Revision summary
Qualitative analysis codes and compares meaning in notes and talk. Thematic analysis, grounded theory, narrative, discourse, and framework analysis are the main named methods. The Manchester extended case tests theory in a crisis. CAQDAS includes NVivo, ATLAS.ti, MAXQDA, and Dedoose. Software retrieves; it does not interpret. Geertz still has to be written after the nodes.
Model answer
Introduction
Qualitative analysis turns field notes, interviews, and images into an argued account. The methods are ways of coding and comparing meaning, and software now holds the corpus without doing the thinking.
Body
From data to account
- The corpus is usually transcripts, diaries, photographs, and documents produced in ethnography or in mixed methods.
- Analysis is iterative: read, code, memo, compare, and write, as Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss set out for grounded theory.
Main methods
- Thematic analysis, taught widely after Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke, groups repeating patterns of meaning across a set of interviews.
- Content analysis counts categories in texts when the question needs frequencies as well as quotes, a bridge toward mixed methods.
- Grounded theory builds categories from open, axial, and selective coding until a mid-level theory of a process, such as stigma or migration, stabilises.
- Narrative analysis follows plots, voices, and life stories, used in medical and refugee ethnography.
- Discourse analysis, after Michel Foucault and later linguistic anthropology, asks how talk makes power, caste, or gender, not only what a person reports.
- Conversation analysis looks at turn-taking and repair in recorded talk, a stricter cousin used in some institutional studies.
- Framework analysis (Ritchie and Spencer) uses a case-by-theme matrix, common in applied policy anthropology.
- Analytic induction and the extended case method of the Manchester School, associated with Max Gluckman and later Michael Burawoy, test a theory against a crisis in the field.
Computer software
- NVivo is widely used to code interview trees, query text, and link memos.
- ATLAS.ti supports coding of text, image, and video and is common in European and development research.
- MAXQDA mixes qualitative codes with simple quantitative overlays, useful in mixed-method theses.
- Dedoose is a web-based mixed-method option for teams.
- Open tools such as RQDA (older R package), TAMS, and Taguette exist for students without a licence.
- CAQDAS is the family name: Computer-Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software.
What software does not do
- It stores, retrieves, and shows co-occurrence. It does not know a culture.
- Clifford Geertz’s thick description still has to be written by the ethnographer after the nodes are coded.
- Poor interviews remain poor after a beautiful NVivo map.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD D[Field corpus] --> C[Coding memos] C --> M[Thematic grounded discourse] C --> S[NVivo ATLAS MAXQDA] M --> W[Written argument]
Conclusion
Qualitative methods include thematic, grounded, narrative, discourse, and extended-case analysis. NVivo, ATLAS.ti, MAXQDA, and Dedoose are popular CAQDAS tools, and they assist retrieval rather than replace ethnographic judgement.
Quick related
Students also ask
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What assumptions must be met for a population to be in genetic equilibrium. Explain the importance of genetic equilibrium.
Next question in the 2023 paper (Q7). View answer →
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Does using NVivo make the study scientific?
No. It makes the audit trail clearer. Validity still depends on fieldwork, sampling of talk, and argument.
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Must every ethnography use CAQDAS?
No. Small corpuses can be coded on paper. Software helps when the set is large or the team is many.
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