Double, Double Toil and Trouble: Using Interactive Qualitative Analysis to Understand Non-Major Accounting Students’ Learning

Abstract

This study investigates the implementation of the methodology, Interactive Qualitative Analysis (IQA) (Northcutt & McCoy, 2004) during the COVID-19 pandemic, to understand how non-major accounting students learn Accounting 101 in a threshold concepts-inspired tutorial programme. Even though IQA is a predominantly qualitative method, it incorporates quantitative data with qualitative data systematically. These data collection and data analysis procedures are a means of aiding participants in a focus group to describe their experiences with a phenomenon, to name these experiences and to then describe the relationships between these named experiences. The objective of the IQA methodology is to create a picture, a Systems Influence Diagram (SID), representative of the mind map of the focus group participants, with regard to the phenomenon outlined in the issue statements. A summary of theoretical codes used to capture the relationships between affinities named, an Inter Relationship Diagram (IRD), is used to draw the SID. IQA requires the researcher to document each step of the research process, whilst acting as a facilitator by teaching the participants the IQA process on how to generate and analyse the data that they have generated, thereby minimising the researcher influence. This study provides qualitative research conducted in the fields of education and accounting, with a qualitative methodological approach, being Interactive Qualitative Analysis (IQA).