The Use of Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis (CAQDAS) in Socio-Legal Research

Abstract

The central aim of this paper is to present the research design of this investigation and to explain the reasons behind the methodological choices I made during the research process. I aim to provide a reasoned account of the research methods and methodology I employed to extract data from the United Nations (UN) reports to answer the theoretically informed research question of this study. This paper is divided into two parts. In the first part, I explain why the method of documentary analysis was best suited to answer the research question of this study. Moreover, I explain how I tackled some the issues that had arisen when I undertook an evaluation of the quality of the documents that I intended to analyse. In the second part of this paper, I discuss how and why I employed the method of Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) to systematically confine and analyse the UN reports to meet the aims of this investigation. I discuss how I used the QCA strategy to devise a set of coding frameworks to extract the relevant data from the UPR reports, which can be further analysed to address the research question. With the help of Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis (CAQDAS) software, I explain how I analysed and coded the data from the reports to answer the research question of this study. In this way, I aim to demonstrate how the research process for this investigation was undertaken in a scientific and theoretically informed manner.