What can qualitative researchers learn from Indexing?

My thoughts on a research article from the Indexer

Title: Indexing and the ‘organized’ researcher

Authors: Hope A. Olson and Lisa M. Given

Journal and Issue: The Indexer Vol.23 (3)

Year: 2003

Introduction

The main objective of this article is to bring out certain principles that are applied in indexing to assist researchers in collecting and organizing data for qualitative research in a more efficient manner. The article rests on the premise that there are significant gaps in the training of researchers who work with qualitative data, creating challenges in organizing data and arriving at relevant conclusions to answer their research questions. This is because, some relevant information gets easily picked up while coding qualitative data while some are actually left out. Therefore, they propose that the Knowledge Organization Model applied for indexing can be extended to qualitative research.

Knowledge Organization Model

The authors draw parallels between the processes involved in indexing and coding qualitative research data. The first step in the model is coextensiveness where the indexer needs to decide what aspects are included in the index and what aspects are not. For a researcher, this would be based on the research question. The second step encompasses two aspects – specificity and exhaustiveness. The indexer needs to decide how specific and detailed the index should be and in making it more specific creates a more precise index. They also have to decide how exhaustive and comprehensive they want to index to be and in making it more exhaustive are increasing information recall. When an index is more exhaustive, it results in recall of more information which can be both relevant and irrelevant. The practical challenge here is that when an index becomes more specific, it draws upon precise information and tends to be less exhaustive and have lower recall. Similarly, when an index becomes more exhaustive, it recalls more information which are less precise and less specific. Thus, precision and recall tend to become mutually exclusive in actual practice. Additionally there is the challenge of internal and inter-indexer consistency in the process of indexing which declines with increased specificity and exhaustiveness.    

Practical Application

Based on the above model, the authors provide an example of its application to a specific research question associated with information seeking behaviours of college students. As a first step a researcher has to recognise the relevant themes and the words that are used to reflect those themes. For instance, reading can be theme as it reflects a form of information seeking behaviour. As a next step, they have identify if they want to have different themes for reading newspapers and reading textbooks and within textbooks, they have to select if they want to have self-owned books and library books as sub-themes. This would constitute specificity and the extent of specificity they want to have depends on the nature of the research problem. With regard to exhaustiveness, they have to decide if they want to include the time of the day when the book was read as a theme as it reflects another facet of the information seeking behaviour. In doing so, the research should also adopt a continuous and iterative process to ensure consistency of themes across transcripts. 

Review and Conclusion

The article discusses an insightful aspect as it stands to show how the principles of indexing are not restricted only to indexing. It brings one of its creative applications and is particularly useful as it seeks to address some shortcomings associated with existing methods of data organisation in research. The use of an example to illustrate its application has made it easier to understand given this a relatively new area. However, I find myself with two questions which would require further exploration on my part to make my understanding more holistic. Firstly, how far this would actually reach researchers handling qualitative data is questionable given that it has appeared in a journal for indexing. Secondly, given that it was written in 2003, it is important to understand how research curriculum has improved to account for emerging trends in research and whether ideas such as these have been incorporated. Despite these potential questions, this article puts forward a powerful idea that can have creative application for researchers.