Qualitative research methods: approaches to qualitative data analysis

Paul Mihas, Howard W. Odum Institute for Research in Social Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC,
United States
© 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction 302
Overview of analytic practices and strategies 302
Coding practices 303
Memo-writing practices 304
Inductive thematic analysis 304
Qualitative research approaches 305
Case studies 306
Ethnographies 307
Grounded theories 308
Narrative analyses 309
Phenomenologies 310
Conclusion 311
References 311

Introduction

Qualitative analysisdthe interpretive analysis of textual, graphical, or audio/video datadoccupies a continuum from description to
theory building, from addressing what questions to attempting to answer complex how and why inquiries. Though researchers might
discuss analysis as a phase, it is best to anticipate analytic strategies even during design and data collection. For example, if we are
interested in lived experience, discussed later in this chapter, we need to generate data that provide access to the nuanced texture of
an experience as it is being lived. But we would also benefit from developing an analytic perspective as we collect data so that we can
begin examining data as we collect them, such as writing memos on especially meaningful text segments.
Qualitative studies can be directed by a conceptual framework, suggesting a deductive thrust, or driven more by the data itself,
inviting an exploratory, inductive lens. In either case, the topics we wrestle with can range from tangible to abstract. How we engage
these topics varies dramatically based on our strategies for analysis. A descriptive study might identify and illustrate barriers and
facilitators of a public health intervention whereas an inductive thematic study would raise topics, or combinations of topics, to
a higher conceptual level. Theme-building allows researchers to make interpretive claims by weaving together evidence across
data and data types and naming these dynamic links. A theoretical study would go even further to make explanatory claims based
on evidence across data and data types, attempting to theorize relationships between individuals, structures, and processes and not
simply describe a situation, event, or experience.
In addition to presenting thematic analysis as a strategy, this chapter also covers established qualitative traditions: case study,
ethnography, grounded theory, narrative analysis, and phenomenology. Case study research involves identifying a bounded
“case” and collecting multiple types of data to assess the case and its context, either descriptively or more thematically. Ethnographic
research focuses on a cultural setting and uses rich description to understand how individuals participate in the same culture,
perhaps in markedly different ways. Grounded theory encompasses several approaches, including objectivist and constructivist,
that invite researchers to analyze process, contexts, structures, and consequences. Narrative analysis treats stories not only as possible
representations of events, but as narrative events in themselves. Researchers using this approach analyze the form and content of
narrative data and examine how these elements serve the storyteller and how the story shapes ontologies and epistemologies.
Phenomenology is an approach designed to “open up” a phenomenon and make sense of its invariant structures, its identifiable
essences across narrative accounts. In this approach, the focus is on the lived experiences of those deeply familiar with the phenom-
enon. Each of these traditions has its own investigative emphases and particular tools for analysisdspecific approaches to coding
and memo writing–and conventions for final products, such as diagrams, matrices, and condensed reports.

Overview of analytic practices and strategies

This section focuses on particular analytic practicesdcoding and memo writingdas well as a common analytic strategy, inductive
thematic analysis. How analytic practices are adopted depends on the conceptual “compass” a researcher might bring to a study.
There are numerous compasses or possible points of departure, depending on the current knowledge in the field as well as the
particular focus of inquiry. The point of departure is the combined knowledge and objectives that guide the initial phase of inquiry.

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 Qualitative research methods: approaches to qualitative data analysis 303

There may be little established knowledge in an exploratory study or an extensive body of research that already speaks to a research
question.
Researchers using a deductive approach might make use of an existing theoretical framework, such as activity theory, which sees
activity as purposeful and transformative, or they might construct a conceptual framework based on a directed literature review.
Particular fields, such as implementation science, offer specific guidance in the form of previously existing codebooks, such as
the consolidated framework for implementation research (CFIR) (Damschroder et al., 2009), a collection of constructs reflecting
the uptake of research findings into routine healthcare. When a theory or a conceptual framework is present in inquiry, these frame-
works become a compass of sorts guiding the analysis. Researchers may then illustrate how their data align with or problematize the
theory or conceptual scaffolding with which they began.
In the absence of a theoretical or conceptual framework, researchers are guided by a more data-driven approach, where the
language of the data and the way that participants frame events, structures, and outcomes become topics that guide the analysis
(Maietta et al., 2018; Saldaña, 2021). Though this approach might be considered more “exploratory,” it is not an unmoored
one. Exploration is governed by research questions, by disciplinary understanding, and by a particular paradigmatic lens. For
this reason, documenting one’s point of departure is imperative. It gives a researcher space to acknowledge how prior knowledge
can be both a strength and a drawback. A researcher may need to “un-know” and un-learn what they have already learned in order to
gain insight into the individuals’ experiential framing (Vagle, 2018). In an inductive approach, researchers experience the shifting
sands of emergent ideas and build scaffolding for the study as they go. Entering the “unknown” privileges participant knowledge
rather than relying on researcher knowledge or cumulative understanding based on pre-existing frameworks.
Reading textual data with an interpretive lens is itself a skill requiring an eye for nuance as well as holistic contiguity. In acknowl-
edging the contiguity of an interview or focus group, we see how a participant or group has created a holistic account even if our
questions were not attempting to generate holism. Attending to the participants’ framing can help us understand their complex
experiences, governing values, or psychological landscape. For example, a participant who references religious beliefs throughout
an interview even when the questions are not about religion can help us understand how a religion meaning system permeates their
everyday experiences. In inhabiting data, we are invited not to be critical of participants but to understand events as they understand
themdto analyze, not necessarily psycho-analyzedto consider the narrative territory of the interview in terms of ideas such as
primacy (what comes first in a narrative), negation (negative language), emphasis (text treated with heightened regard), and repe-
tition (repeated phrases) (Alexander, 1988). A narrative landscape, like a literal landscape, has different terrains, transitions, and
elevations. We might notice places where participants center particular values, decenter other values, or demonstrate negotiated
values (Daiute, 2014), such as librarians who are asked to catalog a title using categories that they find problematic because of their
racist overtones. Prompts for attentive reading include: What is at stake here for the participant? What does the participant reveal
beyond the “facts” of an incident? How does their way of speaking or constructing an account differ from how other participants in
the study share their experiential accounts?

