8.2.4. Analysis, verification and validation of results with communities
Data Analysis
Transcriptions of all interviews, site summaries and field notes were entered into NVivo 9. As the project examines pathways into the CJS and individuals’ interactions with human services and justice agencies across eight locations, two units of analysis were utilised: individuals and sites. These data sources were organised under case nodes in NVivo, with a case node acting as a folder containing all sources of data for each unit of analysis. To enable comparison each case was assigned attributes including their stakeholder classification and location.
A coding frame was developed in order to capture substantive structural and thematic issues emerging from the data. This frame included two levels of coding - organisational and conceptual. Organisational coding captured descriptive categories which represented the structural and locational data relating to for instance sectors within the service system such as education, health, criminal justice system and so on. Conceptual codes were created to represent themes and concepts which captured experiences and perceptions shared by participants. This approach allowed for analysis at multiple levels. For example, an interviewee’s reference to the local court in one site could be coded under the site name or ‘local courts – role of’. This would enable a query on, for example, what Indigenous participants say about the role of local courts, or whether issues to do with local courts are significant for persons with MHDCD living in that site. Having both a descriptive coding frame and a conceptual coding frame enabled an investigation of what was said e.g. about service providers in the site and who said what.
Verification of analysis – ‘Our First Go at Listening Up’: Interim Community Report
Following the completion of the full analysis of the data emerging from interviews from all research sites, a report was prepared for each site detailing a summary of the people and service providers interviewed, the results of the interviews and what would happen next. An Indigenous researcher who had undertaken the interviews then returned to the communities with an interim community report of the qualitative findings for presentation, discussion and verification. Positive feedback was received from all sites and the research team was commended for the timely reporting back to communities and the accuracy of content contained in the interim community reports.
