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Handling qualitative data a practical guide Third Edition
Richards Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Richards, Lyn
ISBN(s): 9781446276068, 1446276066
Edition: Third edition
File Details: PDF, 1.84 MB
Year: 2014
Language: english
HANDLING
QUALITATIVE
DATAA PRACTICAL GUIDE
SAGE was founded in 1965 by Sara Miller McCune to
support the dissemination of usable knowledge by publishing
innovative and high-quality research and teaching content.
Today, we publish more than 750 journals, including those
of more than 300 learned societies, more than 800 new
books per year, and a growing range of library products
including archives, data, case studies, reports, conference
highlights, and video. SAGE remains majority-owned by
our founder, and on her passing will become owned by a
charitable trust that secures our continued independence.

Los Angeles | London | Washington DC | New Delhi | Singapore

 THIRD
EDITION

HANDLING
QUALITATIVE
DATA A PRACTICAL GUIDE

LYN RICHARDS
SAGE Publications Ltd © Lyn Richards 2015
1 Oliver’s Yard
55 City Road First edition 2006; second edition 2010. This edition 2015
London EC1Y 1SP
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014939150

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 Summary of contents

Introduction 1

PART I SETTING UP 9

1. Setting up your project 11

2. Making qualitative data 35

3. Data records 63

PART II WORKING WITH THE DATA 83

4. Up from the data 85

5. Coding 103

6. Handling ideas 125

PART III MAKING SENSE OF YOUR DATA 141

7. What are you aiming for? 143

8. Searching the data 167

9. Seeing a whole 185

10. Telling it 205

 Contents

List of tables xi
Companion website xiii
About the author xv
Preface xvii
Acknowledgements xxiii

Introduction 1

Starting points 1
Handling data 4
The shape of this book 6

PART I SETTING UP 9

1. Setting up your project 11

Placing the project in context 12

Purpose, goal and outcome 13
Designing the project 18
You and your data 26
To do 31
Suggestions for further reading 31

2. Making qualitative data 35

Understanding data 36
Preparing to ‘make’ data 43
Ways of making data 44
Data about your project (and you) 52
Is writing a problem for you? 57
To do 59
Suggestions for further reading 59

3. Data records 63

What will the records be like? 64

How big should a data record be? 66
viii contents

Storing records with software 69

Working with your data records 76
When can you start analysing? 80
To do 81
Suggestions for further reading 81

PART II WORKING WITH THE DATA 83

4. Up from the data 85

Meeting data 87
Where do your ideas go? 91
Handling your discoveries 94
Drawing it – the early uses of models 94
Revisiting design 95
Revisiting and reviewing records 97
Writing it 99
Up to the category 100
To do 100
Suggestions for further reading 101

5. Coding 103

Qualitative and quantitative coding 104

What can you do with coding? 105
Ways of coding in a qualitative project 106
Revisiting the coded data 114
Coder reliability in qualitative research 117
Avoiding the coding trap 118
Establishing your personal data processing style 120
Writing about coding 121
To do 121
Suggestions for further reading 122

6. Handling ideas 125

Organization and creativity 126

Catalogues of categories 128
Writing your ideas 137
To do 138
Suggestions for further reading 139

PART III MAKING SENSE OF YOUR DATA 141

7. What are you aiming for? 143

What are you seeking? 144

What can you achieve? 146
 contents ix

What would be satisfactory? 148

What might it look like? Possible outcomes 149
How will you know when you get there? 152
How will you know if it is good enough? 157
To do 163
Suggestions for further reading 163

8. Searching the data 167

Moving forward 168

The data–theory process 169
Searching coding 171
Searching the text 176
Building on searches 179
Reporting searches 180
To do 181
Suggestions for further reading 182

9. Seeing a whole 185

Seeing what’s there – and what’s not there 185

Ways of seeing 186
Accounting for and validating your ‘seeing’ 199
To do 202
Suggestions for further reading 203

10. Telling it 205

Start with what you have written 206

What if it won’t write? 210
Planning a qualitative report 212
What about validity and reliability? 214
Using your data 216
Reports that don’t work 218
Concluding your study 221
To do 222
Suggestions for further reading 222

References 223
Index 229
 List of tables

5.1 Two very different modes of coding 104

9.1 Seeing and testing synthesis and patterns 187
 Companion website

Handling Qualitative Data, third edition, is supported by a companion website:

https://study.sagepub.com/richards3e. Visit the website to access two sets of
useful resources to accompany the book:

•• Methods in Practice: the stories of ten projects (from eight countries and as many qualitative
methods), are told in the researchers’ own voices. How was the project set up, what data were
sought and created, how did the researcher work with the data, what actually happened during
analysis and reporting?
•• Qualitative Software: this is not a summary of the current state of the various software products
aimed at qualitative researchers. But it does tell you where to go for such summaries. And more
importantly, it advises you before you go shopping for software. Should you use qualitative soft-
ware, and how? How to find impartial, useful and non-marketing advice about software products?
It then provides help on how to manage your relationship with your software, including a brief
handbook of advice to help you ask the necessary questions as you start stepping into software.
 About the author

Lyn Richards has a highly unusual range of relationships with qualitative

research. After undergraduate training as a Historian and Political Scientist, she
moved to Sociology. Her early work as a family sociologist addressed both popu-
lar and academic audiences, with a strong motivation always to make the funded
research relevant to the people studied, and the qualitative analysis credible to
those affected. Each of her four books in family sociology was a text at univer-
sity level but also widely discussed in popular media and at community level.
During her tenure as Reader and Associate Professor at La Trobe University in
Melbourne, she won major research grants, presented and published research
papers, was a founding member of a qualitative research association and taught
qualitative methods at undergraduate and graduate level, supervising Masters
and PhD students.
She strayed from this academic pathway when challenges with handling quali-
tative data in her family and community studies led to the development, with
Tom Richards, of what rapidly became the world’s leading qualitative analysis
software. They left the university to found a research software company, in which
for a decade Lyn was Director of Research Services, writing software documenta-
tion and managing international teaching of the methods behind the software.
Designing and documenting software taught her to confront fuzzy thinking about
methods, and to demand straight talking, clarity of purpose, detail of technique
and a clear answer always to ‘Why would we want to do that?’ Teaching methods
to thousands of researchers in dozens of disciplines in 14 countries, she learned
what worked and what didn’t. From those researchers, graduates and faculty in
universities and research practitioners in the world beyond, she learned their
many ways of handling data, on and off computers, and their strategies for mak-
ing sense of data.
Handling Qualitative Data is a direct result of this experience. It offers clear, prac-
tical advice for researchers approaching qualitative research and wishing to do
justice to rich data. Like her previous book, with Janice Morse, Readme First, for a
User’s Guide to Qualitative Methods it strongly maintains the requirements of good
qualitative research, assumes and critiques the use of software and draws on prac-
tical work, helping researchers whose progress has been hindered by confusion,
xvi about the author

lack of training, mixed messages about standards and fear of being overwhelmed
by rich, messy data.
Throughout this hybrid career, Lyn continued contributions to critical reflection
on new methods, as a writer and a keynote speaker in a wide range of international
conferences. She has life membership of the International Sociological Association
and its Methodology section. Her writing aims always to cut through barriers to
high quality qualitative research and to assist researchers and teachers in making
the inevitable shift to computing whilst maximizing the benefits for their research
processes and outcomes. On leaving software development, she took an Adjunct
Professorship at RMIT University where she is now Associate Research Fellow of
the Centre for Applied Social Research (CASR) and coordinates an active, informal
and splendidly supportive qualitative research network group.
 Preface

Are you at risk of acquiring qualitative data, whether by careful, theoretically based
research design, by practical need or by accident? Are you prepared for rich, com-
plex, unstructured data records, which may rapidly appear in confusing profusion?
Are you doubting you can do justice to those records, and to the people whose
accounts you have been privileged to acquire? Are you prevented from starting by
messages about the difficulty of doing good qualitative work, the debates about
epistemology, or the necessity to learn confronting specialist software?
This book is designed to assist when qualitative data have to be handled, and
to guide you through those barriers to doing it. In decades of helping research-
ers worldwide, I have learned that those who come to qualitative research ‘data
first’ rather than ‘methods first’ are often the most motivated and critical. But
they are also held back by lack of preparation in ways to handle data records,
and by messages about the mystique of doing, or even thinking about doing,
qualitative research and the heavy tasks of doing it in a digital age. So too, often,
are those who have had some training in the study of the theory of methods –
methodology. However adequate their understanding of the philosophy behind
what they are trying to do, they may have no practical idea of how they would
handle data if they ever had some.
This book starts there. It is, therefore, very different from most texts on qualita-
tive methods.
Firstly, it is about handling data – working with data in order to produce adequate
and useful outcomes. The title carries two messages. Qualitative data don’t speak
for themselves, but have to be handled if they are to be analysed. And handling
data is something you can learn and do well as you get started.
It’s amazing how little of the methodological literature is in this area. Even
texts with titles about ‘analysing’ or ‘doing’ qualitative research spend consider-
ably more time on ways of making data than on what you would do with such
data if you ever actually had any. From the perspective of those who have to do
it, texts on qualitative method are often inaccessibly high up in the misty moun-
tains of academic discourse. By horrid contrast, literature on the tools you need
for qualitative research, and particularly on digital tools, suggests you might
never get started if burdened with learning software functions and with very
xviii preface

