Top-down or bottom-up qualitative coding?

Coding qualitative data is a huge undertaking. Even with relatively small datasets, it can be a time-consuming and intensive process, and relying on just one person to interpret complex and rich data can leave out alternative viewpoints and risk key insights being missed. For one or both of these reasons, qualitative analysis is often performed as a collaborative team, with multiple coders either splitting up the task or providing multiple

  Our latest video tutorial introduces coding of qualitative data for those just starting out. Tagging or coding qualitative data with codes and themes is one of the most common methods for analysing qualitative data. But how do you do it? What's a code and a theme? How does it work in practice? Our short guide shows this:     You can download a trial of Quirkos, demonstrated briefly in the video from the link

  This post is based on a talk I gave at ICQI 2018, which itself leads on from a talk from last year on the Entomologies of qualitative coding. Good qualitative data is rich, and detailed - a fertile medium for understanding and interpreting the world. But the detail of the data comes at a price, usually qualitative data sources are lengthy, and are about a lot of different things. You don't just ask a single question that can be

If you are doing inductive coding or grounded theory, your coding framework can get complex, quickly. If you have hundreds of codes, they can become difficult to mangage which can slow down your coding - the part of your analysis you want as efficient and effective as possible so you can focus on identifying bigger trends.   Fortunately, this is what qualitative analysis software is best at - and whether you are using Nvivo, Atlas.ti or

  So you spend weeks or months coding all your qualitative data. Maybe you even did it multiple times, using different frameworks and research paradigms. You've followed our introduction guides and everything is neatly (or fairly neatly) organised and inter-related, and you can generate huge reports of all your coding work. Good job! But what happens now?   It's a question asked by lot of qualitative researchers: after all this

  In the analysis of qualitative data, it can be easy to fall in the habit of creating either very descriptive, or very general theoretical codes. It’s often a good idea to take a step back, and examine your coding framework, challenging yourself to look at the data in a fresh way. There are some more suggestions for how to do this in a blog post article about turning coding strategies on their head. But while in Delhi recently to

  “It’s where you make up as you go along!”   For a lot of students, Grounded Theory is used to describe a qualitative analytical method, where you create a coding framework on the fly, from interesting topics that emerge from the data. However, that's not really accurate. There is a lot more to it, and a myriad of different approaches. Basically, grounded theory aims to create a new theory of interpreting the world,

Following on from the last blog post on creating weird and wonderful categories to code your qualitative data, I want to talk about an often overlooked way of creating coding topics – using direct quotes from participants to name codes or topics. This is sometimes called “in vivo” coding, from the Latin ‘in life’ and not to be confused with the ubiquitous qualitative analysis software ‘Nvivo’ which can be used for any type of

For the first time in ages I attended a workshop on qualitative methods, run by the wonderful Johnny Saldaña. Developing software has become a full time (and then some) occupation for me, which means I have little scope for my own professional development as a qualitative researcher. This session was not only a welcome change, but also an eye-opening critique to the way that many in the room (myself included) approach coding qualitative

  In previous blog articles I’ve looked at some of the methodological considerations in developing a coding framework. This article looks at top-down or bottom-up approaches, whether you start with large overarching themes (a-priori) and break them down, or begin with smaller more simple themes, and gradually impose meanings and connections in an inductive approach. There’s a need in this series of articles to talk about the various

  The terms ‘unstructured data’ and ‘qualitative data’ are often used interchangeably, but unstructured data is becoming more commonly associated with data mining and big data approaches to text analytics. Here the comparison is drawn with databases of data where we have a defined field and known value and the loosely structured (especially to a computer) world of language, discussion and comment. A qualitative

When doing analysis and coding in a qualitative research project, it is easy to become completely focused on the thematic framework, and deciding what a section of text is about. However, qualitative analysis software is a useful tool for organising more than just the topics in the text, they can also be used for deeper contextual and meta-level analysis of the coding and data. Because you can pretty much record and categorise anything you

In framework analysis, sometimes described as a top-down or 'a-priori' approach, the researcher decides on the topics of interest they will look for before they start the analysis, usually based on a theory they are looking to test. In inductive coding the researcher takes a more bottom-up approach, starting with the data and a blank-sheet, noting themes as the read through the text.   Obviously, many researchers take a pragmatic approach,