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Qualitative Data Analysis Methods and Techniques

Qualitative data analysis involves interpreting patterns and themes in textual data through various methods and techniques. Some popular techniques include grounded theory analysis, which generates theories from data; content analysis, which categorizes and summarizes text; narrative analysis, which studies how people form meaning through stories; discourse analysis, which analyzes language use and social contexts; and framework analysis, which organizes data into a matrix to identify themes. Choosing an analysis method depends on the nature of the data and research goals.

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477 views7 pages

Qualitative Data Analysis Methods and Techniques

Qualitative data analysis involves interpreting patterns and themes in textual data through various methods and techniques. Some popular techniques include grounded theory analysis, which generates theories from data; content analysis, which categorizes and summarizes text; narrative analysis, which studies how people form meaning through stories; discourse analysis, which analyzes language use and social contexts; and framework analysis, which organizes data into a matrix to identify themes. Choosing an analysis method depends on the nature of the data and research goals.

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sisay gebremariam
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Qualitative Data Analysis Methods

And Techniques
As data is an invaluable source of business insight, the knowing what are
the various qualitative data analysis methods and techniques has a crucial
importance.

There are different approaches, types of statistical methods, strategies, and


ways to analyze qualitative data.

Choosing the best way and technique depends on the nature of your data
and the goals set in qualitative research.
On this page:

 What is qualitative data analysis? Definition.


 Techniques and methods used in qualitative data analysis: list and
explanation.
 Infographic in PDF.
WHAT IS QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS?
Let’s define it:

Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) involves the process and procedures for
analyzing data and providing some level of understanding, explanation,
and interpretation of patterns and themes in textual data.
Just to recall that qualitative data is data that can’t be expressed as a
number. Qualitative data consist of words, pictures, observations, and
symbols, not numbers. For more details see our post qualitative vs
quantitative data.
Generally, QDA has 4 main steps:

 Becoming familiar with your data. You need to read and re-read
the data, write down detailed notes and impressions, and deciding which
pieces of data possess value.
 Coding into themes – this means to create categories and
subcategories. Each category is an example of some thematic idea. The
goal is to group data associated with some thematic idea which allows
them to be examined together.  The list of build themes represents your
first set of codes.
 Searching for patterns and connections – looking for the relative
importance of data and identifying relationships between data sets or
themes.
 Interpretation of the data and drawing conclusions.
QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS METHODS AND
TECHNIQUES
There are a wide variety of qualitative data analysis methods and
techniques and the most popular and best known of them are:

1. Grounded Theory Analysis


The grounded analysis is a method and approach that involves generating a
theory through the collection and analysis of data. That theory explains
how an event or aspect of the social world “works”.

Grounded theory is one of the most popular qualitative strategies that leads
to a general, abstract theory of a process or action grounded in the views of
people that participate in a study.

The main feature of the grounded theory, which differentiates it from other
qualitative data analysis methods is its focus on theory development.
Grounded theory technique is very suitable to use, especially when you
have to analyze large quantities of unstructured qualitative data. (to know
what unstructured data mean see our post unstructured data examples).
Key data collection methods and techniques that Grounded theory uses:
 Interview with open-ended questions
 Focus groups
 Participant observation
 Study of texts
Note: data analysis in Grounded theory happens at the same time as data
collection. It means you shouldn’t wait until all your data is collected and
then analyze it. The methods have to be flexible and change when the data
show a new theory or direction.
2. Content Analysis
Content analysis is one of the most widely used qualitative data techniques
for interpreting meaning from text data and thus identify important aspects
of the content.

It includes processes and procedures for the categorization of text


data for the purpose of classification and summarization.
The text can be various formats such as documents, pictures, video, audio,
and etc.

The most popular application of content analysis nowadays is in analyzing


the social media field. It is used to quantify patterns and trends in social
media communication.
You will be surprised with the broad range of content analysis
software solutions today. They help you to examine almost any type of
unstructured text data such as business documents, emails, social media,
chats, comments, news, blogs, and much more.
In addition, the machine learning classification algorithms can
significantly increase the amount of text which can be labeled and
classified.
Key purposes of content analysis are:
 To find out important aspects of the content.
 To present them in a clear and effective way.
 To support some argument.
In fact, content analysis is not a single method. It has popular techniques
and approaches: conventional, directed, or summative. The main
differences among the techniques are origins of codes and coding schemes.

3. Narrative analysis
Narrative analysis is also one of the best-known qualitative data analysis
methods and techniques.

Narrative analysis is an approach to analyzing different stories people


create. The purpose is to understand how people form meaning in their
lives as narratives.

It uses various types of stories such as autobiography, family stories,


photos, life experience, as the units of analysis. It focuses on the ways in
which people create and use different stories to interpret and explain the
daily life and the world.

What can we discover from the narrative analysis?

 An interesting knowledge and understandings about people, their


culture and how they are changing.
 It helps us making sense of the past and create meanings of it.
 Helps in organizing information about how humans interpret events.
 Show us the values and beliefs that guide those interpretations.
A long number of data collection methods can be performed. Data can be
in the form of journal records, interview transcripts, observations,
autobiographical writing, documents, storytelling, personal accounts, letter
writing, and etc.

4. Discourse Analysis
Discourse analysis is about analyzing the natural occurring talk – spoken
communication and all other types of text.

It studies the meanings that the use of language and spoken interactions
produce and the contexts of these meanings.

This method not only analyses communications but also takes into
consideration the social context in which the communications happen.

This technique can also include analysis of written texts, such as emails or
the body language.

Discourse analysis is a field of linguistics that focuses on the role of


language in the building of social reality.

Typically, discourse analysis brings together the analysis of language use


and the analysis of situations.

5. Framework Analysis
Framework is one of the qualitative data analysis methods that are gaining
popularity across multiple areas, including health, social policy, and
psychology.

This approach is used to organize and manage data with the help of the
process of summarization. It results in a powerful and flexible matrix that
allows you to analyze data both by theme and case.
The matrix consists of rows (cases), columns (codes) and ‘cells’ of
summarised data. Thus it provides a structure into which you can
systematically cut the data, to analyze it by case and by code.

Using theme display, framework technique lets you analyze your data
thematically and to perform exploratory analysis of the entire dataset.

Framework analysis identifies similarities and differences in qualitative


data, thereby aims to draw descriptive or explanatory conclusions grouped
in themes.

Framework analysis is one of the easiest qualitative data analysis


techniques.

It has very clear steps you can follow and makes highly structured outputs
of summarised data.

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