negative messages about their results for research. In this third edition, these
messages have been strongly pursued.
Secondly, this book is about the agency of the researcher. The researcher designs
and creates a project and then also creates data, collaboratively with those studied,
and it is the researcher who then does the analysing of that data. In this new edition
there is increased emphasis on issues of ethics as you negotiate that collaboration. In
every section, the book confronts the critical issues of reflexivity, alerting the reader
to their relationship with their research questions, design, conduct and records, and
advising on how these reflections can be recorded and used in validating analysis.
Thirdly, the book aims to provide practical advice and build confidence so that,
by following it, a good job can be done. An irony of our time is that just as quali-
tative research has become acceptable and required across most areas of research
practice in social enquiry, it has been shrouded in clouds of debate about reality
and its representation. These debates enthral and entice those of us with time
and training to engage in them, but send a strong message to many practitioners
that qualitative research is possibly a futile endeavour from the start. It seems to
me that, since the world undoubtedly needs good qualitative research (and does
not need bad research), all researchers require assistance in designing projects and
handling data thoughtfully, reflexively, ethically and successfully. This book is for
students of qualitative methods who have been taught to reflect on their data and
their relationship to data, but it is also for the many (out of and inside academia)
who have neither access to courses on epistemological issues nor time to do them,
yet are confronted with a project and wish to learn how they can best deal with it.
They need practical, accessible and informed advice on how to do their task well,
reflecting on their relationship to their data, on what would be a credible account
and how properly to produce one.
Fourthly, the book covers neither the range of qualitative methods nor how dif-
ferent methods derive from different epistemological positions, nor does it teach
any particular method. Instead, it daringly assumes that handling data well and
producing a good research outcome does not require knowing the range and rules
of any particular method, let alone all.
Most texts start with the assumption that qualitative data are accessible only
via a researched understanding of all or at least some methodologies, and that a
project must be located within a coherent methodology. I started there too and I
strongly hold a commitment to what I term methodological fit, the ways in which
question, data, ways of handling data, ways of constructing an outcome and
ways of justifying it fit together. I wrote about that in Readme First (Richards and
Morse, 2013). In the present book, however, I aim to convey this fit to research-
ers whether or not they have the time or opportunity to learn from or engage in
methodological debates. My prime goal is to help them to do justice to data. And
I aim to encourage them, whatever their methodological persuasion, to reflect on
their relationship to their project and their data. Since the first edition of this book
appeared, the feedback has consistently told me this was useful.
 preface xix

You will find here no specification of the rules for working in any particular
method. Texts that do address the tasks of data handling usually do so from within
one method, providing detailed rules for the processes associated with, for example,
a particular version of discourse analysis, grounded theory or phenomenology
or preparation for an ethnography. Such learning will of course provide a firm
basis for research, and as a teacher and writer I have set it as a goal for students.
This book consistently urges the reader who can do so to pursue literature within
the appropriate method for their study. But it also assumes that there is much to
be learned for any study from many methods. Methodological ghettoism serves
neither those outside nor those working inside the closed world of a particular
method. All qualitative researchers need basic skills for handling data, and these
skills are used across methods. Methodological fit and skills for handling data can
be learned by those working in any particular method or by those who are not
steeped in the literature particular to one method. All novice researchers need
pragmatic, informed and understandable assistance in the processes of making
useful data records, in handling and working with the data on the road to a good
analysis, and in showing that it is good.
And finally, this book confronts directly the undeniable fact that qualitative
research is now done on computers. Unlike most texts (see review by Paulus et al.,
2013), it assumes that you will use computer software when handling qualitative
data and consistently offers advice on maximizing the benefits of doing so, and
dealing with the challenges, particularly the challenge of having your project con-
fined to the ‘box’ of a dedicated software product. All researchers use computers
in at least some context and those who do not also use tools that assist qualitative
research are clearly restricted. For methods texts to treat computer handling of
qualitative data as an optional extra (most do), makes it far harder to discuss prac-
tically what we can now do with data. But the constraining of research by software
packages is a recently recognized challenge which this new edition addresses in
every chapter.
Software has transformed the tasks of handling qualitative data. This book
advises of course on techniques that can be done on paper or in your head, along-
side ones that can be undertaken only by using software. It warns of and tackles
the challenges of computer-assisted handling of data, and the issues to be con-
sidered. But it assumes you will use software, and urges you to use many digital
tools. It does not teach any particular software – learning software is another
task (there’s help for this task on the website). Nor does the text assume that
any particular software is to be used. And it firmly avoids assuming that the
techniques made available by qualitative software necessarily improve research
practice. Indeed, as you’ll discover from the warnings in each chapter, and from
the website, I have serious concerns about the ways accepted specialist software
shapes and constrains research.
Moreover, very importantly, this book does not assume that software use will
be limited to the small group of commercial packages specifically marketed to
xx preface

qualitative researchers and which I refer to simply as ‘qualitative software’ (but

which also go under the acronym of CAQDAS: Computer Assisted Qualitative
Data AnalysiS). The story of the development of these packages spans a quarter
of a century, and in many ways they are still set in the same methodological
approaches. A decade of my research life was spent in the fascinating tasks of qual-
itative software development and teaching research strategies with software. Of
course, this work is reflected in my advice to researchers and my take on the chal-
lenges and pitfalls this book aims to rescue you from. And, of course, the software
I helped develop (QSR NUD*IST and NVivo) reflected the methods I teach and
the approaches I take to data. But I now have no connection with any software
company and, since leaving that field, I have watched from the sidelines as the
adventure of inventing qualitative software became, in my view, routinized, inno-
vation too often dampened, at least for some developers, by commercial goals and
competitive pressures and the inertia of research institutions, which have limited
the variety and exploratory range of products. On the website for this book you’ll
find a strong message that it’s time for innovation and encouragement to explore
options beyond the CAQDAS stable. In the chapters of this book you’ll find that
discussion of the powerful possibilities of advanced packages is balanced by warn-
ings about the ways software can constrain your research. A strong message is to
avoid having your enquiry contained within the box of the project you build in
qualitative software. It’s a nice coincidence that this edition coincides with the
25th anniversary of the first international gathering of qualitative software devel-
opers. My hope is that this will mark a new spurt of innovation for qualitative
computing, and new thinking outside the ‘box’ for researchers.
Meanwhile, you can use this book with no computer software (if you must!) or
with any qualitative software, and/or with any combination of the increasingly
familiar other digital tools. Where the techniques described require software, this
is noted, as are the few places where the techniques suggested are particular to one
software package. Where challenges are greater, or risks higher, because of what
you can do with software, this too is discussed.
Each of these goals has been expanded in the website accompanying this
third edition: study.sagepub.com/richards3e. There are two parts to the website
– ‘Methods in Practice’ and ‘Qualitative Software’. The first is designed to offer, as
few published accounts do, a vivid picture of qualitative research as it happens.
There you will find a set of project accounts giving brief but detailed stories of
research experience – what really did occur, what worked and the strategies devel-
oped to deal with challenges. The contributors have returned to those accounts
for this third edition, reflecting on their practice then and what they now see as
important.
The website’s second part advises on software. These pages are designed to help
novice researchers approach the tasks of reviewing and critiquing the qualitative
software available, assessing its usefulness for their own projects and, if they wish,
selecting and learning a package. Because no software is ever static, and the needs
 preface xxi

of researchers are dynamic and varied, there are no specific descriptions here of
current software. Rather, the reader is directed to sites where they will find regu-
larly updated descriptions and tutorials.
This book is written in the conviction that handling qualitative data well beats
handling them badly, and that it can be done. If you are approaching data via
qualitative methods courses, it offers detailed advice at each step as you prepare
for a project and design the processes of analysis. If you are meeting qualitative
methods via data, you will not be burdened here with a message that to do so is
morally bad or practically unwise. But you will be urged to pause and reflect on
your relationship to that data, and advised how to set up and competently con-
duct a project.
Novice researchers can always achieve new understanding from data, however
they come to the task, by thinking through their relationship to the data, by using
good tools and by learning simple skills. Many readers will wish to do no more
than this. Some may go on to learn the varieties and rules of different qualitative
methods and to participate in the discussions of what they represent. Others will
go on to approach positively the puzzles of qualitative data, to meet the challenge
of sensitively managing larger bodies of more complex data records, and to enjoy
the accessible achievement of making sense of a ‘real’ project and even to contrib-
ute to the next stage of innovation with methods and software tools. On finishing
this book, your data records may not be fully accessible and analysed, but the goal
is to end this book, and the first stage of a real project, with the knowledge that
access and analysis are achievable.

