Using quotations to illustrate categories and themes helps keep the analysis firmly grounded in the data. So from codes, categories can be formed, and from categories, more encompassing themes are developed to describe the data in a form which summarises it, yet retains the richness, depth and context of the original data. Themes are thus more abstract concepts, reflecting your interpretation of patterns across your data. Other concerns may emerge in this and other transcripts and perhaps best be represented by the theme ‘lack of control’. In other areas of the transcript fear may arise again, and perhaps these codes will be merged into a category titled ‘fear’. The codes for this paragraph could be ‘fear of surgery’ and ‘fear of pain’. For example, you could read through a transcript, and identify that in one paragraph a patient is talking about two things first is fear of surgery and second is fear of unrelieved pain. There is sometimes a fine line between being immersed in the data and drowning in it!Ī first step is to sort and organise the data, by coding it in some way. This suggests some sort of epiphany, (which is how it happens sometimes!) but generally it comes from detailed work and reflection on the data and what it is telling you. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the volume of data – novice qualitative researchers are sometimes told not to worry and the themes will emerge from the data.
The process of analysis is described by Richards and Morse 1 as one of transformation and interpretation. So you have collected all your qualitative data – you may have a pile of interview transcripts, field-notes, documents and notes from observation. This Research Made Simple piece will focus on some of these common threads in the analysis of qualitative research. Each has its own particular way of approaching all stages of the research process, including analysis, and has its own terms and techniques, but there are some common threads that run across most of these approaches.
Qualitative research covers a very broad range of philosophical underpinnings and methodological approaches. Qualitative data often takes the form of words or text and can include images. Good qualitative research uses a systematic and rigorous approach that aims to answer questions concerned with what something is like (such as a patient experience), what people think or feel about something that has happened, and it may address why something has happened as it has.
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