ABSTRACT
The rapid increase in online and data storage repositories has made large amounts of qualitative data about everyday human occupations readily available and accessible to occupational science and occupational therapy researchers: Big Qual. This chapter begins with defining Big qualitative methodology and provides descriptions of the three main approaches drawing on the author’s experience with a large data set curated from publicly available data which has been used to explore three different research questions with different epistemologies and ontologies. There is a focus on the study of the dignity of risk for older people who live in a residential care facility in Australia to illustrate the application to occupational science and occupational therapy. Sampling, data extraction, and data management are described; along with the challenges posed by the size of the data sets involved. Attention is paid to the ethical considerations of secondary analysis of data. Questions are posed for critiquing Big Qual studies and the limitations of the current methodological literature acknowledged. Big Qual methodology is emerging and is not yet rooted in deep philosophical or theoretical underpinnings; however, it presents exciting possibilities for researchers to explore and bring to light new knowledge for occupational science and to inform occupational therapy practice.