Coding practices
Many researchers have discussed possible coding practices for qualitative research (Charmaz, 2014; Miles et al., 2020; Saldaña,
2021; Strauss and Corbin, 2008). Codes are a vehicle for paying attention, a way for researchers to help establish consistency as
they review and name pieces of data. If used intentionally and strategically, coding is a way of knowing and making meaning of
copious amounts of data. In some studies, codes can be developed even before data collection, as would be the case if using the
consolidated framework for implementation research (CFIR). Even without a framework, researchers might nonetheless develop
an initial codebook based on the research questions, interview questions, and study aims.
In contrast to deductive coding, inductive coding is based on discerning and naming “surfacing” topics in close reading. For
example, in vivo coding uses the participant’s own language to name a topic. In this practice, a concisely expressed belief, such
as “life is empty without family,” becomes the name of the code itself, rather than introducing the researcher’s academic language
that may lose the intensity of the quoted text. Another inductive coding practice, process coding, uses gerunds, or “ing” nouns, to
capture actions and behaviors evident in the data (Charmaz, 2014; Saldaña, 2021). This practice helps researchers move closer to the
participant experiencedwhat they are doing or going throughdrather than focusing on nominalizations that may ignore process.
This coding technique can ultimately help us study what keeps a behavior or action in place, what reinforces it, and what destabi-
lizes it.
We might also make a distinction between descriptive and interpretive coding. In descriptive coding, we take inventory of the
tangible who, what, where, and when of datademotions, settings, relationships, and timespans. However, focusing on description
may result in a flat analysis without generating deeper insight. Interpretive coding, in its more conceptual nature, invites us to distin-
guish the implications and underlying meaning of what is being stated, moving closer to addressing why and how, but also recon-
ceptualizing the who, what, where, and when in conceptual terms. So, we might rethink the codes teachers and parents in terms of role
models or dream makers. Likewise, instead of coding for frustration, we might code for managing emotions, a more interpretive code that
gets at an underlying process, a more meaningful topic with analytic leverage across transcripts.
Coding is an analytic act, but not a destination. Once we have coded data, more interpretive labor lies ahead in assessing what is
“inside,” “outside,” and “in between” the codes. Assessing what is “inside” a code refers to evaluating the text segments contained
within it to assess the data cumulatively regarding the spectrum of voices within, and properties of, the code. For example, we might
find a range in the magnitude of the code, from low to high intensity. We might similarly assess what lies “outside” the code, that is,
304 Qualitative research methods: approaches to qualitative data analysis

what contextualizes or frames it. For example, we might discern that managing emotions is often coded within a particular time period
or event, such as turning points in a career trajectory, contextualizing conflicting emotions within temporal markers. Finally, in inves-
tigating what happens “between” codes, we might see that two codes reveal more together than they do separately. For example, we
might discern that home life, when assessed alongside work life, provides insight into a new concept, actual self vs. ideal self. These
examples are reminders that though codes may seem like self-contained ideas, they become building blocks for further analytic
inquiry when we look at the dynamic relationships between them (and contextualize codes within enveloping ones). We find other
stories to tell and higher-level concepts that bridge seemingly unrelated topics (Maietta et al., 2021).