Lyn Richards
 Acknowledgements

In preparing the third edition of this book, I have been greatly helped by generous
feedback from students, teachers and researchers around the world, and from the
editorial team at Sage and their anonymous reviewers – my thanks to all.
One theme was dominant among the responses to the book, as in the stories
from researchers I had taught and helped in 20 years of teaching qualitative methods
in academia and outside, across countries and disciplines, and all levels of senior-
ity and experience. This was the difficulty novices find at the start of research, in
picturing what it would be like to be there, doing a qualitative project, and what
they could realistically hope to achieve – what it would be like to get there. I was
encouraged by this feedback, and by several close colleagues, in pursuing a maver-
ick project I’d talked of for years – putting together an informal body of accounts
of research experience, accessible online. Unlike most refereed publications and
thesis chapters, such a website could tell it as it is, with live accounts of what really
happened and what it was really like to face the challenges, how ways around
obstacles were devised, what worked and what didn’t, and the extraordinary expe-
rience of arriving at an adequate account of your data.
My thanks to those who backed me in this project, to Sage for seeing it as not just
ambitious but useful, to the many who responded to the call for contributions but
for one reason or another were turned away, and above all to the ten researchers
who finally ran the whole course. It wasn’t an easy task (or for many academics, a
familiar one) to write succinctly, briefly, honestly and clearly about the real story of
a project. I greatly appreciate their persistence in reworking drafts, their tolerance
in accepting my critical editing and suggestions, and my goals for the project. The
outcome is a unique research resource, and a good read. And I thank those who
spent time writing a postscript section to their account for the present edition,
reflecting on what they now know, looking back.
I wrote this book for all the researchers I have tried to help around the
globe, in decades of university teaching at undergraduate and graduate level,
then workshop teaching and project consultancy. They taught me to set aside
assumptions about research goals and experience that make sense only in
academia (and possibly, now, not there). I also learned new practical ways of
tackling the myths and monsters of qualitative methods, and discovered or
xxiv acknowledgements

invented techniques that worked for those confronted with data and the task
of doing justice to messy records.
This book was dreamt long back. I kept thinking, as the acceptability of qualita-
tive research grew, and I tried to help researchers with important questions and
no training, that a straightforward text would appear to show researchers how to
handle data. As I waited, both teaching and literature increasingly shifted away
from such purposes, to theoretical discussions about representations of reality.
Meanwhile, it was more and more evident that the world needed good qualitative
research to address the clamouring questions of health and social justice. With
few books advising what one would do with data if one ever got any, the need
for balance increasingly concerned me, as did the continuing irrelevance of texts
to those normally using software. Can you think of another profession in which
the majority of practitioners are untrained, and the majority of texts and teachers
teach methods long overtaken by technology?
This third edition is a next step in my attempts to fill that gap. The first was
Readme First (2013), written with Jan Morse to address a related need: that of
researchers who meet methodological choice without any training and have to
find their way to an understanding of methodological congruence. This book fol-
lowed, aimed to help them handle the data that results, and to assist those other
researchers who meet qualitative methods ‘data first’. With the second edition, it
moved to include the website accounts of methods in practice, live examples and
sharing of experiences. This new edition asked for more reflection from those con-
tributors. And it also asks of the reader another level of reflection, on their agency
in doing the research and the ethical implications.
My thanks to the professionals at Sage, particularly to Commissioning Editor
Katie Metzler, who advised wisely, tracked progress and checked from the north-
ern winter if I’d survived bushfires in Australia, to Anna Horvai, who prepared the
excellent and encouraging detailed report on referee feedback and performance of
the second edition and to Lily Mehrbod who took the new edition through to the
finishing post.
Thanks also to the Qualitative Interest Group at RMIT University, who gave me
a new understanding of the needs of researchers, at all levels of experience and an
amazing range of disciplines, for windows on the research process.
In preparing each edition, I have always been greatly helped by Tom Richards,
to whom I originally dedicated this book. It is a small by-product of our shared
belief in the importance of qualitative research and of helping people to do justice
to data, of the shared adventure of developing software tools, and of Tom’s abil-
ity to design and create tools that would remove barriers to research and create
entirely new ways of doing it, first for my work, and then for the research of many
thousands of others.
SETTING UP MAKING SENSE OF YOUR DATA

Chapter 1: Chapter 7:
Setting up. What are you aiming for?
Planning and Refine later Specifying the outcomes.
starting.

guides
Make
data WORKING WITH THE DATA

Chapter 4: Chapter 8: Chapter 9:

Chapter 2: Provides data for
Up from Searching Seeing a
Qualitative
the data. the data. whole.
data.
Ideas, memos, Chapter 6: coding search, Synthesis &
What are
models. Handling text search. patterns.
they?
How to manage ideas.
What to do
ideas? Cataloguing, Test,
with data?
writing. revise
Chapter 3: Chapter 5:
Data Coding.
Doing & using Write it
records.
coding. up
Making, Development &
managing. revision of ideas
Chapter 10:
Telling it.
Revising logs, writing reports,
Need for new data showing credibility.
 Introduction

Since the first publication of this book, much – and little – has changed. The
literature available to researchers has expanded greatly, as has the variety of
methodological approaches to qualitative research. The popularity of qualitative
methods has soared, in an ever-widening range of disciplines. But judging from
feedback to this book and other help resources, little has changed for embattled
novice researchers meeting qualitative data before they have training in tech-
niques for handling such records. This book was written for them, and has now
been expanded in response to their needs.
In this book you will find practical help in designing and using basic strate-
gies for making sense of qualitative data. And the book now links with a website
(https://study.sagepub.com/richards3e that carries more detailed advice and an
extraordinary online goldmine of ten researchers’ open and practical stories of
their experiences in real projects. The ‘Methods in Practice’ web-pages take you
into each project with the voice of the researcher recounting it. There you can read
stories of strategies developed and challenges met in projects from eight countries,
including many methods, contexts and disciplines, what it was like working this
way, what worked and what didn’t.

Starting points

Qualitative Methods and Qualitative Data

The first two chapters of this book concern the preparation for and design of quali-
tative studies, and the nature of and challenges in handling qualitative data. Here,
I offer some starting definitions.
Qualitative methods are ways of studying people and their social worlds by
going there, observing them closely, in their natural setting, and learning how
they understand their situations and account for their behaviour. There are many,
very different, qualitative research methods, but all attempt understanding of
individuals or small numbers of cases. Analysis aims to generate new accounts
or explanations out of this rich data, rather than test existing theories. A quali-
tative method is needed for researchers who are trying to learn something
2 introduction

new, rather than test something that is known. If you are planning a qualitative
project, it is probably because you don’t know what you will find. Qualitative
methods seek surprises.
So qualitative data is messy stuff! If you are working qualitatively it is usually
because the question being asked does not clearly indicate what data you need to
answer it. Whatever the qualitative method chosen, the researcher will be seeking
people’s own understanding, in their own words, of their own and others’ behav-
iour and its social context. The records of observations or discussions are most
often textual, sometimes visual or audio files. Those records ideally include data
about the social context, and are usually unstructured, since the goal was to gather
people’s own accounts, in their own words, rather than record answers to the
researcher’s prepared questions. The researcher is part of those data, not an outside
observer. Qualitative data are the results of interaction between the researcher and
‘subject’. Qualitative data records are thus typically records of observation or interac-
tion that are complex and contexted.
These starter definitions may surprise you, as both qualitative methods and
qualitative data are more usually defined negatively – the method is not quan-
titative, the data not expressed numerically. Such definitions can be confusing,
since most qualitative studies, like most social observations, involve some count-
ing, and most data can be summarized numerically. More usefully, qualitative
data can be described as data that are not easily reducible immediately (or, perhaps
ever) to numbers.

