There are many different ways of coding qualitative data. Two of the most frequently mentioned are in vivo coding, in which participants’ actual words become codes while the researcher is coding, and a priori coding, in which the researcher has defined codes before beginning to analyze the data.

Sometimes content analysis is applied as a blanket term for looking to see what qualitative data is about (ie the content) and from there many approaches can be applied.

Qualitative research often focuses on what people say: be that in interviews, focus-groups, diaries, social media or documents. Qualitative researchers often try to understand the world by listening to how people talk, but it can be really revealing to look at not just what people say, but how. Essentially this

Many forms of grounded theory adopt a variant of open, axial and selective coding as their key steps in qualitative analysis. Usually these follow the description in Strauss and Corbin (1990), but others such as Glaser (1978) defined similar procedures

How do you actually analyse qualitative data? How do you start to digest a rich qualitative data set, and begin to pull together the strands that will show insights from the data? If you've ever written a book report in high school, some of the basic concepts are the same.