Wednesday 14 March 2012

Qualitative Data Analysis

Though Qualitative research gives a truer indication of why people behave in a certain way, or believe the things that they do, analysing people’s ideas, opinions or answers to interview questions can take longer than working with the numerical statistics that get generated by Quantitative research.

If you have applied Qualitative methods in your Dissertation or Research Project, you first need to mould the information into a usable format, before you can remark upon it, or draw any conclusions from it.

This flow diagram shows a process that might help...:


Rather than using graphs or charts, you should present Qualitative data as narrative descriptions, in the transcripts of interviews (though just use key quotations in your report - save the full version for an Appendix at the end of your work), or perhaps by devising rich pictures or flow diagrams of any routines or patterns that appear, as above.

More information and guidance for writing extended projects is available in the "Dissertations" folder here.

1 comment:

  1. This is exactly what I was looking for. Being a doctoral student and visual, I have always wanted a diagram that will summarize the QR process for me. And so far, this is the best I have found. Thank you Library Richard. You have no idea how long and how much I have struggled to get a clearer picture like this.

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