Métodos de determinación de horizonte temporal

4.5.2.1. Justification of Data analysis Approach:

In approaching the analysis of the data, qualitative content analysis is used because my data is qualitative in nature. Basically, qualitative content analysis aims at making ‗valid inferences from text‟ (Weber, 1985, p. 9). Also, qualitative content analysis is used for analysing all texts, including ‗written responses on qualitative surveys‟ (Lankshear and Knobel, 2004, p. 333).

Although content can be analysed quantitatively (Silverman , 2006, p. 158), Wilkinson (2004, p. 184) shows the difference by holding that qualitative content analysis takes account of the mentions of words and presents them as quotations under each category, hence it is called

thematic analysis. Furthermore, qualitative content analysis has the advantage of simplifying huge amounts of data to make them ‗organised segments‘ (Marvasti 2004, p. 91; Hsieh and Shannon 2005, p. 1278). But qualitative content anlaysis goes further than surface meaning and tries to reveal latent meaning (O‘Connor 2001, p. 1)

Following a qualitative treatment of content provides the chance for exploring the meanings constructed by my participants because it would enable me to look at the data as often as I would need (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005, p. 909) in order to make better connections and get better understanding of these meanings (Berg 2004, p. 266); hence the difference between qualitative treatment and the quantitative mere counting of words or themes (Hseih and Shannon, ibid, pp. 1283-4)

Because I have decided to follow a qualitative content analysis method, it is obvious that I started this research with some research questions and, therefore, it is clear that I had in mind some predetermined themes which made the bulk of my research questions; hence it is qualitative content analysis (Cohen et al, 2007, p. 491), or what Hseih and Shannon (ibid, p. 1281) call ‗directed content analysis‘. This is so because my research is driven by some pre-defined themes.

4.5.2.2. Steps followed in the Analysis of Each Diary Report:

i)- Preparing Diary Reports Data:

Analysing these reports started during the process of data collection, as recommended in Richards (2003 – see subsection 4.4.3.2). Because the first unit was just an introductory one and because the diary reports I got after it were used mainly for training the participants, I decided to make my formal analysis start with tones, the first feature to attract a formal treatment in PALE, and such a treatment was made in units 2 and 3.

Because I had participant A‘s relevant report first, I read it a number of times and identified a number of important lines of enquiry regarding the participant‘s perceptions of theory and tasks. Because many of these points are responses to the questions I gave in the diary reports, I found them present in the other participants‘ reports, with varying degrees in terms of elaboration and clarity. Having read the other participants‘ reports, I noted that they also had additional issues not discussed in participant A‘s diary. This was the first step in the analysis procedure, but more about this procedure is provided in the following paragraphs.

ii)- Coding and Categorising of Diary Report Data:

A- Bearing in mind that the diary report questions targeted some broad issues (the participants‘ attempt to make sense of rules and their communicative value, their perception of how the course was run in terms of sensitisation/PPP methods, and their perceptions of the gains they have made), I started by reading through the transcript of A, locating all the responses to these questions and giving them the labels ‗rules‘, ‗tasks‘, ‗gains‘ in accordance with the general content of response clusters. These responses turned out to make up the major part of the diary report, being a dense and well-focused type of writing.

B- Having done so, I started doing a detailed coding of all the extracts that were marked as belonging to these broad issues, all in Arabic, the language in which the reports were written. The

result of the coding process was a list of 18 codes – see appendix 5.4.2.2.2.1 for a list of these codes.

C- This list was compared to a list of codes produced by a fellow PhD student. She coded only some extracts because she believed she did not have an idea bout DI. The result of this comparison was that my codes were too general. I agreed with that. The following is an example with which my colleague did not agree with:

“But in particular I began enjoying doing the listening tasks when the rules became clear. I even enjoyed doing the listening tasks because I felt that doing them involved some creativity since I had to think of what was given and what was new, so it is like you know something and you are applying it to what you are hearing... As for the speaking task, I started enjoying doing that even before thinking of the rules that govern the use of rising and falling tones, because the use of tones made me discover how native speakers speak and why their pronunciation is different (Perception of practice)‖

As noted in this extract, I had given only one code to the whole extract. Having agreed with my colleague‘s observation, I decided to make my codes more specific by trying to assign a code to each unit of information, rather than assign general codes. An example of the more specific set of codes I produced later, and which my colleague approved of, is the list of underlined codes for the same paragraph mentioned above:

But in particular I began enjoying doing the listening tasks when the rules became clear (enjoyment in listening). I even enjoyed doing the listening tasks (enjoyment in speaking tasks) because I felt that doing them involved some creativity since I had to think of what was given and what was new (feeling of creativity), so it is like you know something and you are applying it to what you are hearing... As for the speaking task, I started enjoying doing that even before

thinking of the rules that govern the use of rising and falling tones, because the use of tones made me discover how native speakers speak and why their pronunciation is different (interest in native-like accent resulting from practising tones)

As I said, having applied a more specific set of codes to the whole extracts, I showed my colleague this new list and she agreed with it completely. Of course, all the coding was done in Arabic. The new list of resulting codes is given in Appendix 5.4.2.2.2.2. This appendix also shows how the codes are also organised according to the broad issue they describe. The broad issues represent the high level categories, which are pre-defined because they are the responses to the questions asked in the diary reports (See appendix 3.6.4.2. for an example of the coding process, done on part of a diary report, with high level categories being written in capitals while the relevant codes being written in lowercased letters). There are two things to observe about this categorisation:

- Some categories are larger, and contain more sub-issues, than others. For example, the category of ‗communicative value‘ seems to explore a specific issue, while the category of ‗tasks‘ seems to explore some issues which can be seen as hyponyms, with different degrees of emphasis on the participants‘ actual performance and their feelings.

