piles. They use categories of their

Raw Data

Raw Data

Raw Data

Raw Data

Case 1 Case 2 Case 3

Narrative Analysis

Negative Case Method

Analytic Comparison

Factor 1

Factor 2

Factor 3

Factor 4

Factor 5

Present?

Present?

Present?

Present?

Present?

Absent?

Absent?

Absent?

Absent?

Absent?

Theory

3. Revise


4. Examine


5. Expected but
   Not Found

Narrative

FIGURE 4 (Continued)