Memo-writing practices
Qualitative data collection can generate overwhelming amounts of textual data that require reliable practices to help us condense
and synthesize our understanding. Coding is a practice that helps us consolidate this text into more manageable units and topics.
Memo writing, in parallel, is another practice that can help us formally monitor and develop our evolving ideas as we move across
data. The two practices differ in that codes tend to track individual, separable topics whereas memos function as a place to sustain
complex inquiry, a space to draw connections between quotations, documents, or codes.
Types of memos include a document reflection memo, which treats an interview or other transcribed encounter as a contiguous
whole that reveals consistent threads regarding values, beliefs, and attitudes or, of equal interest, contradictory threads regarding
these topics (Mihas, 2022). Though we might have asked targeted questions in a structured or semi-structured interview guide,
the landscape of an entire interview can help us understand the big picture, and as a result, we might become more aware of chro-
nological trajectories, belief systems, or psychological states that take shape during an interview, insights we might otherwise miss in
focusing solely on textual fragments.
In addition to coding text segments, memos on key quotations can help us better understand illustrative pieces of data. A key quota-
tion is a text segment that is especially informative in that it reveals a way of thinking, behaving, or experiencing a phenomenon.
When an opioid user says, “every ‘never’ I ever said came true,” we might pause to open up these words and explore what they mean
for the participant and the larger research inquiry (Mars et al., 2014). This kind of reflective memo allows us to elaborate on what
participant language is teaching us and how it helps provide insight into the intricate insider perspective. The content of these
memos can also be used to develop codes.
Cross-document comparison memos move beyond document-level or segment-level quotations to synthesize meaning across data.
By creating an intentional space to compare a particular topicdan experience, belief, or valuedand its dimensions, this memo
serves as a place of growing insight that also functions as pre-writing for a more formal paper or report. That is, when we have
a hunch in one interview, we might intentionally write about it and refine the memo, and our proposition, as we review more
data. In looking at the experiences of US parents whose children were soldiers in Iraq during the early years of the Iraq War
(2003–2011), a comparison memo might show, for example, that mothers inhabit a limbo state of “what-if” thinking versus
news of actual events (Collins, 2008).
Coding itself can also help us compare a topic across data, but it is sometimes difficult to code for an idea that permeates an
entire transcript or to code for what is happening “between” text segments, that is, to code for the subtextual “rhyming” that
happens when one segment is juxtaposed against another. A comparison memo can help us keep track of these slippery concepts
that require elaboration as we find examples that offer complementary or contradictory perspectives.
Invariably, most qualitative findings show up as written claims. Memo writing as a practice can help us develop a writing voice
that is congruent with our data and a way to interrogate evidence for a claim. In speaking with, not for, participants and braiding our
voices with participant voices, we are more likely to stay close to the data and present co-constructed insights that serve both
academic journals and communities from which the voices arose. For this reason, engaging in memos throughout the entire
research lifecycle can help us invest in writing as a "way of knowing" (Richardson, 2000). This makes the task of final reports
and papers more efficient because we have already developed the textured language of the study, rather than reducing writing to
“write-up.”

