Michelle J Searle, OCT, PhD

Analysis of Qualitative Data

 

Data analysis involves making sense out of the data through interpretation that can yield meaningful and symbolic content. All qualitative methods employ analysis and coding techniques to help organize the overwhelming amount of data that are frequently collected during qualitative research.

 

Qualitative analysis seeks to understand – for example, it might understand the way an educator feels about a specific initiative, problems of practice, questions and issues related to professional growth, the complex relationships with educational systems.

 

Qualitative inquiry uses multiple and often overlapping methods. As Eisner (1998) believes, this process does not depict “sloppy planning or wishful thinking … its function is to highlight the complexity of such work and its dependency on the sensibilities and good judgment of the qualitative researcher” (p. 170). A text that uses multiple forms is the best in education, not only because it responds to multiple learning modalities, but also because it is “humanly situated, always filtered through human eyes and human perceptions, bearing both the limitations and the strengths of human feelings” (Richardson, 1997, p. 65).

 

Often analysis takes place using a three cycle coding process that is outlined in the triangle on the right. Coding provides an opportunity to reduce the amount of data while also knowing the data more fully. There is a recursive nature to data coding and analysis that is cyclical rather than linear.