Data First: Meeting Qualitative Methods

The majority of those first meeting qualitative data are unprepared by training
to handle such data. This problem is encountered at all levels and locations of
research practice, by policy analysts, postgraduate students, evaluators, research
assistants, contract researchers, consultants, undergraduates, senior colleagues
and supervisors. Meeting data without training can happen for any of several per-
fectly good reasons.
This may be your first meeting with qualitative data because you are being
taught the methods by first working with data. Some teachers prefer to show stu-
dents the richness and interest of qualitative data, and to introduce the challenges
of handling data, before they tackle the philosophical basis for methodologies.
Early in a course about research, the emphasis may be on what social researchers
do to record social interaction. The student is immediately making data records,
and needs to know both that records must be handled in order to be analysed and
that they could handle such data. Later, if they go on to a more advanced level, dis-
tinctions between different methods may be explored, and detailed instructions
may be given in a particular method.
Or it may be that you are unprepared with data-handling skills because you sim-
ply didn’t mean to make qualitative data. Practitioners trained in other methods,
 introduction 3

or with no research training, may be confronted, in an academic task or a contract

research setting, with an issue requiring qualitative data. Such data happen when
you ask questions like ‘What’s going on?’ or ‘How do they see their situation?’ or
simply when you leave space for ‘write-ins’ in a questionnaire. Perhaps the mean-
ings people put on their actions or experiences have to be understood because a
statistical analysis has failed to explain the patterns discovered. Answers may then
be sought by talking to people or observing them.
You may have happened on qualitative data, even a lot of data, as a result of a
project that was not designed to be qualitative. In recent years, the use of qualita-
tive data has spread rapidly, and in areas where qualitative data have not hitherto
been used, projects are designed to inform researchers needing to understand
medical problems ‘on the ground’, political issues at the grass roots or the needs
of local action groups, to advise government, businesses or marketing strate-
gists, to prepare legal evidence or evaluate programmes. Across disciplines, many
researchers strive to handle qualitative data records far more numerous (though
not, often, as rich) as were handled in traditional small-scale projects. The meth-
odological disadvantages of bulk data are massive, but saying so doesn’t help the
researcher who has to handle the data. Throughout this book, there are notes on
how particular techniques can be adapted to bigger projects.
Or perhaps you did plan to do a qualitative project, and you prepared yourself
by reading about methodology, but delayed the challenge of learning how to
deal with the material. The graduate student who embarks upon a dissertation
without a plan for handling data can be overwhelmed by a sense that the well-
honed research design has failed them. Records soon pile up when (amazingly!)
everyone wants to talk to you. Just as the material becomes both exciting and
informing, it also threatens to get away from your control. Records you could
hold in your hand moments ago expand to a massive body of complexity that
could knock you over.
In all of these situations, the data may prove splendidly relevant and very excit-
ing, but the challenges of doing justice to these records look formidable. Wasting
such material, whose acquisition took time and trust, is not an option. In the
field, when researchers are dealing with qualitative data for the first time, or are
confronted with data they do not know how to handle, the need is for pragmatic,
achievable techniques for data management, data reduction and data analysis.
The following chapters offer a basic set of such handling skills, to maximize the
chance that qualitative data will be well handled and well used. The website offers
real experiences of researchers’ efforts to do justice to qualitative data.
I am not here debating the disadvantages (or surprisingly, sometimes, advan-
tages) of meeting data before methodology. This book is simply responding to the
fact that many researchers do.
If your starting point was to get a glimpse of ways of handling data before
gaining an understanding of the why of qualitative research, this book will
leave you still needing that understanding. Why would you locate your study
4 introduction

thus, why would you have such data, why would you seek different sorts of data
for another study, why is this not a quantitative study? My strong advice is not
to avoid those questions. The present book leaves them still to be addressed,
in the appropriate way for your research context, at the appropriate time for
your project.
Such wider questions are the focus of the methodological map-book I wrote
with Janice Morse, Readme First for a User’s Guide to Qualitative Methods (Richards
and Morse, 2013), hereafter Readme First. Like the present book, it assumes lit-
tle prior training. Readme First is about the why questions that apply to method,
why one would use one method rather than another, and why good qualitative
research requires a fit of question to method, method to data and data to analysis
and outcome. It sketches for different methods what the experience of using them
would be like, and offers a wide list of readings for each method and its justifica-
tion. To inform the choice of methods, and direct the reader who wishes to go
there to the relevant literature and to ways of learning methods without mystique,
I refer to Readme First. Each chapter in this book, and also each of the projects on
the website, ends with suggested further readings.
Here, the emphasis is on how to do the data handling. With class exercise data
or ‘real’ projects, the first hurdle is often to gain understanding that such data
can be handled – and that data handling is the first step to analysis. The next
hurdle is seeing that being able to deal with qualitative data does not require inter-
minable time or sophisticated skills. Once these hurdles are cleared, researchers
can immerse themselves in their rich records and seek subtle understanding and
adequate explanations of the situation studied.
The handling is also done, hands-on, with computers. Working without
computers is no longer an option for qualitative (or indeed any) researchers.
Handwritten records like diaries or letters may stay on paper, but any typed text
will be in electronic format, as will your report. Researchers now use software to
handle such records, because, once software is learned, they can achieve much
more in considerably less time and at far less risk if they do. If you or someone
with power over you still prefers to work with coloured pens and copied extracts,
most of the advice about the goals of handling data in this book will still be rel-
evant to your work, but the goals will be much harder to achieve. As mentioned in
the Preface, where software is necessary for the techniques discussed, this is noted.
The ‘Methods in Practice’ reports on the website offer honest accounts of what it
is like to work with any of several software packages – or none.

Handling data

Handling data? There are books and workshops on collecting data and analysing
data – ways of making and doing things to data. The emphasis here is more on
the craft of creating and working with data records and the book is intended for
 introduction 5

those doing such work, hands-on. Like any craft, it has guidelines for setting up
and working skilfully with the materials.
Using those guidelines, a researcher can rapidly build a live, changing body of
material from which new understanding can be created. To get there requires that
the ideas and the data records are not just managed but handled, and handled
skilfully.
Qualitative researchers deal with, and revel in, confusing, contradictory, multi-
faceted data records, rich accounts of experience and interaction. The researcher
confronted by such data records almost always talks in terms of dilemmas. How to
tame the data without losing their excitement, get order without trivializing the
accounts, or losing the reflections about the researcher’s role in making them hap-
pen? How to exert control without losing vivid recall? How to show a pattern that
respects the data without prematurely reducing vivid words to numbers?
So think in terms of handling the records of data that you collaboratively create
in interaction with those you study. We use ‘handler’ to refer to interaction with
animals we respect, and with whom we expect to form a relationship – whoever
heard of a fish handler? The verb indicates understanding and control, or lack of it
(‘I have to learn to handle change better’). It is about coming to grips with a chal-
lenge. (The slang phrase ‘I can handle that’ means it’s good.) The goal of the rest of
this book is that the reader will finish it confident that they can handle qualitative
data and that the experience is good.

Real Data and Real Projects?

This book can be read without data, or used with provided data, classroom exer-
cise data or the first stages of data for a ‘real’ project.
But you also need to know real projects, ones that work and ones that don’t.
In this book, each chapter has a running ‘example’ of a research project. There
are no references to publications on these projects, because I made them up, to
avoid loading the text with detail. The real projects are on the website, where
the ‘Methods in Practice’ reports offer something you don’t get from referred
journals – a sense of what projects are really like. Many have links to project
sites, publications and online reports.
For more hands-on experience, find an experienced researcher who will let you
work alongside them, perhaps as a volunteer assistant. Like any craft, qualitative
research is well learned in apprenticeship, so long as the apprentice retains the
ability to question what they observe in practice.
If you are not working in a ‘real’ project, consider finding or making a very small
body of your own data, by observing and taking notes, by talking to people and
recording recollections or by taping and transcribing interviews. Learning about
techniques and achieving competence in them is easier if you are genuinely inter-
ested in the data being handled.
6 introduction

The shape of this book

The following chapters take the reader through ten research processes that are
always involved in qualitative data handling, though not always in that order.
For convenience they are grouped in three parts: on setting up, on working with
the data and on making sense.
In each chapter, references to the projects on the ‘Methods in Practice’ website
are indicated by an icon in the margin.
Practical tasks to do, uses of the website material and suggested readings, round
off each chapter.

Part I: Setting Up
Part I is about starting the project. Its message is to think forward, think ethics,
think project goals, think making good records and think from the start about
how you will later justify and account for your research processes.
Chapter 1 is about setting up your project. It advises on qualitative research
design, ethical issues in qualitative work and the thinking through of project pur-
pose, goal and outcomes.
Chapter 2 discusses the meanings of ‘qualitative’ and ‘data’, the differences
between qualitative and quantitative, the importance of complexity and con-
text and of reflection on your part in making your data. It covers readying for
data, gaining familiarity with the research field and with the ongoing tasks of
writing of qualitative research, and logging the records to establish validity and
reliability.
Chapter 3 is about making data records, the different ways of making data, and
the importance of avoiding wastage and data loss, the necessity for data reduc-
tion, skills for doing it and ways of ensuring a smooth flow of data. It deals with
access to information and recording of the decisions that affect what the project
will later be able to claim. And it confronts the tasks of choosing software tools
and becoming competent in using them.
Aim to end this part with a project set up and a sense of data as manageable.

Part II: Working with the Data

In all qualitative methods, data making and analysis are simultaneous, not sequen-
tial, stages. The next three chapters explore what this means in practice.
Chapter 4 explains ways of exploring data to get ‘up’ from the mass of your
data to a clearer picture of what’s going on. It looks at processes of interpretation,
during reading, reflection, review. It sets out ways of recording what happens in
annotations and memos.
 introduction 7

Chapter 5 is on qualitative coding, starting with why it is so different from

quantitative coding and the purposes of qualitative coding. It explains how to use
coding to store information about cases, gather material on a topic, and the all-
important ways in which coding can open up meaning, allowing you to develop
categories or explore dimensions in the data. It warns of the traps of over-coding,
especially with software assistance, and advises on how to avoid them.
Then Chapter 6 deals with the ideas that result from working up from the data
and coding: the discovery and handling of ideas, how to catalogue the categories for
thinking about your project, and what to do with the ideas emerging from the data.
Aim to end this part with a growing project within which ideas emerging from
the data are catalogued and accessible, linked to well-coded data and documented
as they develop.