Inductive thematic analysis

Thematic analysis, which can include both deductive and inductive practices, was developed across disciplines throughout the twen-
tieth century, including work in physics by Gerald Holton (1973). In more recent years, psychologists Braun and Clarke (2006)
outlined a set of theme-building procedure for the social sciences, but thematic analysis remains a loosely defined practice with
many varied applications across fields of study and across a “range of theoretical and epistemological approaches,” such as case
study and ethnography (Braun and Clarke, 2006, p. 6). Though some researchers argue that thematic analysis is a method in its
own right, others, such as Morse and Cheek (2021) and Boyatzis (1998), consider thematic analysis a practice or a tool. As
such, thematic analysis is not exclusively tied to a particular epistemology or paradigm. If we adopt a realist paradigm to assess
the barriers of emergency medicine, we might construct themes that elucidate treatment barriers. If we instead adopt a constructivist
paradigm, we might develop themes to capture social structures evident in an emergency setting, such as how built environment
“acts” upon patients.
Though deductive approaches to thematic analysis, such as directed content analysis, are common (Bingham and Witkowsky,
2022; Hseih and Shannon, 2005; Mayring, 2015), they are beyond the scope of this chapter. Instead, this section focuses on inductive
 Qualitative research methods: approaches to qualitative data analysis 305
thematic analysis, whereby researchers do not begin with theoretical constructs or frameworks. They start only with provisional topics
that work their way into an evolving codebook. During the initial review of data, called “open coding” or first-cycle coding,
researchers generate numerous topics, both broad and specific (Charmaz, 2014; Saldaña, 2021). Open coding, often descriptive,
invests in the language of the participant as well as the aims of the study. However, thematic analysis does not stay at the level
of description or initial insight. Researchers move up the conceptual ladder from this vast array of ideas to develop conceptual clus-
ters using evocative, condensed language.
Codes and themes occupy different semantic planes. A code is a container for a single topic, whereas a theme goes further in
capturing dimension or meaning across multiple codes and in this way acts as an "argument" about the "phenomenon being exam-
ined” (Braun and Clark, 2006, p. 18). For this reason, topics such as barriers and facilitators are regarded as broad topics that do not
adequately elevate ideas to a more compelling claim or theme, which tends to be more evocative, such as the family obligations inten-
sify transportation barriers. In other words, themes pierce the surface of data to evoke a higher-level story or abstract concept. They go
deeper in unearthing participants’ tacit assumptions and pervasive logics and in connecting seemingly different topics, such as
family and transportation in the above example, and naming this dynamic link.
There is no single agreed upon strategy for determining themes, but researchers might create clusters of seemingly related codes
and then name the conceptual glue that holds them together. Hence, in a study on experiencing chemotherapy, descriptive codes for
eating new foods, seeking new entertainment, and rethinking life choices might be tied to a theme, emerging self, that functions as a concep-
tual bridge between or among codes. In studies using structured interviews, we often find ourselves with pre-existing topics. For
example, in a study of indigenous people experiencing climate change in Alaska, we might have anticipated at the ouset topics
such as physical health and mental health. These are simply topics based on research questions. They are not themes. To construct
a theme, we might review the quotations coded to each code and assess what we perhaps have not noticed in reviewing each
code separately. We might discern that across these codes participants address issues of the self as a marker of climate change,
a thematic bridge that connects the separate notions of physical and mental health.
Braun and Clarke’s thematic analysis method is an iterative process consisting of six steps: (1) becoming familiar with the data,
(2) generating codes, (3) generating themes, (4) reviewing themes, (5) defining and naming themes, and (6) locating exemplars.
Becoming familiar with data refers to data immersion and iterative cycles of reading, with each cycle generating further insight.
Generating codes means coding for as many topics as possible and applying the code to a contextual segment, not just a phrase.
Generating themes means sorting the codes into higher-level topics. Researchers might use tables, mind maps, or theme piles to
cluster topics into these broader groupings. This phase ends with “candidate themes” and subthemes. Reviewing the themes means
interrogating the candidate themes by revisiting the data coded to the component codes. We may determine that the data do not
sufficiently support the theme or that there is too much variation across text segments to justify the theme. This may mean renaming
the theme or making it a sub-theme of a broader construct. The next phase entails refining the names of themes and ensuring that
they occupy the same semantic plane, i.e., that they are conceptually parallel. If the language of most of the themes is broad and
abstract (e.g., collectivity and the communal self) but other ideas are more surface-level (e.g., keeping busy, reading a book, playing
a game), this may require creating a higher-level construct to elevate the superficial topics to more abstract ones (e.g., suppression
and distraction) (see Goodman, 2004). Producing the report means telling the complex story of the themes, first describing the
meaning within each theme, with illustrative examples, and then perhaps looking across themes to discern connective takeaways
or meta-themes.
Braun and Clarke (2006) state that a theme captures a prominent aspect of the data in a patterned way, “regardless of whether
that theme captures the majority experience” (Scharp and Sanders, 2019, p. 1). Though identifying a pattern might entail noticing
frequency, it is primarily about meaning making, not underscoring quantity. There is no “hard-and-fast answer to the question of
what proportion of your data set needs to display evidence of the theme for it be considered a theme” (Braun and Clarke, 2006, p.
10). In other words, the identified themes address the research question, even if not every participant addresses the theme per se.
In a study of men managing body image and appearance, researchers identified four themes: men value practicality, men should not
care how they look, clothes are used to conceal or reveal, and clothes are used to fit a cultural ideal (Frith and Gleeson, 2004). Each of these
themes addresses the study’s overarching questiondhow men use clothing. Each theme tells a story based on these abstract
concepts. The theme men value practicality underscores how men valued the functional nature of clothes, what is “necessary for daily
living” (p. 43). Each theme is presented with quotations that add texture to the concept and provide evidence for how the researcher
conceptually elevated numerous textual fragments, identified a crystalized pattern or distinguishable shape across different textual
accounts. In this way, themes use the idiographic to construct the nomothetic. In some cases, researchers can use the participants’
own language to name the theme, as was the case in a study on whether patients tell their physicians that they are depressed, where
themes included “My doctor just picked it up” and “They just check out your heart and things” (Wittink et al., 2006).

Qualitative research approaches

The next section of the chapter presents five established qualitative research approaches: case studies, ethnographies, grounded theo-
ries, narrative analyses, and phenomenologies.
306 Qualitative research methods: approaches to qualitative data analysis

