Hacane,

The software doesn't matter, you should consider it primarily as a tool for coding.

1) What knowledge do I need...

Your theory should provide some guidance on the themes or concepts you expect to find in your interviews. You also should do some reading on qualitative analysis, starting perhaps with this handy guide from Nick J Fox: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nick_Fox3/post/What_is_the_difference_between_content_analysis_and_thematic_analysis_as_methods_used_in_qualitative_data_analysis/attachment/59d61f1279197b807797d7ba/AS%3A273622457880604%401442248085721/download/Qual+Analysis+ch+2.pdf

2) What are the steps...

Your theory may provide a framework for the themes and categories, but I encourage you and an independent research collaborator to individually go through some sample interviews, and see what themes emerge. Then compare notes and refine your themes, and only then compare back to your theory. Refine again. Once you have the themes, develop categories or nodes that you can use to code elements of the interviews. At this point you'll do the coding (and attend to any emergent themes that may not have been apparent in the initial theme development). Now, evaluate your theory in light of the themes you found in the interviews - is the theory supported? Do you need to refine the theory? Can your data be explained by other (existing or new) theories? Finally, you will write up your results and discuss the findings, both descriptively and in terms of the theory and the role of the data in providing evidence for / against the theory.

Cheers,

Todd

I'm not sure why you've emphasized the analysis process if you are still at the beginning phases of the project. I suggest you check into some resources on qualitative interviewing, such as Rubin & Rubin, Qualitative interviewing the art of hearing data. In particular, the results from your data analysis will be entirely dependent on the questions you ask and the ways in which you conduct your interviews.

Also, starting with a hypothesis already puts you into a relatively limited set of approaches, since many forms of qualitative research start with a more exploratory perspective. If your goal is to "test" a hypothesis, this will have a major effect on every aspect of your research design, including the analysis technique you use.

If you are doing a qual study you will not have a hypothesis. You have not started your study but preparation is key.

I will skip down to chapter 3 which is your data collection. Whether you do interviews, demographics questionnaires, focus groups, observations, will depend on what design you choose.

Once you have done that, you will transcribe and then decide what analysis program you want to use or you can choose to handcode. I do not think you should hand code if you plan on using a program.

For now, focus on chapters 1-2 because this is where you will introudce your study and talk about your theory or conceptual framework and your themes. Concern yourself with chapters 3-5 later . As you go through your study you will be able to better understand what you should use.

There are many reasons for doing a qualitative study, so I have to respectfully disagree with La Verne A Davis's first sentence, above ( "If you are doing a qual study you will not have a hypothesis.").

While is it true that qualitative studies are often conducted early in the exploration of a new topic or field, they are also used to expand our understanding of an existing field, to go beyond the numbers and dig into the quality of individual experiences. What is true, however, is that it's important to not let preconceptions (including hypotheses) blind you to themes revealed in a qualitative study.

I appreciate your reply Todd L'Herrou but I stand by what I say. If you are focusing on a "hypothesis", you are talking about a quantitative study. You must be careful of the words you use when writing your articles or dissertations.

I agree with Todd L'Herrou that qualitative studies can pursue a hypotheses, and an example would be comparative case studies. There certainly is a strong tendency for qualitative studies to be more exploratory while quantitative studies tend to be more hypothesis testing, but it is by no means a rule or a law.

It would seem from your questions that you very early in your research and that is good because you should really get to understand qualitative research before you begin. Too often this does not happen, and students (and supervisors) think that they can just "easily" collect data and answer their qualitative research questions and then find out that it is much more complicated than just "findings themes".

I recommend that take the time to understand what kind of researhc you are interested in conducting, read about the different approaches to qualitative research (a good place to begin is Creswell's work concerning choosing from five methods). As you do this, pay attention to the complexities of study design (see Maxwell's work on this - attached below). I believe that once you get a better understanding of qualitative research you will also understand that interviewing is much more complicated than it would seem at first glance. Read the literature about how to go about conducting an interview that best addresses (and potentially provides answeres to) your research question(s). I recommend Josselson's book "Interviewing for qualitative inquiry" (2013) as a point of entry, but you can also go to Rubin & Rubin, or Kvale & Brinkman, or otherwise find information more closely tied to the method you choose (e.g., grounded theory, phenomenology, narrative research, etc.).

Analysis will be closely related to your methodology (and derive from it to a great extent). The softwares you mentioned WILL NOT DO THE ANALYSIS FOR YOU. They will (or may) assist you in organizing and analysing your data, but YOU will have to make sense of the data.

Good luck.

In sum, it depends on which specific method of qual research you use. As with quantitative research, there are several methods one can select to use and for both, it is usually based on whta you are going to investigate, as one method (again in both) may be better/best suite than the others.

The following sources may be able to help, particularly the steps in relation to qualitative research/data collection/data analysis and interpretation, etc., as per Creswell (2012).

• Bell, J. (2010) Doing Your Research Project: A guide for first-time researchers in education, heath and social science. England: Open University Press.
• Creswell, J. W. (2012) Education Research: Planning, Conducting, and Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research. 4th edn. Boston: Pearson Education Inc.
• Saunders, M., Lewis, P. and Thornhill, A. (2009) Research Methods for Business Students. 5th edn. Harlow, England: Pearson Education Limited.
• Silverman, D. and Marvasti, A. (2008) Doing Qualitative Research: A Comprehensive Guide. California: SAGE Publications, Inc.
• Turner III, D. W. (2010) Qualitative interview design: A practical guide for novice investigators, The qualitative report, 15, 3, pp. 754-760.
• Whiting, L. S. (2008) Semi-structured interviews: guidance for novice researchers, Nursing Standard, 22, 23, pp. 35-40.
• Hypothesis in Qualitative Research: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Hypothesis_in_Qualitative_Research

Hypothesis is based on theories, and help you to provide your interview questions accordingly. After collecting data then you need a software to help you analyze the data.

Recently posted here on ResearchGate:

Article How to appraise a qualitative study

It is usually not recommended to start with one of the later "steps" when conducting research. It appears that you started with data collection (interviews) and now ant to anlayze the data. Where's the basis--What is the research question? background theories, etc. How were interviews developed, prepared, purpose of samples, sample selection? Or are you using interview from some other study? collected for some specific pupose?

Hi,

I'd strongly advise you to take some time to read about it. You'll need more than a couple of advices from us RG users to handle your analysis properly.

You could have a look at those books, they are quick reads and should be helpful both for methods and steps :

Lewins Ann et Silver Christina, 2007. Using software in qualitative research: A step-by-step guide, Thousand Oaks, California, Sage, 288 p.

Kuckartz Udo, 2014. Qualitative text analysis: A guide to methods, practice and using software, Sage.

I also heard the Five steps QDA method books are good, but haven't used them myself. See here : https://www.fivelevelqda.com/article/10299-the-five-level-qda-method-books-are-in-production

Hope this helped ! Have a nice day.

Amélie

The common steps of Qualitative Research are:

Find the issue

Determine research questions

Design the study

Collect data

Analyze data

Generate findings

Validate findings

Report