Part III: Making Sense of Your Data

The final part is on handling the processes of analysis and reporting.
As you work through the book, it will become evident that each of the analysis
processes will probably occur throughout a project, as, of course, does writing.
The ways of searching and seeing your data send you back to revisit processes of
making data, interpreting, coding and handling ideas. Writing about your project
aids analysis.
Chapter 7 invites you to reconsider the outcome you want from the project, and
firm up what you are aiming for. It tackles two challenges of qualitative research:
understanding how theory can be constructed and not knowing what sort of an
outcome you might be able to construct. Possible constructs seeking synthesis and
patterns are discussed, with ways of assessing what would be satisfactory and how
the researcher will know when they get there.
Searching for, interpreting and validating patterns in the data are covered in
Chapter 8, with an emphasis on the many ways of searching either the text or
your coding, or both. It discusses how to use these tools to question themes and
build understanding, and how to use the results to establish and explore patterns
and test hunches.
Seeing the project as a whole requires different skills, the subject of Chapter 9. It
indicates the array of techniques for seeing an overall ‘whole’ or seeing a pattern
and for testing what is seen, including modelling, displaying relationships and
developing interpretations.
Finally, Chapter 10 maps the paths to concluding a project satisfactorily. The
emphasis is on establishing the strength of the argument by using your writing
from the start of the project and using the data purposively. It discusses the ways
of usefully telling your project to others and establishing that your research has
been rigorous and your conclusions deserve interest and respect.
8 introduction

Feedback Loops and Forward Planning

These ten chapters do not represent discrete, sequential stages of a project. Nor do
the website materials fit neatly into them. This is because of two core characteris-
tics of qualitative research.
Firstly, the techniques of qualitative research are not linear but looping. The
researcher learns from the data, returning to revise or revisit steps taken before
that understanding developed.
The non-linear nature of qualitative research is sometimes a problem to novices.
The method is often described as ‘cyclical’, and the researcher can be pardoned for
wondering how they can ever get anywhere other than where they started. Along
the way, they discover that the feedback process is never cyclical; it always takes
them somewhere else. But its uncertainty remains a challenge.
This book is designed to show that at each step, well-planned feedback loops
drive the project forward rather than dragging it back. The looping of a project
occurs throughout the book, from the discussion in Chapter 1 of the essential
process of designing for feedback loops, to the use of them in Chapter 10 for
validating the outcome in your final report. These journeys are illustrated in the
diagrams that commence each chapter, maps of the book showing you where you
are now, where you came from and where you can go next.
Secondly, the techniques of qualitative research work only if they are purposive,
and can be highly dysfunctional if they become ends in themselves. You are urged
to move around the book and follow leads to the website purposively, with your
own goals in mind. Use the maps to see how the processes described draw on or
feed into processes in other chapters. Jump forward where a process makes sense
because it is preparatory for another technique to be discussed later, or back to
check why you would want to be doing this. (Do you really need to code this data
at this stage, for example? You may need to know how you can use coding in ques-
tioning and pattern discovery.)
However you get there, you are advised to read the whole book before you
seriously commence making data in a ‘real’ project. The methods of qualitative
research are many and often messy. You’ll hear researchers bemoan the load of ‘all
that data’ and the threat that ‘it will never make sense’. You will also hear critics
question whether there’s a method in this madness. My aim in this book, and our
aim in providing the website examples, is to show that qualitative researchers can
make sense of disparate and challenging data, and justify their accounts, because
they have flexible, adaptable but rigorous and trusted methods that work.
 I
Setting up
 THIS LATER
CHAPTER CHAPTERS

Project Plan
Concept Data planning
(Ch. 2) &
Purpose, goal & Sets
recording
outcome directions &
acceptability
(Ch. 3)
What are these
conditions for
for your project?

They guide How to move

up from data
Sets (Ch. 4)
Designing the practical
project plans for
What are you
Take all into
asking? Idea
account when
How are you development
asking it? (Chs 5–7)
What data will
you need?

Log later Theory building &

Project as process changes in testing
(Chs 8, 9)

Logging your
design Log
Starting a development Writing up the
log trail in all these outcomes
(Ch. 10)

Initial Activities

Write
Entering the field about &
log Data records,
using Memos
Declaring your (Chs 3, 4)
ideas
Literature, ‘bias’,
initial thoughts Sketch using Models (Ch. 4)

Learning your
software
Choosing,
learning, starting
the project
 One
Setting up your project

This chapter is about starting out sure-footed. It advises on ways of specifying what
you are setting out to do, why, and how you will do it. It urges that in setting up you
should be usefully reflecting on your research question, whether it requires qualita-
tive research and the data needed to answer it well. How might you acquire such
data and what are the ethical implications of doing this? These are all questions that
should be asked before you start even planning to acquire data. It proposes as first
steps clarifying your own relationship to the topic and the intended data, and declar-
ing the assumptions you bring with you.

Starting can be the hardest part of any new task. In any social research project,
putting off starting is easy because of the risks of starting unprepared. If you
change your approach once you have entered the research field, you may not get
a second attempt. This is particularly salient if you are intending to do a qualita-
tive project, which is likely to be focusing closely on a fairly identifiable group of
people. Moreover, there is a special challenge for the qualitative researcher; rarely
can a project be specified in advance. If you are working qualitatively it’s because
you don’t know what you will find. Even riskier than putting off starting is start-
ing too soon, by making data without clear goals and procedures in mind. The
risks are ethical and practical. Ethical risks are huge. If you have not reflected on
what you wish to do and its impact on those involved, you may harm those you
wish to study, impact their lives and damage your own reputation and chances of
constructive research. And if you have not reflected on your relationship to the
question, the people involved and the data, you may skew the study irreparably,
and seriously damage those relationships. Practically, if you have not organized
your project, considered the design, the data needed and the ways they will be
handled, you will find yourself swamped by a flood of complex, contradictory
accounts of experiences that are only partially relevant to your question.
12 handling qualitative data

So start by thinking first. The first stage is to frame your project – placing it in
context, forming it, fitting the parts together, constructing them into a plausible,
doable whole, so you can see it before you start. This opening stage of a project
is undoubtedly the most under-emphasized and indeed often overlooked stage in
qualitative work. Far too often, novice researchers just start, assuming the project
will just happen, as they enter (or blunder into!) the research field. The practical
and ethical challenges of beginning that way are massive, and projects can be
doomed from the start if they are not framed at the start.

Placing the project in context

For most new researchers the early stages of proposing and starting a project are
fraught by regulation. All these regulations have purposes. (Many are designed to
rescue you and/or those you propose to study from your own lack of preparation,
or from approaches that are unthinking or ill-informed), but they may appear as
barriers to getting going, and are often resented. Treat those requirements as posi-
tive steps, helping you to do a thorough job of framing your project, reporting on
its ethical implications and presenting a design.

The Literature as Context

For most research, a first essential step will be to find out what’s already known,
and what sorts of studies have been done, in the area. This comes early not just
because a committee requires it before you get approval, but because your own
project must be informed by other studies, your own question by the answers to
others’ questions and, importantly, your own research design by what has been
done, what it offered, and especially, what’s not yet known.
There is a substantial literature on doing a literature review! (See references at
the end of this chapter, and, as for any topic, do a web search for new ones.) But
novices often lack advice on how to approach it, and regrettably it’s too often seen
as a necessary chore, and a hurdle to get over before the study can commence.
Resist that attitude! This is a precious chance to locate your project. Consider
approaching the task this way:

•• Literature reviewing is a qualitative data task. You are seeking to understand unstructured text
documents, to distil the important themes in them, to come up with your own account of what they
offer. So treat it as a starter project, exploring tools for coding and analysis.
•• Literature reviewing (like qualitative research) is detective work – you are seeking the explanation
of priorities, the story of how things are seen. Don’t allow your review to become merely descrip-
tive, a list of who said what when. Make it critical, incisive, new. Aim to say something surprising
about what isn’t known and how you could help. Aim to become the new authority in this field.
•• Literature reviews, like qualitative projects, are ongoing. Don’t get trapped into seeing your review
as a once-off exercise prior to starting. Once you start, you’ll see that paper you overlooked as
 setting up your project 13

suddenly significant, you’ll understand why other studies omitted this major issue, you’ll need to
seek out what’s known in areas you didn’t see as mattering.
•• Literature reviewing is a task generously supported by a variety of computer tools (Paulus et al.,
2014). Find bibliographic software, use web searches, chase discussion groups and blogs around
important themes.
•• If you are intending to use a qualitative software package, consider putting your literature review
into a project in that package. It offers a safe container for your reflections and explorations. Seek
out current papers or workshops on the use of your chosen qualitative software in this way. (Jump
to Chapter 5 for discussion of coding. If you code the material in the literature, or your interpreta-
tive notes, you’ll be starting a category system that will point to the things you will later look for in
your own data.)