Case studies
As others have noted, defining a “case study” is a “definitional morass” given that it can be considered a form of data collection, an
approach to analysis, or a type of reporting or write-up, or all these (Gerring, 2007, p. 17; Savin-Baden and Howell Major, 2013). As
an approach to qualitative research, a case is intended to have the following properties. First, it is bounded by time and place, such
as the months following the rollout of a vaccine in a particular rural county, and has a “real-life,” naturalistic context. However, in
the age of virtual spaces and online communities, the notion of “boundedness”dand culture itselfdhas become increasingly prob-
lematic given that individuals can participate in different cultures with complex boundaries simultaneously (Bartlett and Vavrus,
2017). Second, a case study employs methodological triangulation, the use of multiple data collection methodsdinterviews, focus
groups, documents, observations, visual data, and online resourcesdto contribute to interpretive precision or a comprehensive
understanding of an event, episode, organization, or individual. Third, a case has an identifiable context, whose boundaries
with the case itself are sometimes difficult to discern, such as a school and the district in which it resides (Stake, 1995, 2006;
Yin, 2018).
Case study analysis occurs at the level of a particular semantic plane, or level of abstraction. Analysis can focus on description,
such as an account of school bullying at a particular high school, or move into more abstract conceptual territory, such as analyzing
identify formation of the bully and victim. The level of abstraction depends on the research question, our intended audience, and
whether our aim is rich descriptiondthe tangible who, what, where, and when of analysisdor also theory buildingdthe how and why
of conceptualizing.
A more explicitly comparative approach would be used in a multi- or comparative case study. Case comparisons can be homol-
ogous or heterologous (Bartlett and Vavrus, 2017) where homologous comparisons employ entities having a similar position or
structure (such as two colleges with a large number of first-generation students) and heterologous comparisons assess entities
that are categorically different or high-contrast (such as a retail store and a clinic) but are studied in order to understand a more
abstract phenomenon, such as organizational death. In analysis, researchers would compare data and codes across cases (sites,
episodes, or individuals) to investigate similarities and differences and provide evidence for building a logic model or other type
of conceptual model, such as a process model of organizational death in a study of dying organizations (Sutton, 1987).
Analyzing a case study requires us to keep track of the complexity of the different units within our data collection, the case itself,
and its context. The unit of data collection is often different from the unit or units of analysis (Yin, 2018). We might interview indi-
viduals or gather website mission statements to understand an organization, the ultimate unit of analysis. That is, our analysis must
always remain attentive to the case itselfddrawing conclusions at the case leveldand avoid getting lost in the minutia of the units of
data collection. Coding for the emotions of individuals in the above example would be of use only if it helps us understand the
environment of the organization. Coding for components of participant life histories would be necessary only if the participants
themselves were the cases, rather than the units of data collection. However, a particular kind of case study, the embedded case
study, would allow us to study smaller units within the larger case, such as classrooms within a school.
Case studies have been characterized as variance oriented, interpretivist, and process oriented (Bartlett and Vavrus, 2017).
Variance-oriented case studies, using a post-positivist framing, are concerned with variables and correlations among them (Maxwell,
2013) whereas interpretivist studies attempt to understand participants’ “sense-making” of events or phenomena. In contrast to
these, process-oriented case studies tend to seek explanation based on an “analysis of how some situations and events influence
others” (Maxwell, 2013, p. 29).
Researchers have outlined different approaches to analyzing case studies, including using a theoretical proposition, using an
exploratory approach, developing a case description, and assessing rival explanations (Yin, 2018). Using a theoretical proposition
does not necessarily mean a strict prediction involving a dependent and independent variable. Rather, it points to a kind of hunch
that we seek to examine qualitatively with multiple data types. Analytic practices in this situation would necessitate linking data to
proposition(s) through various strategies, including presenting a descriptive account of a site’s atmospherics or conditions (Yin,
2018). In a practice called pattern matching, we take an identifiable pattern from our descriptive account and compare it to an antic-
ipated or predicted one. Another option, explanation building, involves making an initial theoretical statement, comparing initial
findings with the original proposition, revising the original proposition, and repeating this process until one has settled on a refined
proposition that matches the data. Yet another practice, the logic model, fleshes out the complex development of events over
a period of time. Analytically, this may mean matching observed events with theoretically predicted ones. Across all these practices,
analyzing qualitative case studies incorporates many of the strategies and practices employed in generic qualitative researchdcod-
ing, memo writing, and diagrams.
Case study analysis makes use of methodological triangulation which entails comparing at least two different methods, such as
interviews and observations, to assess whether researcher discoveries and participant points of view evident in one methodological
practice also surface in the other, for example, whether there are conceptual echoes between interviews and naturalistic encounters
(Yin, 2018) (For a discussion of other types of triangulationddata triangulation, investigator triangulation, theoretical triangula-
tion, environmental triangulationdsee Denzin and Lincoln, 1998). Triangulating methods allows us to assess convergence,
complementarity, or divergence of these different data types, illustrating how evidence across methods supports a claim or compli-
cates it, perhaps further dimensionalizing a topic (Farquhar et al., 2020). Convergence and complementarity strengthen the findings
and precision of a case study and address the limitations of relying only on one type of (perhaps myopic) data. Equally valuable,
divergence might point to how participants claim a type of behavior or belief that the researcher sees differently through a different
method, such as in the context of a real-time observational setting. Though triangulation often aligns with a post-positivist lens,
 Qualitative research methods: approaches to qualitative data analysis 307

with appeals to validity and reliability, it can be adopted in a more interpretivist approach, and treated as a kaleidoscope
(Flick, 2018), enabling researchers to take on different interpretations of their study at different levels of abstraction (Farquhar
et al., 2020).
Memo writing is a tool to systematically compare data types within a case study as well as findings across cases in a multi-case
study. Researchers might also use a matrix with different data types on one axis and topics on another axis to further illustrate how
a topic (or theme) shows up similarly or differently across these data types (e.g., Rafaeli, 1989).

