Applying qualitative youth and adult perspectives to investigate quantitative survey components with a novel “crosswalk” analysis

This paper presents an innovative qualitative “crosswalk” analysis that extends sociocultural narrative theory and method to evaluate data obtained from survey measures in a mixed methods approach. This offers a unique method, centered within an activity-meaning system, to apply qualitative narrative analytic techniques to questions posed by quantitative survey measures, coding survey questions by using values that emerged from participants’ narratives of experience. In this way, this novel technique allows for interpretation of surveys via a lens that privileges participant-generated qualitative data. This research is situated in a broader study that sought to examine the intersection of social-emotional learning and school climate constructs in lived experiences. Results of this analysis extend the complexity of relational understandings of human development by including surveys as institutional narratives, with theoretical and methodological implications for future research.