analysis - Quirkos Qualitative Research Blog (Page 3)

Workshop exercises for participatory qualitative analysis

I am really interested in engaging research participants in the research process. While there is an increasing expectation to get ‘lay’ researchers to set research questions, sit on review boards and even ask questions in qualitative studies

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Tools for critical appraisal of qualitative research

I've mentioned before how the general public are very quantitatively literate: we are used to dealing with news containing graphs, percentages, growth rates, and big numbers

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Finding, using and some cautions on secondary qualitative data

Many researchers instinctively plan to collect and create new data when starting a research project. However, this is not always needed, and even if you end up having to collect your own data, looking for other sources already out there can help

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Developing and populating a qualitative coding framework in Quirkos

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

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Teaching qualitative analysis software with Quirkos

When people first see Quirkos, we often hear them say “My students would love this!” The easy learning curve, the visual feedback and the ability to work on Windows or Mac appeal to students starting out in qualitative analysis. We have an increasing number of universities

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Play and Experimentation in Qualitative Analysis

In the last blog post article, I talked about the benefits of visualising qualitative data, not just in the communication and dissemination stage, but also during data analysis. For newcomers to the world of qualitative research, the analysis process often seems intimidating and mysterious

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Freeing qualitative analysis from spreadsheet interfaces

The old mantra is that a picture tells a thousand words. You’ve probably seen Hans Rosling’s talks on visualising quantitative data, or maybe even read some of Edward Tufte’s books on data visualisation

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Levels: 3-dimensional node and topic grouping in Quirkos

One of the biggest features enabled in the latest release of Quirkos are 'levels', a new way to group and sort your Quirks thematically. While this was always an option in previous versions, they are now fully integrated into the search and query views

qualitative analysis software

The CAQDAS jigsaw: integrating with workflows

I’m increasingly seeing qualitative research software as being the middle piece of a jigsaw puzzle that has three stages: collection, coding/exploring, and communication. These steps are not always clear cut, and generally there should be a fluid link between them

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Our hyper-connected qualitative world

We live in a world of deep qualitative data. It’s often proposed that we are very quantitatively literate. We are exposed to numbers and statistics frequently

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Participatory Qualitative Analysis

Engaging participants in the research process can be a valuable and insightful endeavour, leading to researchers addressing the right issues, and asking the right questions.

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Using Quirkos for fun and (extremely nerdy) projects

Most of our blog is a serious and (hopefully) useful exploration of current topics in qualitative research and how to use Quirkos to help you with your research. However we thought it might be fun to share something a little different

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Structuring unstructured data

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

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Bringing survey data and mixed-method research into Quirkos

Later today we are releasing a small update for Quirkos, which adds an important feature users have been requesting: the ability to quickly bring in quantitative and qualitative data from any spreadsheet, or online survey tool

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Why the shift from Labour to the SNP in the 2015 Election in Scotland?

If the polls are to be believed, Labour are going to loose a lot of Scottish seats in Westminster to the SNP next month. This wave of support seems to come largely out of the referendum last year on Scottish Independence, but it's difficult to completely understand

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6 meta-categories for qualitative coding and analysis

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

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Free materials for qualitative workshops

We are running more and more workshops helping people learn qualitative analysis and Quirkos. I always feel that the best way to learn is by doing, and the best way to remember is through play. To this end, we have created two sources of qualitative data that anyone can download and use

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The dangers of data mining for text

There is an interesting new article out, which looks at some of the commonly used algorithms in data mining, and finds that they are generally not very accurate, or even reproducible. Specifically, the study by Lancichinetti et al.

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How to organise notes and memos in Quirkos

Many people have asked how they can integrate notes or memos into their project in Quirkos. At the moment, there isn’t a dedicated memo feature in the current version of Quirkos (v1.0), but this is planned for a free upgrade later in the year. However, there are actually two ways

$Is qualitative data analysis fracturing?$

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Is qualitative data analysis fracturing?

Having been to several international conferences on qualitative research recently, there has been a lot of discussion about the future of qualitative research, and the changes happening in the discipline and society as a whole. A lot of people have been saying

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Using Quirkos for Systematic Reviews and Evidence Synthesis

Most of the examples the blog has covered so far have been about using Quirkos for research, especially with interview and participant text sources. However, Quirkos can take any text source you can open on your computer, including text PDFs

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Knowing your customers

As consumers, it feels like we are bombarded more than ever with opportunities for providing feedback on products and services. While shopping on-line, or even when browsing BBC News we are asked to complete a short questionnaire

qualitative analysis software

Paper vs. computer assisted qualitative analysis

I recently read a great paper by Rettie et al. (2008) which, although based on a small sample size, found that only 9% of UK market research organisations doing qualitative research were using software

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Top-down or bottom-up qualitative coding?

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