Ethnographies
As others have noted, many approaches to ethnography emerged in the twentieth century, from researchers studying the internal
logics of a holistic culture (Agar, 1980; Malinwoksi, 1922/1966) to attempts to analyze more interconnected “cultural scenes”
(Spradley and McCurdy, 1972). Similarly, anthropologists moved from studying people “outside” their own culture (Park,
1925/1967) to looking at settings within their own culture, such as researchers in the US studying inner city Philadelphia
(Anderson, 1999). Contemporary ethnography, especially in recent decades, also introduced efforts to incorporate one’s critical
reflexivity into the analytic journey, inquiring how one’s positionality activates a particular ethnographic lens in both participant
and non-participant observation and how it contributes to framing the final ethnography.
In entering the fieldda school, a hospital, a refugee sitedethnographers encounter multiple ongoing stories, rather than a single
cultural account, and concern themselves with verbal exchanges of various types: phatic communion, ordinary conversation, skilled
conversation, personal narratives, and dialog (Goodall, 2000). Phatic communion refers to politeness rituals; ordinary conversation
to discussion, gossip, or information exchange; skilled conversation to debate, negotiation, or interviews; personal narratives to
individual or mutual self-disclosure; and dialog to “spontaneous mutuality” (pp. 103–104).
Ethnographic interviews, as a form of skilled conversation, take place after a researcher has been in a field long enough to be able
to ask relevant questions. In analyzing these collected verbal exchanges, the researcher considers the temporal, spatial, and
embodied nature of the encounterdbody language, vocal inflections, and setting atmospherics. As such, a verbal exchange can
be considered as much of an “event” as a cultural practice in the community, blurring the distinction between participant-
observation and interview.
Ethnographic efforts function along a spectrum from emic (folk concepts) to etic (concepts of the ethnographer)dguided by
theories of culture and shared meaningdbut it is the inductive thrust, the surfacing folk concepts, that leads to the most unexpected
findings. Field notes, memos regarding one’s impressions in the cultural spaces, “combine a high level of careful empirical detail
with personal asides and impressions” (Mills and Morton, 2013, p. 83). As such, they are a cumulative space inviting the unforeseen
to take shape. To refine analysis, ethnographic memos can be organized into types: observational, methodological, theoretical,
emotional, and environmental (Gobo and Molle, 2017). In contrast, coding, an optional practice in ethnographic analyses,
condenses copious accounts of the cultural group or cultural scenesdobservations, interviews, collected artifactsdinto meaningful
topics. Codes used in ethnographic analyses might include beliefs and values as well as other established codes such as routines (also
called “everyday practices”), rituals, rules, roles, relationships (Saldaña and Omasta, 2018) as well as rich points (speech acts that
contain cultural knowledge), turning points, habits of speech, myths, and actual practices (or organizational realities) (Goodall,
2000, p. 113). Coding, and analysis itself, is iterative, with initial coding casting a wide net around data, generating many top-
icsdboth deductive and inductivedand subsequent analysis engaging more targeted coding. The researcher uses growing knowl-
edge to better assess documented encounters in the field and identify patterns across data, such as power in particular cultural spaces
(deCerteau, 1996). Memos and codes together offer two forms of “coherence”: contiguity and similarity (see Maxwell, 2012).
Memos can be used to examine cultural spaces as contiguous wholes while coding can be used to identity components of culture
(e.g., beliefs) and to assess similarity and dissimilarity within and across them.
Though an ethnography is not replicable in the traditional sense because it would be impossible for another researcher to have
the same encounters with the same people in the field and generate the same data, data analysis can attempt to address replicability
by developing a codebook. A codebook is a set of identified topics with operationalized definitions. Differentiating between similar
codes, such as sharing information versus knowledge building, can create deeper insights into what shared meanings inhabit the
community or group under inquiry. This does not mean that values per se are shared but that the culture as a whole activates a range
of values of which others are aware, such as a country with polarized political views. An ethnography might go beyond the data at
hand and draw connections between the study’s emerging findings and link them to existing theories on social structures, processes,
and outcomes. Furthermore, ethnography is corroborative, relying on more than one data collection method (Wolcott, 2010) (See
also discussion of triangulation in Case studies section of this chapter.)
Some researchers (St. Pierre and Jackson, 2014) advocate a “post-coding” approach to avoid overly fragmenting data into
segments at the expense of a more cohesive understanding. Rather than coding, post-coding practices might include “focusing
on occasions and instances” that provide more holistic meaning and writing about those instances as part of rich description
(Harrison, 2018, p. 79).
As a final product, an ethnography is an overarching representation of a cultural space (or connected spaces) based on cumu-
lative verbal exchanges, artifacts, and observations. The findings are typically shared in a narrative report that walks the reader
through primary themes and illustrative accounts of various interconnected episodes, such as sense-making episodes, risk-taking
episodes, face-saving episodes, and crises (Goodall, 2000, p 18; Van Maanen, 1988). In an ethnography of inner-city Philadelphia,
anthropologist Elijah Anderson identified constructs, or themes, such as campaigning for respect, the social shuffle, self-image based on
308 Qualitative research methods: approaches to qualitative data analysis

“juice,” and the staging area. These constructs are an example of applying “inference to a static cultural scene” (Goodall, 2000, p. 94).
Agar refers to inferences as the “glue of coherence,” what link “different pieces of knowledge and connect knowledge with the world”
(Agar, 1980, p. 32). In other words, the evocative language of Anderson’s themes provides an interpretive epistemological frame,
combining theoretical exploration with evocative description. His ethnography not only identifies abstractions, it also walks the
reader through textured accounts of particular youth, such as Tyree’s story, which is based on an extended ethnographic interview.
Tyree’s story is “dramatized in places to represent vividly the intricacies of the code of the street,” the unwritten rules of inner-city
life, and to provide evidence for the constructed themes (Anderson, 1999, p. 80). Anderson’s textured writing bring to mind Har-
away’s advice that the “only way to find a larger vision is to be somewhere in particular” (1988, p. 590). Synthesizing and recon-
ciling the particular (and its many contradictions) with the holistic is a common objective of ethnographic writing. Visualization
techniques for reporting findings include time-ordered displays (understanding causes and contexts of local causality), role ordered
displays (showing who does what when), conceptually ordered displays, and agent-based modeling (Gobo and Molle, 2017;
Ladner, 2014).

