Summary Analysis and interpretation of qualitative data

ANALYSIS + INTERPRETATION OF
QUALITATIVE DATA
KEY POINTS –

 Qualitative researchers believe that traditional quantitative methods
do not produce results that are applicable to everyday life.
 Qualitative methods emphasise subjectiveness because they aim to
represent the world as seen by the individual.
 In order to produce subjective information the qualitative researcher
asks open questions, or uses observation.
 The data sets produced in qualitative research tend to be very large,
although the samples might be quite small compared to those used
in quantitative approaches.
 If a researcher is trying to produce numbers then they probably
haven’t used qualitative data analysis.

QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS
SUMMARISING QUALITATIVE DATA –

 Qualitative data is difficult to summarise.
 Whereas quantitative data can be easily summarised with measures
of central tendency, measures of dispersion + with the use of
graphs.
 None of these options are possible with purely descriptive findings.
 Instead, qualitative data is summarised by identifying repeated
themes.
INDUCTIVE –

 Most qualitative analysis aims to be inductive (bottom-up)
→ the categories/themes that emerge are based in the data.
 The categories/themes may lead to new theories.

 A less common approach to the analysis of qualitative data is the
deductive (top-down) approach
→ the researcher starts with present categories/themes.
 These categories are likely to be generated by previous
studies/theories.
 The researcher would aim to see if the data is consistent with the
previous theoretical viewpoint.

AN ITERATIVE PROCESS –
 Qualitative analysis is a very lengthy process because the data is
gone through repeatedly.