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Abstract

Research workers often abandon interesting `soft data' accumulated in the course of project work because of problems of analysis. This paper describes solutions to some familiar problems which emerged during the course of five years evaluative work with a community work organization. The suggestions for dealing with the mass of data systematically and in a manner which generates a conceptual framework, and the means of establishing reliability and validity may be adapted for use in other projects. Analysis based upon this rigourous approach to `soft data' was found to be of practical use to fieldworkers and the methods have been useful in other projects.

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Problems in the Analysis of Soft Data and Some Suggested Solutions

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