Boolean Classes and Qualitative Inquiry. WCER Working Paper No. 2006-3

The prominent role of Boolean classes in qualitative data analysis software is viewed by some as an encroachment of logical positivism on qualitative research methodology. The authors articulate an embodiment perspective, in which Boolean classes are viewed as conceptual metaphors for apprehending and manipulating data, concepts, and categories in the same way we perceive and manipulate worldly objects and containers. Drawing on examples from seminal approaches to qualitative methods, they demonstrate how one central aspect of qualitative research practices--the process of coding data--can productively be viewed as collecting and containing concepts and categories in this embodied sense. They discuss the implications of this view for coding and for bridging qualitative and quantitative methods of inquiry. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)