BUSINESS

Business Research Methods

Business Research Methods

Introduction

There has been considerable recent discussion about the 're-use' of qualitative data available in archives, such as those accessible through Qualidata, and of 'secondary analysis of qualitative data' more generally. Quite a lot of this discussion has been concerned with problems associated with re-use, for example that there will often be a lack of fit between the data available and the requirements of a second analysis, and that lack of access to the original contexts in which and about which the data were generated will make them difficult to interpret or will lead to error. However, some recent contributions have questioned the existence or severity of these problems by challenging the concepts of 're-use' and 'secondary analysis', and this is the stimulus for my discussion here.

On top of this, Moore (2007) suggests that the notions of re-use and secondary analysis involve a false conception of data because they fail to recognise that data are reflexively constructed within research processes rather than existing independently of these. From this point of view, data cannot be first collected and analysed and then re-used by other researchers for the purposes of 'secondary' analysis. Indeed, data cannot even be 'collected' in the first place because they are always constructed, as Bateson (1984) pointed out long ago in the context of survey research. The conclusion drawn is that it is possible, and desirable, to use material that other researchers have generated; and that the process of analysis here is no different in epistemic status from that in primary research, because the data are necessarily constituted, contextualised and recontextualised within any project. As a result, the problems of 'fit' and 'context' are no more likely to arise in research using data from an earlier study than they are in one where 'new' data are produced (Eco, 1994, 1).

What is at issue here is partly a terminological point - about the appropriateness of the phrases 're-use of qualitative data' and 'secondary analysis', and their analogues - but the arguments outlined above also present a challenge to any idea that what these phrases refer to is a relatively weak and/or problematic form of research by comparison with 'first-time use' of data in 'primary analysis'. More specifically, criticisms of the re-use of qualitative data in terms of 'fit' and the role of 'context' are questioned.

The Issue of Terminology

A first issue is whether the use of data produced by a previous research project amounts to a sufficiently distinctive kind of work as to require its own label, such as the 're-use', 'reworking', or 'secondary analysis' of data. It is certainly true that there is no absolutely clear dividing line between use and re-use, and that there is some inconsistency of usage. However, despite this, in my view there is some value in these labels, and they could be applied in relatively consistent ways (Moore, 2006, 2).

In order to draw a distinction between use and re-use we need to be able to differentiate between studies where the ...