Interrogating video data: systematic quantitative analysis versus micro-ethnographic analysis

This paper demonstrates how systematic observation software, such as The Observer XT, can be used to organise and manage large video corpora, assist in case selection, and facilitate comparability and cross referencing with a corpus. While this software has conventionally been used to produce quantitative results that can be subjected to statistical analyses, it will be argued that it can also assist in complementary qualitative analyses. Drawing upon data from a recent study of classroom discourse, the paper shows how a combination of systematic quantitative analysis and micro-ethnographic analysis can lead to a productive cycle of generating and testing hypotheses, maintaining qualitative and ethnographic insight while producing findings of a more generalisable kind.