Survey research and design in psychology/Tutorials/Qualitative analysis/Overview

Overview edit

View the accompanying screencast: [1]

Qualitative data generally consists of words (although it could consist of any non-numerical data). There are two basic approaches to qualitative analysis:

  1. Qualitatively (as words and themes/meaning) or
  2. Quantitatively (code as categories and analyse frequencies and percentages).

The aim of the qualitative analysis for the lab report is to analyse qualitative data (for probably the first time) and to present the main underlying themes or meaning for university student satisfaction and/or dissatisfaction.

The qualitative analysis results, as well being of potential use in and of themselves, can also serve as a validity check for other analyses e.g., are the themes consistent with a factor analysis of the quantitative satisfaction items?

Use either a research question or a hypothesis to guide the qualitative analysis, e.g., "What are the main areas of university student dissatisfaction?".