The interpretations are “grounded in” (or based on) observed empirical data, hence the name. The technique was developed by Glaser and Strauss (1967) in their method of constant comparative analysis of grounded theory research, and further refined by Strauss and Corbin (1990) to further illustrate specific coding techniques – a process of classifying and categorizing text data segments into a set of codes (concepts), categories (constructs), and relationships. How can you analyze a vast set qualitative data acquired through participant observation, in-depth interviews, focus groups, narratives of audio/video recordings, or secondary documents? One of these techniques for analyzing text data is grounded theory – an inductive technique of interpreting recorded data about a social phenomenon to build theories about that phenomenon. Interested readers are referred to more authoritative and detailed references such as Miles and Huberman’s (1984) seminal book on this topic. This chapter provides a brief overview of some of these qualitative analysis strategies.
A creative and investigative mindset is needed for qualitative analysis, based on an ethically enlightened and participant-in-context attitude, and a set of analytic strategies. The emphasis in qualitative analysis is “sense making” or understanding a phenomenon, rather than predicting or explaining. Unlike quantitative analysis, which is statistics driven and largely independent of the researcher, qualitative analysis is heavily dependent on the researcher’s analytic and integrative skills and personal knowledge of the social context where the data is collected.
Qualitative analysis is the analysis of qualitative data such as text data from interview transcripts.