Grounded theories
Grounded theory, developed by sociologists Bernard Glaser and Anselm Strauss (1967), introduced an innovative approach to
social and behavioral research that underscored an inductive entry point into initial data engagement, followed by a strategic shift
to deduction and more targeted data collection. The ultimate goal of this approach was to theorize based on datadto answer largely
“why” questions regarding actions, reactions, and interactionsdto attempt to explain what activates, sustains, or destabilizes
a complex process. Early grounded theory is sometimes called “objectivist” because it suggested an identifiable, objective theory
“out there” in the world. Since then, other forms of grounded theory have been developed, including Straussian grounded theory,
which focused on established constructs related to process, including contexts, conditions, antecedents, promoters, actions, and
consequences (Corbin and Strauss, 2015; Strauss and Corbin, 2008). Another genre, constructivist grounded theory, developed
by sociologist Kathy Charmaz, acknowledged the researcher’s role in co-creating data and knowledge production. In contrast to
researchers of formal grounded theory, advocates of constructivist grounded theory recognize “multiple realities” and see knowl-
edge as situated within a particular setting or situation in an “ever-changing world” (Charmaz, 2014, p. 132).
Though grounded theory is inductive, researchers nonetheless begin with what have been called “sensitizing concepts,” topics
based on a discipline or literature review (Charmaz, 2014, p. 30), rather than an “empty head” (Dey, 1999, p. 251). However, these
concepts do not direct our inquiry. We are simply aware of them as we begin our intimate reading of data and let the data direct our
initial code construction. This phase, called “open coding,” allows us to generate numerous ideas, capturing structures and processes
as well as creating in vivo codes, topics named based on participants’ distinctive language. Open coding then moves to focused
coding, whereby researchers concentrate on those open codes with the most “analytical reach” (Charmaz, 2014). In interrogating
both open codes and focused codes, grounded theorists move to higher levels of abstractionddeveloping categoriesdto theorize
the data and address variationdhow participants might engage a process, such as recovering from a house fire, differently based on
shifting contexts and timespans (Charmaz, 2002; Stern and Kerry, 2009). This process might involve returning to the field to collect
additional data concentrating on an emerging concept, a process called “theoretical sampling” (Charmaz, 2014; Glaser and Strauss,
1967; Morse, 2007).
Throughout the phases of coding, researchers review quotations coded to the same code or category, a practice called “constant
comparison,” which, as Glaser and Strauss (1967) note, “very soon starts to generate theoretical properties of the category” (p. 106).
This not only allows for theoretical refinement but also encourages researchers to stay close to the data, not to overinterpret based on
an underdeveloped understanding of a code. As a mode of rigor, constant comparison engenders a higher level of abstraction
(Charmaz, 2014) and can be used in generic qualitative approaches as well. It is a means of precision and a way to avoid driftdlos-
ing one’s operational sense of a code over time because one has lost track of how it has been applied.
Because grounded theorists are interested in making sense of a processdunderstanding the conditional or evolving contexts in
which the process occurs or is transformeddtheir objectives go beyond practical description to instead grapple with social struc-
tures, how processes and individuals are situated, and how processes function in motion. Researchers do not simply move forward
into abstract territory; they also go backward into the data itself. This is a shift from induction to deduction as researchers “test” the
focused codes on more and more data. That is, the data, including data in the ongoing data collection, become territory that
researchers examine with burgeoning hunches. Researchers view the emerging categories provisionally and seek evidence grounded
in the data to support, refine, or retire the abstraction. They also seek negative instances and incorporate these occurrences into more
overarching constructs. This conceptual elaboration increases the theory’s credibility and reach. Researchers might also make use of
diagrams throughout analysis to develop conceptual clusters and relationships among codes as they emerge (Keane, 2022; Soulliere
et al., 2001).
In some forms of grounded theory, determining a central category or “core concept” is common (Strauss and Corbin, 2008). This
summons researchers to conceptualize what they have been hearing across participants and gradually discerning across codes and
memos and through constant comparison. As Charmaz (2014) says, a central category is one that “made explicit what I had sensed
and understood but had not conceptualized” (p. 146) (Corbin and Strauss, 2015). It takes the foreground as the other categories
become supporting entities in the background. In modified versions of grounded theory, there are several primary categories but not
necessarily a central one.
 Qualitative research methods: approaches to qualitative data analysis 309

