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Qualitative Research: Doing Constructionist Data Analysis: Online (4 days)
Guidance for early career researchers on how to use the latest constructionist approaches, which treat our data as instances of complex behaviours and hence complementary to quantitative research.
Instructor
Prof David Silverman is an outstanding scholar specialising in qualitative research. David is Professor Emeritus in the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths College and Visiting Professor in the Management Department at King's College, University of London and the Business School, University of Technology, Sydney. He has authored 15 books and 45 journal articles on qualitative research, ethnography and conversation analysis. He is the author of four bestselling Sage textbooks on qualitative research and has published monographs on his research on a large public sector organization, medical consultations and HIV-test counselling. Prof Silverman has hosted workshops on qualitative research for PhD students in Australia since 2009 as well as in Europe, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Tanzania. He successfully supervised 30 PhD students, three of whom are now full Professors.
Course Level
This master-class offers lectures and data workshops covering the latest approaches to key areas of qualitative research:
• Improving the quality of interview data analysis. Treating respondents’ accounts as skillful versions of reality. Attending to the step by step production of meaning between interviewer and interviewee.
• Finding sequences in your data. The limits of content and thematic analysis. Finding outcomes in data and tracing the sequences in which they are produced.
• Documents and digital data as social constructions. How to avoid treating them as ‘secondary data’ and tracing the narratives they construct.
• Theorising with qualitative data. Avoiding armchair theorising and theory used as ‘window dressing’. How to induce theories from your data.
The workshop is relevant to both early career researchers and more experienced researchers interested in constructionist approaches who want to improve their research skills.
This is an evening course as Professor Silverman is based in the UK
The workshop will consist of 4.5 hours of lectures, 3 data workshops and 15 minute one-to-one supervisions.
All sessions will run between 6.30pm and 9.00pm AEST
EVENING 1
6.30 - Introductory lecture
7.15 - Improving the quality of interview data analysis [lecture]
8.15 - 9.00 - Student data sessions
EVENING 2
6.30 - Feedback from data sessions
7.00 - Finding sequences in your data [lecture]
8.15 - 9.00 - Student data sessions
EVENING 3
6.30 - Feedback from data sessions
7.00 - Analysing documents and digital data [lecture]
8.15 - 9.00 - Student data sessions
EVENING 4
6.30 - Feedback from data sessions
7.00 - Theorising with qualitative data [lecture]
8.15 - 9.00 - Open discussion
A basic knowledge of qualitative research.
Any of Prof. Silverman’s current Sage textbooks.
Interpreting Qualitative Data [seventh edition] or, for more advanced researchers, his Very Short Book [second edition].
David is such a good teacher. He's very skillful in his methods, but also practical in terms of understanding that everyone might have different needs an/or approach.
The way of presentation , involvement and the details provide was very useful.
I was reminded again of the foundation of qualitative research. And even though my path is not necessarily the same, but I can gain valuable insights and critiques to improve my own research
The ability to have conversations with the lecturer was invaluable
Very useful for my current role and my research
It was quite a shock in some ways, given the critique of thematic analysis and conventional theorising, but a shock I needed to have. And am grateful for. Just wish I'd have come across this earlier in my career! Having David present the material, challenge us and go through questions and examples allowed for an unfolding of awareness for me. I did not get that reading the ebook prior to the course, so the course very much deepened what I had been able to discover through reading. It was well worth it and I have been doing a massive amount of reflection on everything I held unchallenged since Friday night.
Upcoming offerings
Master-class September 2026
Course schedule
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Venue
Early Bird Deadline
Pricing