To answer your first question, qualitative content analysis would be appropriate. Here is one way of doing it:

Elo, S., & Kyngäs, H. (2008). The qualitative content analysis process. Journal of advanced nursing, 62(1), 107-115.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2007.04569.x

As for your second question, ethnographic research involves embedding yourself in a specific community or culture. Data is generated through observation and informal interactions, not just interviews; therefore it is difficult to specify a number when it comes to sample size.

Heather K. Larson Thanks you

Take a look at Russell Bernard's book on research methods in cultural anthropology. There are a number of ways to think about this and the approach will be related to how you want to present your data. If you want to find patterns, there is some good software that can help with this, such as NUDIST. If you want to present case studies, then simply carefully reading your interviews and looking for important themes in how people construct meaning can be just fine. As Heather noted sample size is not easy to specify. A sample of five may be just fine, or even fewer, if you are presenting case studies and not attempting to generalize from the data. And, as she noted, ethnography is much more complex than simply qualitative interviews--it also tends to take months to conduct an ethnographic study properly.

Hello Muhammad Yasir Imam

You need to read a book and refer to the guidance for qualitative data analysis. Some software such as NVIVO and SmartPLS help you to analyse the data derived from interviews, but there are many of them and you need to choose one according to your research requirements. One book that really helped me was:

Saunders, M., Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A., 2007. Research methods. Business Students 5th edition Pearson Education Limited, England.

You can also find its pdf online. Good luck!

That may depend on what you are asking of the data. If you want to find trends in subjects of a study, you can use Qmethod. This would help you determine if you have two or three groups of respondents that give similar answers. You can find more infomation online about Qmethods, but they typically use a factor anlysis like PCA or hierarchical clustering. Also a free option to Invivo is TAMs. Its a very simple software and helpful to get started seeing the broad ideas in the data. In progams like these two, you code the responses into catahories that make ita easier to seatch theoigh. Like “general background”, or “Stressors”. Then you can go back and pull all the information for a specific code from each interview.

One of the way for analysing the qualitative data is comparison of past and today .past we can understand by literature review and today by data collection by depth interview .

Usually the average size of sample is 100 people

I have always tried to combine both quantitative and qualitative approaches: the former gives accurate but scant information, while the latter supplies much information subject to interpretive biases from both respondents and the investigator. Ideally they reinforce one another. If not, they can signal that you need more data and/or a reexamination of your approach.

When dealing just with qualitative data it is important to seek correspondences across subjects. That will increase your confidence you are onto something and also allow you to identify the outliers. Always remember that humans are fallible, often biased sources of information. That will encourage you to vet the responses you get and to closely examine those that seem a bit odd. The research is yours and you will receive the credit/blame for the results.

How you analyze your data depends on what type of data you have: narratives? life history? stories? And, what's the purpose of your study? And what are your research questions? Short answer questions don't give you much to analyze; that's like getting y/n responses on a survey. Always useful if you have a lot of narratives, look at Latent Semantic Analysis. Keep in mind, language/speech yields cultural content, which will be important in interpreting the data if you are interviewing across ethnic boundaries. Sample size depends on cultural homogeneity of informants' culture/ethnicity/native language. Read material I suggested below on thematic analysis. Then, you'll know how many people to interview.

A detailed description of thematic analysis you can read in my book, The Myth of Prison Rape: Sexual Culture in American Prisons (2009,RomanLittlefield). We interviewed 564 prisoners, gathered 2,000 pages of narratives, and I generated a thematic analysis revealing the nature of prison sexual culture.

Nel quesito di Imam rilevo una sovrapposizione di problematiche:

1. ANALISI DI DATI QUALITATIVI

2. DATI ACQUISITI CON INTERVISTE SEMI-STRUTTURATE

3. DUBBI SULLA CONSISTENZA DEL CAMPIONE

4. PERPLESSITA' TRA CAMPIONE STATISTICO E SUA VALUTAZIONE QUALITATIVA (con metodo etnografico).

Prima questione: è lecito parlare di "dati" qualitativi - considerato che i "dati" sono elementi raccolti con criteri quantitativi? [in una indagine qualitativa non si raccolgono dati ma si accumulano "]considerazioni"

Seconda questione: quale valore aggiunto sarà mai possibile attribuire a dati acquisiti con interviste semi-strutturate? e forse avranno meno valore "qualitativo" se l'analisi risulterà condotta con metodi diversi? [Per es., con interviste aperte, con colloqui, con appunti elaborati durante una osservazione implicata, ecc.?]