The Social Context

All social research occurs somewhere. Before you start, consider where you will
place your project, both geographically and socially. Where will you need to go
and do you have the resources to do this? If you can’t physically go there, will
online data suffice? And socially, will you be acceptable and accepted where you
wish to go, and adequately informed about the context?
Is there a location that is accessible, practically, socially and (in both regards)
ethically, for your purposes? Simply asking this question may cause you to reframe
the project!
If on the other hand you already know where you are heading, because you are
there, do some hard thinking about whether this is the best place. Researchers
often propose a project where they are already – studying an issue or process in
their place of work, or a community they belong to, a problem they face or an
experience they share. These proposals may be admirable – you know a problem
that needs to be solved or strongly feel for those dealing with an issue and want to
help. They may also be practical – you are accepted in the area and known, people
will talk with you, indeed have already offered to do so. But beware the assumption
that the location is advantageous because you know the context! See Chapter 2 for
more on the relationship of you to your data.

Purpose, goal and outcome

At the early stages of project proposal, it is easy to confuse the purpose of your
project with its specific goals, and easy to leave out of consideration what sort of
an outcome is required. These are three very different aspects of the ‘results’ you
are aiming for. A first step towards design is to put yourself into the picture. What
are your purposes, your goals and what outcome do you seek?

•• Purpose: Why this study? Will it help ameliorate some societal problem? Will it inform the litera-
ture? Will it drive policy making and decision making? Is it more generally to add to our under-
standing of the social world? Or – be careful here – is its purpose to justify some action or back
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
 promotion, 4;
leaves for Mexico, 7;
at Camargo and Matamoros, 10-14, 23-24;
march to Victoria, 24-43;
at Victoria, 43-46;
march to Tampico, 46-50;
at Lobos, 51;
at Vera Cruz, 53-73;
march to Cerro Gordo, 74-79;
battle of Cerro Gordo, 80-90;
march to Jalapa, 90-93;
at Mexico City, 92-93.

McMaster, J. B., quoted, 52 (note), 74 (note).

Malibran, 55, 56.

Marquesoto, 40.

Mason, Lieut. J. L., 63, 64, 65-66, 67, 70.

Matamoros, 10, 11, 12, 23.

Meade, George G., 5, quoted, 18 (note), 22 (note), 48 (note).

Moquete, 23, 27.

Murphy, 34, 39.

Padilla, 42.

Patterson, Gen. Robert, 14, 15, 16, 20-21, 22 (note), 23-24, 26, 27,
30, 31-32, 33, 35, 37, 40, 41, 43, 56.

Pillow, Gen. Gideon J., 15, 23, 25, 26, 35, 37, 52 (note), 79, 81-87.
Plan del Rio, 78-79.

Puerto Nacional, 77.

Quitman, Gen. John A., 44, 52 (note).

Rancho Padillo, 23.

Reilly, 89.

San Fernando, 33-34.

Santa Fé, 75-76.

Santander, 37.

Santa Rosa, 46.

Santa Teresa, 27-28, 29.

Saunders, Capt. John, 68, 69, 72.

Scott, Gen. Winfield, 52 (note), 70, 71 (note), 86, 87.

Semmes, R., quoted, 79 (note), 82 (note).

Shields, Gen. James, 52 (note), 88, 89, 90.

Smith, Lieut. Gustavus W., 2, 4, 7, 11, 20-21, 23, 25, 26, 31, 36, 38,
55, 57, 58, 59, 60-62, 63, 68, 74, 75, 78, 80, 93.

Smith, Major John L., 58.

“Songo,” 27-28, 30, 37, 42.

Stevens, Lieut. I. I., 63, 70, 72.

Stuart, “Jimmie,” 14, 73-74, 75-76, 78.

Swift, Capt. A. J., 2, 7, 11, 16, 55.

Tamaulipas, 51.

Tampico, 50-51.

Taylor, Gen. Zachary, 22 (note), 44.

Totten, Col. Joseph G., 2, 57-58, 61-62, 64, 66, 70.

Tower, Lieut. Z. B., 67, 78-81.

Twiggs, Gen. David E., 47, 48, 52, 56, 74, 79, 80, 82, 87-90.

Vera Cruz, siege of, 53-73.

Vergera, 74, 75.

Victoria, 43-46.

Vinton, Capt. John R., 58, 68.

Volunteers, 16, 18, 28-29, 36, 38-39, 43, 80.

Walker, Sears Cook, 1.

Waterhouse, Major, 36.

Williams, Seth, 15-16, 32.

Worth, Gen. William J., 52 (note), 53, 56, 58, 74, 75, 77, 78, 80, 86,
89, 90, 92.

Wynkoop, Col. Francis M., 82, 84, 86-87.