- There are some codes which, while feeding a given category, also seem to feed other categories.

D- I decided to respond to these two observations as follows. Concerning the former observation, I decided to have a number of sub-categories under each ‗dividable‘ category. The result of examining the codes of these dividable categories was the following:



Concerning the latter observation, codes which feed more than one category were used in more than one category just as long as they are found relevant.

E- Having developed a number of categories and sub-categories, I looked through the other participants‘ transcripts, and I found that the template developed so far applied to their transcripts, with the exception of one extract that explores the participants‘ demonstration of the function of tones. As this was not provided by participant A, I found that an additional category had to be added in order to account for the other participants‘ demonstration examples, which I decided to label ‗Demonstration Example‘.

4.5.2.3. Explanation of Categories and Sub-Categories:

The overall picture of categorisation is then provided in the following template, which is what I applied to the analysis of tones as well as the other features:

Demonstration Example Evaluation of Rules

Evaluation of Communicative Value Feedback on the Course in terms of Tasks:

Feedback on Tasks

Speaking Tasks (e.g. 15, 27) Listening Tasks (e.g. 10, 11, 27) Affective Attitudes (e.g. 28, 29, 35))

 Listening:  Speaking:

 Affective Attitudes:

Evaluation of the Course in terms of Exploratory Learning: Evaluation of Gains terms of awareness:

Evaluation of Gains in terms of Performance

The following is an attempt to explain what needs to be understood by each of these categories and subcategories. It will be clear that the meaning of the categories is explained in terms of what the participants say as a first stage before a higher level of inferencing is made, thus following, in Braun‘s words (2006, p. 84), ‗a progression from description, where the data have simply been organised to show patterns in semantic content...to interpretation‟. The benefit of following this presentation, as followed and supported in Borg (1998, p. 14) is that it ‗mirrors and makes transparent to readers the inductive processes of data analysis that were central to this study; it also ensures that all assertions in the account are clearly grounded in the data from which they emerged‘

1- Demonstration Example: this category includes all references to assimilation examples, serving to show how successfully the participants could give an example and explain it explicitly in relation to a given DI feature. Therefore, such a category also includes all the elaboration associated with the demonstration.

2- Evaluation of Rules: this category includes all references to rules, describing what the participants thought of concerning the way a feature is described, e.g. statements of clarity /agreement, or statements of ambiguity and/or disagreement...etc. Such statements, in some cases, are also made in the participants‘ demonstration example; hence the two categories overlap a lot.

3-

Evaluation of Communicative Value: this category includes all references to the relationship between a given DI feature and significance to communication, describing either a

relevance or irrelevance to intelligibility. Again, in many instances, this category overlaps with the previous two categories and in some cases a single statement can be used in this and the previous two categories.

4-

Feedback on the Course in terms of Tasks: this category includes all references to the tasks of the units, describing the participants‘ perception of the tasks. This category includes the following subcategories:

4.1. Listening Tasks: this subcategory describes the participants‘ evaluation of the listening tasks in terms of how difficulty or easy they are, and sometimes an explanation of that evaluation. 4.2. Speaking Tasks: this contains the participants‘ evaluation of the difficulty or easiness of the speaking tasks, sometimes with an attempt at explaining why.

4.3. Affective attitudes: this subcategory includes the participants‘ and in terms of their affective attitude.

5-

Evaluation of the Course in terms of Exploratory Learning: this category includes all references to the exploratory presentation method followed in the unit, including all types of inductive learning such as hypothesizing and sensitisation.

6. Evaluation of Awareness Gains: this category includes all references to gains at the level of knowledge, depicting what is stated as a conceptual benefit arising from attending the sessions on a given DI feature. Forms of acknowledgement are either explicit or implicit, but the various views range from considering such knowledge as useful or useless.

7. Evaluation of Performance Gains: this category includes all references to pronunciation improvement, via statements that imply the possibility of benefiting from the sessions, and statements that suggest challenges or hindrances.

4.5.2.4. Issues of Representation:

For representation, it is possible to include the categories of Evaluation of Awareness/Performance Gains, and Evaluation of the Course in terms of Exploratory Method in a separate chapter (i.e. Chapter 7: Other Evaluations) because the relevant views do not go through major changes over the course and thus they can be economically represented with reference to general themes rather than with reference to feature-bound categories. Going through the contents of the three categories, it has been discovered that the various views contained within them can be categorised as follows:

i)- Evaluation of Awareness Gains:

Upon examining the various references made in this category, it has been found that these references describe two general themes of ‗recognition of awareness‘ and ‗recognition of no awareness‘. Whereas the former includes statements which state the participants‘ recognition that their awareness has been expanded due to the sessions, the latter acknowledge no similar incursion into the participants‘ worlds of knowledge. Worth noting here is that the ‗recognition of awareness‘ theme is richer than the latter.

ii)- Evaluation of Performance Gains:

The references made in this category have been found to explore the role that the sessions have had/will have on the participants‘ performance/pronunciation. Three types of roles are recognised: a positive role, a negative role, and a neutral role.

iii)- Evaluation of the Course in terms of Exploratory Method:

Examining the references made in this category, it is been found that these references describe two themes: satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The former includes all sorts of satisfaction with the exploratory method, while the latter describes all sorts of dissatisfaction with the method.

In document Propuesta de un procedimiento para determinar el horizonte temporal de evaluación económica financiera en sistemas híbridos de generación de energía (página 60-64)