5 Different Best Methods to Analyse Qualitative Data
Are you looking for the best methods to analyse qualitative data? If yes, then you should first know about the meaning of qualitative data. Qualitative data is non-numeric and contains only the expressions and descriptions of a phenomenon, issue, or topic at hand. If you are new to the world of research, dealing with qualitative data can be very intimidating. Analysing this data can be a minefield as you have to deal with some fluffy concepts, difficult terminologies, and lengthy abstracts containing only words and expressions.
However, fear not, dear readers – this article is going to unpack some of the best methods to analyse qualitative data. One at a time, there will be a mention of the top 5 methods used widely in the analysis of qualitative data. However, before moving on to the actual discussion, let’s explain the meaning of qualitative data analysis.
What does it exactly mean to analyse qualitative data?
To have a firm understanding of the meaning of qualitative data analysis, let’s go one step back and first answer, “what is qualitative data?” Well, in its most straightforward definition, qualitative data is data that is not numbers. It is not the stuff you, as a researcher, measure using some statistics or mathematical formulae. It is the type of stuff you gather to explain or describe the softer side of things.
As this data mostly consists of words and expressions, it can be very hard to analyse it. It can be a time-consuming task as you have to analyse each word or expression collected during the research process. The reason is that you might have discussions that you scribbled down in messy field notes. Extracting the sensible data from those notes is no easy task. So, long story short – qualitative data analysis is a lot of work. Therefore, hiring a dissertation writing service UK becomes very important in this regard.
Best methods to analyse the qualitative data
From the discussion above, it is now clear like a crystal that qualitative data is non-numeric and is very difficult to analyse. You also know the primary reason behind this difficulty, i.e., messy field notes or dancing answers of the respondents. However, there are many methods that you can apply to analyse qualitative data. Different methods have their strengths and weaknesses. So, let’s start describing each analysis method one by one by giving a brief description.
1. Method no.1 – Qualitative content analysis
Content analysis is the most simple and straightforward method to analyse qualitative data. It is a research tool used to determine the presence of words, themes, and patterns in a given qualitative data. Using this method, you try to determine the relationships present between the identified themes and patterns. The content analysis method also helps you determine the frequency with which the same concept or theme is shared in the qualitative data. The method of doing the content analysis is very easy. You simply analyse the themes and patterns in the lar groups of data first and categorise them. After doing this, the last step is calculating the frequency of the theme or the concept.
2. Method no.2 – Narrative analysis
The name of this analysis method says it all. Narrative analysis is all about listening to people telling stories and then analysing what that story means. The stories can be very helpful in analysing the world as they make sense of reality. Therefore, narrative analysis is one of the best qualitative data analysis methods. For example, by analysing the narrative of a prisoner, you could have some insights into their view of the world and the justice system.
During narrative analysis, the researcher’s bias is considered the main issue. The reason is that the researcher can mould the story the way he wants and conduct a biased analysis. So, you need to be very careful about the bias.
3. Method no.3 – Discourse analysis
Discourse is nothing but a fancy word for speech or debate. Discourse analysis is about analysing a speech or debate within its social context. The “social context” here means the social setting or the culture in which the speech takes place. For example, you could analyse how a politician speaks about terrorism. An important thing to remember when conducting discourse analysis is that the culture and history of those involved in the research are extremely important. Forget about a good analysis without considering these two.
4. Method no.4 – Thematic analysis
It is a more advanced method that takes larger bodies of qualitative data to analyse. In thematic analysis, you look at the themes present in the dataset. It is only possible when you take quite large amounts of data and group them in the form of similarities, i.e., themes. The themes, in turn, help you analyse qualitative data effectively and derive meaningful conclusions from it. For example, you analyse the reviews of 100 customers about a Sushi Restaurant in Lahore. By analysing the data, you identify the themes that repeatedly come about the particular restaurant.
5. Method no.5 – Grounded theory
Grounded theory or GT is a powerful qualitative data analysis method using which you create a new theory with the help of the data at hand. This method of qualitative analysis starts off with a single case and then expands to additional cases to see their relation to the theory. For example, you intend to analyse how often the students use YouTube as a learning tool at university. As a researcher, what do you do? You formulate a group of 5 graduate students first and analyse the factors that lead them to go to YouTube for learning. After this, you keep on increasing the samples based on the first developed theory.
Conclusion
In this article, I have explained the 5 best methods to analyse qualitative data. Although analysing the qualitative data is not quite simple due to the words and expressions involved in it, you can still do this by using content, thematic, and narrative analysis methods. So, try to read and comprehend the methods discussed above effectively. These methods are your key to academic success.