 FOOTNOTES:
[1] In a letter to his brother “Tom” dated West Point, September
22, 1846, McClellan wrote: “We start with about 75 men—the best
Company (so Gen’l. Scott and Col. Totten both say) in the service.
All Americans—all young—all intelligent—all anxious, very eager
for the campaign—and above all, well drilled. If the Lord and
Santa Anna will only condescend to give us a chance—I’ll be
most confoundedly mistaken if we don’t thrash them ‘some’.”
(McClellan Papers, Vol. I.)
[2] Gustavus W. Smith was one of McClellan’s most intimate
friends and was known by him by the nickname of “Legs.” He was
born in Scott Co., Kentucky, on January 1, 1822. He died in New
York on June 23, 1896. Smith graduated from West Point in 1842.
He entered the Confederate Army in 1861 and distinguished
himself in the Peninsular Campaign fighting against his old friend
at the battles of Seven Pines and Fair Oaks.
[3] A town of some three thousand inhabitants, situated on the
river San Juan about three miles above its junction with the Rio
Grande. It is about one hundred miles by land from Matamoros.
(See Life and Letters of General George Gordon Meade, Vol. I,
pages 109 and 119.)
[4] A letter from McClellan to his mother, dated “Camp off
Camargo, Mex.,” November 14, 1846, tells her that when he
arrived at Matamoros he was taken sick almost immediately. He
remained sick for two weeks while there and “whilst on the
steamboat thence to Camargo” ... “When we got here I went into
hospital quarters whence I emerged yesterday, so that I have had
almost a month’s sickness, but now am perfectly well.” He adds, “I
would not have missed coming here for the world, now that I am
well and recovering my strength, I commence to enjoy the novelty
of the affair, and shall have enough to tell you when I return, to fill
a dozen books.” (McClellan Papers, Vol. I.)
[5] Later on McClellan wrote in the diary on a page otherwise
blank:
“On the 18th June, 1851, at five in the afternoon died Jimmie
Stuart, my best and oldest friend. He was mortally wounded the
day before by an arrow, whilst gallantly leading a charge against a
party of hostile Indians. He is buried at Camp Stuart—about
twenty-five miles south of Rogue’s River [Oregon?], near the main
road, and not far from the base of the Cishion (?) Mountains. His
grave is between two oaks, on the left side of the road, going
south, with J. S. cut in the bark of the largest of the oaks.”
[6] Robert Patterson, born at Cappagh, County Tyrone, Ireland, on
January 12, 1792, died at Philadelphia, Pa., on August 7, 1881.
Came to America early in life and became a prominent merchant
and Democratic politician in Philadelphia. Served both in the War
of 1812 and in the Mexican War and in 1861 was mustered into
the service as a major-general. He commanded the troops in the
Shenandoah Valley and was outwitted by General Joseph E.
Johnston who slipped away in time to join Beauregard and rout
the Union forces under McDowell at the first battle of Bull Run on
July 21, 1861. Patterson was retired from the army the same
month.
[7] Tampico was captured November 14, 1846.
[8] Gideon J. Pillow was born in Williamson Co., Tennessee, on
June 8, 1806. He died in Lee Co., Arkansas, on October 6, 1878.
Pillow was a prominent Tennessee politician and was active in
securing the presidential nomination for his intimate friend James
K. Polk. In 1846 he was commissioned a brigadier general by
Polk and went to the front in command of the Tennessee
volunteers. In 1861 he became a brigadier general in the
Confederate Army and is famous for having deserted his forces at
Fort Donelson on February 15, 1862, leaving them to be
surrendered to Grant the next day by his subordinate, General
Simon B. Buckner. Also see Autobiography of Lieut.-Gen. Scott,
Vol. II, pages 416-417.
[9] Later a brigadier general in the Union Army. He was adjutant
general on McClellan’s staff and closely connected with him while
in command of the Army of the Potomac.
[10] The city was captured on September 24, 1846, after three
days fighting.
[11] “The people are very polite to the regulars ... but they hate the
volunteers as they do old scratch himself.... You never hear of a
Mexican being murdered by a regular or a regular by a Mexican.
The volunteers carry on in a most shameful and disgraceful
manner; they think nothing of robbing and killing the Mexicans.”
Letter to mother, dated “Camp off Camargo, Mex.,” November 14,
1846. (McClellan Papers, Vol. I.)
“I believe with fifteen thousand regulars, we could go to the City of
Mexico, but with thirty thousand volunteers the whole nature and
policy of the war will be changed. Already are the injurious
influences of their presence perceptible, and you will hear any
Mexican in the street descanting on the good conduct of the
‘tropas de ligna,’ as they call us, and the dread of the ‘volontarios.’
And with reason, they (the volunteers) have killed five or six
innocent people walking in the streets, for no other object than
their own amusement; to-be-sure, they are always drunk, and are
in a measure irresponsible for their conduct. They rob and steal
the cattle and corn of the poor farmers, and in fact act more like a
body of hostile Indians than of civilized whites. Their own officers
have no command or control over them, and the General has
given up in despair any hope of keeping them in order. The
consequence is they are exciting a feeling among the people
which will induce them to rise en masse to obstruct our progress,
and if, when we reach the mountains, we have to fight the people
as well as the soldiers, the game will be up with us. I have some
hope, however, that when we leave this place, which has become
a mass of grog-shops and gambling-houses, and march to meet
the enemy, the absence of liquor, and the fear of the enemy, may
induce a little order among them and bring them to a better state
of discipline.” Letter of George G. Meade, dated Matamoros, July
9, 1846. (Life and Letters of General George Gordon Meade, Vol.
I, pages 109-110.) Meade wrote further, from Camargo, August
13, 1846: “Already have they in almost every volunteer regiment
reported one-third their number sick, and in many cases one-half
the whole regiment, and I fear the mortality will be terrible among
them, for their utter ignorance of the proper mode of taking care of
themselves. The large number of sick is a dead weight upon us,
taking away so many men as hospital attendants, requiring
quarters, etc., and if taken sick on the march, requiring
transportation in wagons or on litters.” (Same, page 121.) Also
from Monterey, December 2, 1846: “The volunteers have been
creating disturbances, which have at last aroused the old General
[Taylor] so much that he has ordered one regiment, the First
Kentucky foot, to march to the rear, as they have disgraced
themselves and their State.... The volunteers cannot take any
care of themselves; the hospitals are crowded with them, they die
like sheep; they waste their provisions, requiring twice as much to
supply them as regulars do. They plunder the poor inhabitants of
everything they can lay their hands on, and shoot them when they
remonstrate, and if one of their number happens to get into a
drunken brawl and is killed, they run over the country, killing all
the poor innocent people they find in their way, to avenge, as they
say, the murder of their brother. This is a true picture, and the
cause is the utter incapacity of their officers to control them or
command respect.” (Same, pages 161-162.)
For further testimony of the same character see Luther Giddings,
Sketches of the Campaign in Northern Mexico, pages 81-85;
William Jay, Review of the Mexican War, pages 214-222; J. J.
Oswandel, Notes on the Mexican War, page 114. Also see
postea, page 37.
[12] George A. McCall was born in Philadelphia, Pa., on March
16, 1802, and died there on February 25, 1868. He graduated
from West Point in 1822. McCall was made a brigadier general in
1861 and placed in command of the Pennsylvania Reserves. He
distinguished himself in the Peninsular Campaign under the
command of McClellan at the battles of Mechanicsville, Gaines’s
Mill and Frazier’s Farm.
[13] Meade, in a letter dated “Monterey, November 10, 1846,”
wrote in explanation of this move as follows: “The cabinet at
Washington, profiting by the history of the Aulic Council, is
manoeuvering his (Taylor’s) troops for him, and at Washington,
entirely independent of his wishes and views, organizing
expeditions for Tampico, even going so far as to designate the
troops and their commanders. To-be-sure, it is well understood
how this is done, by the mighty engine of political influence, that
curse of our country, which forces party politics into everything.
“General Patterson and others are good Democrats; they are
indignant that General Taylor should have left them in the rear
when he carried more troops than he could feed. They complain
at Washington, and forthwith General Patterson and Co. are
directed to proceed against Tampico, and General Patterson
informed before his commanding general knows anything about it.
Well may we be grateful that we are at war with Mexico! Were it
any other power, our gross follies would have been punished
severely before now.
“General Taylor, of course, has to succumb, and the Tampico
expedition is to be immediately prosecuted. General Patterson
goes from Camargo.... He marches direct to Tampico. General
Taylor, however, does not design that he shall have it in his power,
from ignorance or other causes, to fail; therefore he will leave
here with a column of some two thousand men and artillery, light
and heavy, and will join General Patterson before he reaches
Tampico, when both columns united, and under General Taylor’s
command, will operate against the town, in conjunction with the
navy, if the latter have it in its power to do anything.” (Life and
Letters of G. G. Meade, Vol. I, page 152.)
[14] i. e., General Patterson.
[15] Aide to General Patterson.
[16] Surgeon on General Patterson’s staff.
[17] A Mexican servant.
[18] George C. Furber, in his Twelve Months Volunteer; or Journal
of a Private in the Campaign in Mexico, gives in chapters VIII and
IX (pages 275-393) a lively account of this same march, in which
he took part, from Matamoros to Victoria and Tampico. He
describes many of the events noted by McClellan, but from the
standpoint of an enthusiastic and self-confident member of the
volunteer forces.
The contemptuous sting in McClellan’s frequent references to
“mustangs” can be appreciated from the following. Says Furber
(page 376): “The ‘mustang cavalry’—a description of force
unknown to the army regulations ... accompanied us from Victoria.
—It was composed of numbers from the three regiments of
infantry. Any one that could raise the means to buy a long-eared
burro (jackass), or a mule, or old Mexican horse, or any such
conveyance, immediately entered the mustang cavalry. Such
animals could be bought for from three to five dollars. Some of the
riders had procured Mexican saddles, with their horsehair
housings and bridles also; while some had bridles, but no
saddles; others had saddles without bridles; while others, again,
had neither. Here was a soldier large as life, with his musket in his
hand, on a little jackass, without saddle or bridle, and so small
that the rider had to lift his feet from the ground;—the little burro
jogged along with him, occasionally stopping to gather a bite of
grass.”
[19] McClellan’s small brother and sister.
[20] Agustin de Iturbide was born in Spain on September 27,
1783, the son of a Spanish noble. He entered the army and
attained a high and responsible position in the Spanish
administration of Mexico. In 1821 he advocated the celebrated
“Plan of Iguala,” in which it was proposed that Mexico should
become independent under the rule of a member of the Spanish
