Little Children—Lots of Data. Possibilities to Combine Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods to Analyze Narratives about the Self

Abstract

The evaluation of a health promotion program of several years for primary school children resulted in two problems. First, qualitative instruments had to be developed for a population (children at the age between 5 and 10), for which standardized procedures would not be suitable. Second, the program was tested in a total of 20 school classes, and longitudinal verbal and pictorial-based data were collected. Thus, over a period of almost four years, an enormous amount of qualitative data were collected. New procedures were developed in order to analyze these qualitative data comprehensibly in a quantitative way. In addition, it had to be taken into account that the qualitative categories used for data analysis had to be elaborated (had to become more differentiated) in the course of time. In order to ensure the longitudinal comparabililty, the earlier codings had to be brought into line with the respective elaborations of the coding scheme. Overall, a constant standard of excellence of qualitative analysis could be achieved. Moreover, the coding scheme could be improved by considering the quantitative results. In this article, these procedures and their efficiency in evaluating the promotion program are presented. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0002165

Keywords

• project evaluation
• self-image
• self-worth
• self-reports
• health promotion
• primary school children
• longitudinal study
• qualitative content analysis
• intercoder reliability
• kappa-coefficient