Secondary Qualitative Analysis in the Family Sciences

Sharing and reusing data can help researchers answer new questions and approach data from different analytical perspectives. The extant literature on data sharing has focused almost exclusively on qualitative data specifically, such as interviews and focus groups. Observational and video data capturing family interactions are a common data collection method in family science research. While quantitative analytic approaches are common, observational and video data can lend itself well to qualitative analysis. This paper introduces a secondary data analysis approach, referred to as methodological expansion, which involves the process of qualitatively analyzing pre-existing data that were collected for quantitative research purposes.