coding - Quirkos Qualitative Research Blog

What's the difference between codes and themes in qualitative analysis?

You'll see lots of literature on qualitative analysis talk about using both codes and themes, but they are difficult concepts to explain and often the lines between them are blurred.

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Using Emoji for Qualitative Data Analysis

It is possible to use emoji instead of words for codes, I was curious. I had not come across this before, and became intrigued about how emoji might be used for coding as well as analysis.

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Managing qualitative coding systems

In this blog post, I'm going to try and persuade you to do something really boring. Develop a formal process to record your analysis journey, and the coding systems you have.

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Collaborative coding of qualitative data

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

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A Beginners Guide to Coding Qualitative Data

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?

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Qualitative Coding Systems and the Extended Mind

Sometimes it can seem that our bodies are doing things without us knowing about it. I would struggle to tell someone the PIN number for my bank card, but my fingers know it – they just automatically type the right sequence!

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Starting out in Qualitative Analysis

When people are doing their first qualitative analysis project using software, it’s difficult to know where to begin. I get a lot of e-mails from people who want some advice in planning out what they will actually DO in the software, and how that will help them

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How to use qualitative analysis software (QDAS) for data management

A research project is often a big logistical undertaking, qualitative or otherwise. Through literature reviews, developing research questions, grant applications and funding, ethics/IRBs [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_review_board], managing co-researchers and supervisors, recruitment, collecting data from respondents, research journals, analysing data and writing up findings, there

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Seeking the greatest common divisor in qualitative coding

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

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Managing coding frameworks in Quirkos

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

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What next? Making the leap from coding to analysis

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

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Stepping back from coding software and reading qualitative data

There is a lot of concern that qualitative analysis software distances people from their data. Some say that it encourages reductive behaviour, prevents deep reading of the data, and leads to a very quantified type of qualitative analysis

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Circles and feedback loops in qualitative research

The best qualitative research forms an iterative loop, examining, and then re-examining. There are multiple reads of data, multiple layers of coding, and hopefully, constantly improving theory and insight into the underlying lived world

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Qualitative coding with the head and the heart

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

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What actually is Grounded Theory? A brief introduction

“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

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Merging and splitting themes in qualitative analysis

To merge or to split qualitative codes, that is the question… One of the most asked questions when designing a qualitative coding structure is ‘How many codes should I have?’. It’s easy to start out a project thinking that just a few themes will cover the research questions

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In vivo coding and revealing life from the text

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

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Turning qualitative coding on its head

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

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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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Building queries to explore qualitative data

So, you’ve spent days, weeks, or even months coding your qualitative data. Now what? Hopefully, just the process of being forced to read through the data, and thinking about the underlining themes has revealed a few likely points of interest. Now is a good time to step back

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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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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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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