Reasoning with qualitative data: Using retroduction with transcript data

This dataset was collected as part of a research project designed to understand students’ and educators’ views about academic writing. The data is provided by Dr. Christian Beighton from Canterbury Christ Church University’s Department of Post-Compulsory Education in the UK. The example focuses on how academic writing is described by interviewees and shows how we can reason about data in a range of ways. We discuss three common approaches to reasoning, comparing deductive and inductive approaches and shows how a retroductive approach can be used with this data to develop original perspectives on qualities data. The dataset file is accompanied by a teaching guide and a student guide.