Tonight I watched a MAXQDA Research Session by Justyna Okrucinska. Their graduate work used a mixed-methods study design and MAXQDA. The title of the session was “In Search of the Meaning of European Identity.” Okrucinska is originally from Poland. They work in a research group in the University of Berlin. Their focus and research interests include European integration and Queer theory. The topic for this research was European identity. Okrucinska asked: maybe there are diverse sources of European identity? A study by a Polish sociologist (Konieczna-Salmatri 2019) distinguished three different narratives that can lead to identification with Europe. For Okrucinska’s study, they used the Eurobarometer database for quantitative data and the MANIFESTO project database for qualitative data. The three types of European discourse identified were Economic (ambivalent: economic prosperity, social protection, stronger sy in the world, Euro), Cultural (belonging: peace, democracy, freedom to travel, cultural diversity), and Euroskeptical (unemployment, waste of money, loss of identity, bureaucracy, weak border control, more crime). The first round of coding identified keywords, translation of keywords to each national language, and text search and autocode with three codes. The second round of coding refined segments through disqualification and merging. Thematic codes were then assigned. The biggest obstacle identified was the language barrier. AI Assist helped by summarizing for longer segments and paraphrasing fro shorter segments. AI Assist helped summarize in English and assign codes. All together, they generated 400+ A Assist suggested codes. The Code Matrix Browser allowed comparison of codes and number of times identified. The work was greatly facilitated through AI Assist and visualization tools unique to MAXQDA.