royal family. Ferdinand VII regarded the movement as a rebellion,
and Iturbide himself was proclaimed emperor as Agustin I in May,
1822, and crowned the following July.
A rebellion immediately broke out against his authority under the
lead of Santa Anna, who proclaimed a republic at Vera Cruz.
Iturbide was forced to abdicate in March, 1823, and went to
Europe. He returned to Mexico the following year but was
arrested and shot at Padilla on July 19, 1824.
[21] Sappers, soldiers employed in the building of fortifications,
field works, etc. (Century Dict.)
[22] “General Taylor never wore uniform, but dressed himself
entirely for comfort. He moved about the field in which he was
operating to see through his own eyes the situation. Often he
would be without staff officers, and when he was accompanied by
them there was no prescribed order in which they followed. He
was very much given to sit his horse sideways—with both feet on
one side—particularly on the battlefield.... Taylor was not a
conversationalist, but on paper he could put his meaning so
plainly that there could be no mistaking it. He knew how to
express what he wanted to say in the fewest well chosen words,
but would not sacrifice meaning to the construction of high
sounding sentences.” U. S. Grant, Memoirs, Vol. I, pages 138-
139.
[23] David E. Twiggs was born in Richmond Co., Georgia, in
1790. He served in the war of 1812, and in the Mexican War
became a brigade and division commander under General Scott.
In February, 1861, he was in command of the Department of
Texas, but surrendered his forces, with the military stores under
his charge, to the Confederates. On March 1, 1861, Joseph Holt,
Secretary of War, issued “General Order No. 5” as follows,—“By
the direction of the President of the United States, it is ordered
that Brig. Gen. David E. Twiggs, major-general by brevet, be, and
is hereby, dismissed from the Army of the United States, for his
treachery to the flag of his country, in having surrendered, on the
18th of February, 1861, on the demand of the authorities of Texas,
the military posts and other property of the United States in his
department and under his charge.” (Official Records, War of the
Rebellion, Series I, Vol. I, page 597.)
Twiggs was appointed a major-general in the Confederate Army,
and died at Augusta, Georgia, on September 15, 1862.
[24] “The correspondent of the ‘Spirit of the Times,’ G. de L., is
Captain [Guy] Henry, of the Third Infantry, a classmate of mine at
West Point, a very good fellow, and I notice his recent productions
since our march from Camargo have been quite spirited.” Meade,
Life and Letters, Vol. I, pages 167-168.
[25] “McClellan’s sobriquet in Mexico, among his intimate friends,
was ‘Polance’ (sugar). On the march, when [he] first arrived, he
insisted upon eating a lot of the sugar arranged on even cobs and
persuading his companions to eat it too. He was always fond of
sweet things. They all became ill in consequence, and he more
than any of them. After that they addressed him as ‘Polance’ for
he kept saying,—‘Why it’s Polance, the best sugar—it can’t hurt
anyone’.” (Note in writing of McClellan’s daughter, McClellan
Papers, Vol. 108.)
[26] “Tampico is a delightful place, having fine cafes, and all the
luxuries of a somewhat civilized town.... I find the place much
larger than I expected, and really quite delightful. There is a large
foreign population of merchants, and in consequence the town
has all such comforts as good restaurants, excellent shops, where
everything can be purchased, and is in fact quite as much of a
place as New Orleans. It is inaccessible, owing to a bar, having
only eight feet of water, and as this is the season of ‘Northers,’
already many wrecks have taken place.” Meade, Life and Letters,
Vol. I, pages 175 and 177.
[27] “You can form no idea of the pleasure it gave us to meet the
regulars after having been so long with the cursed volunteers.... I
am tired of Tampico for I like to be in motion.—You have no idea
of the charm and excitement of a march—I could live such a life
for years and years without becoming tired of it. There is a great
deal of hardship—but we have our own fun. If we have to get up,
and start long before daybreak—we make up for it, when we
gather around the campfires at night—you never saw such a
merry set as we are—no care, no trouble—we criticize the
Generals—laugh and swear at the mustangs and volunteers,
smoke our cigars and drink our brandy, when we have any—go
without when we have none.” (Letter to Mother dated Tampico,
February 4, 1847. (McClellan Papers, Vol. I.)
[28] The Isle of Lobos is “a lovely little spot, formed entirely of
coral, about two miles in circumference, twelve miles from the
Mexican shore, sixty from Tampico, and one hundred and thirty
from Vera Cruz.” N. C. Brooks, History of the Mexican War, page
295.
It was at the Isle of Lobos that General Scott organized his army.
The regulars were divided into two brigades, commanded by
Generals William J. Worth and David E. Twiggs respectively.
General Robert Patterson commanded the division of volunteers
which was composed of the three brigades of Generals Gideon J.
Pillow, John A. Quitman and James Shields. All told, Scott’s army
numbered over 12,000 men. J. B. McMaster, History of the People
of the United States, Vol. VII, page 506; James Schouler, History
of the United States, Vol. V, page 42.
[29] The island of Sacrificios, three miles south of Vera Cruz.
[30] William J. Worth was born in Hudson, N. Y., on March 1,
1794. He fought in the War of 1812 and in the Seminole War in
1841. During the Mexican War he participated in the campaigns of
Generals Taylor and Scott and later he commanded in Texas. He
died at San Antonio, Texas, on May 17, 1849.
[31] Escopette, a carbine or short rifle, especially a form used by
the Spanish Americans (Century Dict.).
[32] Light cavalry armed with lances, or long spears, varying from
8½ to 11 feet in length (Century Dict.).
[33] Pierre G. T. Beauregard, later a prominent Confederate
General, was born in New Orleans on May 28, 1818. He
graduated from West Point in 1838. Died at New Orleans on
February 20, 1893.
Beauregard was appointed a brigadier general in the Confederate
Army in 1861 and bombarded and captured Fort Sumter in April of
the same year. He commanded at the first battle of Bull Run on
July 21, 1861, and following it was promoted to the rank of
general. He took part in the battle of Shiloh in April, 1862,
commanded at Charleston, S. C., from 1862 to 1864, and in
Virginia in the latter year.
[34] Robert E. Lee, later the celebrated Confederate General-in-
Chief and McClellan’s main adversary. He was born at Stratford,
Westmoreland Co., Virginia, on January 19, 1807, and died at
Lexington, Virginia, on October 12, 1870.
[35] Epaulment, the mass of earth or other material which protects
the guns in a battery both in front and on either flank (Century
Dict.).
[36] Terre-plein, the top, platform or horizontal surface of a
rampart, on which the cannon are placed (Century Dict.).
[37] Boyau, a ditch covered with a parapet, serving as a means of
communication between two trenches, especially between the first
and third parallels. Also called a zigzag or an approach (Century
Dict.).
[38] Berm, a narrow level space at the outside foot of a parapet, to
retain material which otherwise might fall from the slope into the
ditch (Standard Dict.).
[39] Colonel Bankhead was the Chief of Artillery at the siege of
Vera Cruz.
[40] General Juan Morales was the Mexican commander at Vera
Cruz.
[41] Revet, to face, as an embankment, with masonry or other
material (Century Dict.).
[42] Traverse, an earthen mask, similar to a parapet, thrown
across the covered way of a permanent work to protect it from the
effects of an enfilading fire (Century Dict.).
[43] General Scott “always wore all the uniform prescribed or
allowed by law when he inspected his lines; word would be sent to
all division and brigade commanders in advance, notifying them of
the hour when the commanding general might be expected. This
was done so that all the army might be under arms to salute their
chief as he passed. On these occasions he wore his dress
uniform, cocked hat, aiguillettes, sabre and spurs. His staff proper,
besides all officers constructively on his staff—engineers,
inspectors, quartermasters, etc., that could be spared—followed,
also in uniform and in prescribed order. Orders were prepared
with great care and evidently with the view that they should be a
history of what followed.... General Scott was precise in language,
cultivated a style peculiarly his own; was proud of his rhetoric; not
averse to speaking of himself, often in the third person, and he
could bestow praise upon the person he was talking about without
the least embarrassment.” U. S. Grant, Memoirs, Vol. I, pages
138-139.
[44] Vera Cruz at that time was a city of about 15,000 inhabitants.
[45] On the advance of Scott’s army from Vera Cruz, Twiggs led
the way, followed a day later by Patterson, and five days later still
by Worth. J. B. McMaster, History of the People of the United
States, Vol. VII, page 507.
[46] Simon B. Buckner was born in Kentucky on April 1, 1823, and
died January 8, 1914. He graduated from West Point in 1844.
During the Civil War he was first a brigadier general, and later a
lieutenant general in the Confederate Army. He stood by his
troops and surrendered Fort Donelson to General Grant on
February 16, 1862. After the war he became Governor of
Kentucky and was the candidate for Vice-President on the Gold
Democratic ticket in 1896.
[47] About sixty miles from Vera Cruz, and about thirty from
Jalapa. J. S. Jenkins, History of the War with Mexico, page 270.
[48] General Pillow’s brigade consisted of four regiments of
infantry,—1st Tennessee (Colonel Campbell), 2nd Tennessee
(Colonel Haskell), 1st Pennsylvania (Colonel Wynkoop) and 2nd
Pennsylvania (Colonel Roberts); also a detachment of Tennessee
Horse and a company of Kentucky Volunteers under Captain
Williams. R. Semmes, Service Afloat and Ashore, page 179.
[49] “The Cerro Gordo, or Big Hill, called by the Mexicans in their
dispatches, El Telegrafo, is an immense hill, of a conical form,
rising to the height of near a thousand feet. It stands ... at the
head of the pass, to which it gives its name, and formed the
extreme left (our right) of the fortifications of the enemy.” Semmes,
op. cit., pages 176-177.
[50] He commanded the 1st Regiment of Pennsylvania
Volunteers.
[51] He commanded the 2nd Tennessee Volunteers.
[52] James Shields was born in County Tyrone, Ireland, in 1810.
After the Mexican War he was United States Senator (Democrat)
from Illinois during the years 1849-1855, and from Minnesota in
1858-1859. He was one of the “political generals” in the Union
Army who were decisively defeated by “Stonewall” Jackson during
the celebrated “Valley Campaign” of May and June, 1862. Shields
died in Ottumwa, Iowa, on June 1, 1879.
[53] The American forces present at the battle of Cerro Gordo,
both in action and in reserve, were about 8,500 men. The
Mexicans were estimated at 12,000 or more. The American losses
in the two days fighting were 33 officers and 398 men, a total of
431, of whom 63 were killed. The enemy losses were estimated at
1,000 to 1,200, in addition to five generals and 3,000 men who
were captured. General Scott’s official report dated “Jalapa, April
23, 1847” (Senate Docs. 30th Congress, 1st Session, No. 1,
pages 263-264).
[54] The City of Mexico was surrendered to General Scott’s
victorious army on September 14, 1847.
[55] McClellan left the City of Mexico on May 28, 1848, and
reached West Point, N. Y., on June 22 following.
 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been
standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
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