Terza e Quarta questione: chiedere quale debba essere la "consistenza" del campione è una contraddizione rispetto al progetto di realizzare una ricerca qualitativa di tipo etnografico.

In conclusione: gli interventi sono quasi sempre "ragionevoli", anche se alcuni propongono metodi "positivistici" allorquando suggeriscono il ricorso a software che sono un sicuro sintomo di metodolatria.

I colleghi interessati dai questi dovrebbero dialogare con criteri più standardizzati per produrre adeguati approfondimenti. La "rete" che sto scoprendo da poco tempo, in effetti è una buona occasione per avviare una conoscenza capace di alimentare una emancipazione intellettuale: ma le conoscenze occasionali devono consentire di tornare ai tradizionali criteri del confronto scientifico implicandovi i ricercatori che sono effettivamente impegnati in ricerche interessanti. E ogni ricerca deve essere occasione per aumentare le conoscenze costruite su esperienze concrete.

The following publications may further help, namely: …..Bernard (2000:178) observed that most ethnographic studies are based on thirty-sixty interviews….. Morse (1994:225) outlined more detailed guidelines…..(see: Guest et al, 2006, p. 61).

• Dey, I. (2005) Qualitative data analysis: A user-friendly guide for social scientists. New York: Routledge.
• Guest, G., Bunce, A. and Johnson, L. (2006) How Many Interviews Are Enough?: An Experiment with Data Saturation and Variability, Field Methods, 18, 1, pp. 59-82.
• MacQueen, K. M. and Milstein, B. (1999) A systems approach to qualitative data management and analysis, Field Methods, 11, 1, pp. 27-39.
• Miles, M. B. and Huberman, A. M. (1994) Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook. 2nd edn. CA: Sage: Thousand Oaks.
• Sangasubana, N. (2011) How to Conduct Ethnographic Research, The Qualitative Report, 16, 2, pp. 567-573.

ho cominciato da poco a dialogare a distanza con internet;

scopro che le riflessioni risultano alterate da una scrittura che non corrisponde alle idee che sono state trasmesse;

si verifica un'alterazione del pensiero dell'emittente e non si sa se il ricevente ha letto il messaggio prima della sua alterazione;

comunque nella Babele informatica sembra che tutti comunichiamo;

ma se il ricevente non perviene ad una corretta espressione del messaggio trasmesso, come può ritenere di essere sintonizzato con il trasmittente?

e la mancata sintonizzazione produce un disturbo percettivo;

ognuno finge di aver compreso il messaggio dell'altro - così che ciascuno dei parlanti prosegue nelle proprie convinzioni;

è buona cosa - questa - ma solo se le "proprie convinzioni" non risultano disturbate dalla cattiva percezione dei messaggi ricevuti.

Mi sembra interessante poter continuare a discutere di queste alterazioni - almeno così saranno tutti impegnati a scoprire gli errori della comunicazione.

Queste dinamiche conversative diventano oggetto di una eventuale etnografia della comunicazione a distanza.

How you will analyze your data will depend on your study's aim and objectives.

For example, are you attempting to build theory? In that case, you may which to consider grounded theory. Inductive content analysis has also been likened to grounded theory. Do you have a lot of pre-existing literature with a set of codes to work from? In that case, you may wish to consider a more deductive approach.

I have experience conducting grounded theory, inductive and deductive thematic analyses and case studies. I have always used the software NVivo.

The nursing profession has a lot of methods books and articles for qualitative research. I learned a lot from the works of Holloway and Wheeler.

But first circle back to your research objective- ultimately that is what will guide you.