Qualitative Research Methods are widely used in the field of social sciences. Qualitative research is a type of research that describes and expresses the words or actions of the participants in a descriptive and narrative way to better describe the situations experienced by the participants. The qualitative research method focuses on the main case and is based on the opinions of the participants.
Perhaps the most difficult stage of qualitative research is data analysis. The most important difference between qualitative and quantitative research methods is the data analysis process. Qualitative data analysis takes a different path from quantitative data analysis. The main difference between these two analyzes is that the codes correspond to numbers in quantitative data and concepts, topics, or themes in qualitative data. Another important feature of qualitative data analysis is that this analysis can be done together with data collection.
What is qualitative data analysis? Qualitative data analysis involves organizing what is seen, heard, and read to understand experiences and what has been learned from them. Qualitative data analysis is defined as the process of combining and interpreting what people say and what the researcher sees and reads. While qualitative data analysis is also defined as the process of transforming qualitative data into findings, there is no specific formula for doing this. In other words, there is no standard formula for qualitative data analysis. It can be said that drawing a standard roadmap to the data analysis process will harm qualitative research because the standardization of data analysis techniques in qualitative research will negatively affect the acquisition of rich and in-depth information according to the collected data.
Although there is no formula for qualitative data analysis, a guide can be found. However, these guidelines make recommendations regarding the process, do not constitute a general rule, and therefore do not provide a recipe. Because every qualitative research has its own characteristics and may require new approaches in data analysis, in other words, qualitative data analysis means diversity and flexibility. Therefore, the researcher should develop a data analysis plan for his/her research, taking into account both the characteristics of the research and the data collected and available data analysis approaches.
Qualitative data is usually non-numeric. In the analysis of qualitative data, Maxqda, Nvivo, etc., programs such as With these analyses, all notes including findings, documents, observations, and interviews can be stored, queried, and modeled. All kinds of documents, audio, pictures, movies, etc., can be analyzed. The researcher can recreate documents suitable for his/her working style. It can store data. It can be reused. Can make comparisons. It can create models, tables, and matrices and present findings visually. Analysis of qualitative data can reveal a new perspective. Rework may be required each time. Notes are reviewed. Data are grouped comparatively by time and place.
Qualitative data analysis has some key features. According to these features, qualitative data analysis can be expressed as a systematic and cyclical process that adopts an innovative, inductive, explanatory, and exploratory approach to the emergence of patterns in data or the development of new concepts and theories. In this process, it is important to review the data repeatedly, to create themes, and to reveal and interpret the relationship between the themes. In addition, an important feature of this analysis is that it can be done together with the data collection process.