Approaches to qualitative data analysis

Abstract

This chapter sets the scene for qualitative data analysis. It introduces: elements of qualitative data analysis, ethics in qualitative data analysis, and computer assisted qualitative data analysis (CAQDAS). In doing this, it deliberately uses seminal texts in this field. The chapter identifies sources of qualitative data and the challenges of data overload, reduction, analysis, display, interpretation and the drawing of conclusions, setting these within the larger issues of such data being open to multiple interpretations and involving largely inductive processes. The chapter suggests several ways of proceeding in qualitative data analysis and reporting, some of them in a staged approach and other ways in a less sequential approach in preparing, organizing and managing data. Data analysis here is seen to require thick description, reflexivity, emic and etic analysis, and openness to different interpretations. Software for qualitative data processing is discussed, and the types, their uses, strengths and limitations are clarified (e.g. the proclivity of some software to approaches such as coding), with practical examples provided. The point is made that such software processes rather than analyses data, and that the researcher is the analyst.