Grounded theorists conclude their efforts when additional data confirm the properties of the categories; additional data do not
develop the categories (Dey, 2007). This theoretical saturation signals a kind of closure, though the theory will develop as others
examine it perhaps using other methods, such as surveys, scales, or other qualitative methods.
In reporting the results of a grounded theory, researchers create products that condense their identified or constructed categories,
including perhaps conditional matrices and diagrams that map categories and dimensions (Corbin and Strauss, 2015; Kennedy-
Lewis, 2014). A conditional matrix shows the variance of a category on each axis. For example, a matrix addressing survivors of
hurricanes might show perceived luck on one axisdfrom high to lowdand trying to live normally on the otherdagain from high
to low. Perceived luck refers to the extent to which survivors claim to be lucky regarding their survivor status while trying to live nor-
mally captures the degree to which survivors attempt some semblance of a daily routine. The resulting matrix and discussion would
show how and why participants fall in one of the four quadrants; it is one possible product of a study theorizing the process of
surviving a hurricane and the variation in the survivors’ experiences, but many other kinds of diagrams explicating theory are
possible.

Narrative analyses
In narrative analysis, researchers move away from analyzing situations, individuals, and events per se to instead studying the con-
structed storiesdthe narrative accountsdof these entities. By becoming a textual event, a story is “detached from the moment it
occurred and has assumed consequences of its own” (Moen, 2006; Ricoeur, 1981). The roots of narrative analysis are extensive
and have led to numerous lenses for analyzing social encounters as revealed through textual data (see Bertaux, 1981; Clandinin,
2013; Kim, 2016; Polkinghorne, 1988; Riessman, 1993). In this long-established tradition, researchers collect storied data from par-
ticipantsdepisodes that individuals present in terms of chronology and plotdin order to construct a meta-story, a higher-level
account that incorporates patterns across stories (e.g., see Sarasa, 2015). In seeing data as entry points into storied accounts,
researchers depart from more categorical ways of thinking about data and data collection (such as open-ended surveys). However,
even in highly structured interview data, which often suppress participant stories, researchers might nonetheless analyze the data
with storytelling in mind. Stories provide episodic knowledgedthey reveal what participants know without our asking them
what they knowdand typically take longer to tell than simply sharing an opinion or attitude in more “efficient” forms of data
collection, such as open-ended survey responses.
Approaches to analyzing narrative data are varied and have different foci. Analysis might focus on content (what is told), struc-
ture (how a story is constructed), or on the narrative’s performative aspect (who is the intended audience) (Riessman, 2007).
Engaging with narrative data may involve coding its components, such as story type, form, genre, tone, and purpose. More refined
coding structures, such as those outlined by Labov (1972), include: abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation, resolution,
and coda. Abstract encapsulates the reason the story is being told, orientation provides details of time and setting, complicating action
indicates an event that changed the course of action, evaluation refers to the narrator’s attitude about the event, resolution or result is
the final outcome, and coda brings the audience back to the present time. Saldaña (2021) outlines additional analytic practices,
including dramaturgical coding, motif coding, and metaphor coding. In dramaturgical analysis, we view life as performance and
individuals as characters acting out a plot with an identifiable beginning, middle, and end. Attendant codes include objectives,
conflicts, tactics, attitudes, emotions, and subtexts (see also Bogdan and Biklen, 2007). Another especially elaborate option is Thomp-
son’s Motif Index. A motif refers to particular details within a tale and may refer to a type of character, action, setting, or object
(Thompson, 1932/2022). These include mythological motifs, such as quest motifs, and might be used to assess how certain
present-day accounts are congruent with classic literary patterns, providing further insight into how individuals naturally draw
from the well of storytelling devices to make claims and describe barriers to their fulfillment.
Despite these established coding systems, Clandinin and Connelly (2000) indicate that their approach is to “find a form to rep-
resent. storied lives in storied ways, not to represent stories lives as exemplars of formal categories” (p. 141). Hence, researchers
might need to discern in the data those elements that may not align with a previously established code structure. One might also
argue that social media is changing how human beings tell stories and these fragmented forms of storytellingdtweets, blogs, and
Facebook postsdmay require a special form of coding and attention to subtext.
Narrative as chronology, a textual account imbued with plot, invites us to consider how inciting events or a character’s actions
lead to subsequent events, suggesting a causal link under particular circumstances (Elliott, 2005; Polkinghorne, 1995). Analysis
might involve developing a timeline, or an annal (Clandinin, 2013), a logical sequence underscoring the pivotal moments,
twists-and-turns, and consequences of the events. After developing a narrative account of each participant, the second level of anal-
ysis would involve the “resonant threads or patterns” discernible across transcripts (Clandinin, 2013, p. 132). In one example,
“narratives were temporally sequenced, telling of a journey from place to place through time, with key moments in the plot
common across the stories” (Goodman, 2004, p. 6). Developing this meta-story involves identifying themes, or resonant threads,
that tie together all stories. This re-storying of the stories could also use “cohering metaphors,” such as “rising from the ashes,” or
other techniques to identify and name meaningful reverberations across accounts (Ladner, 2014).
Narrative analysis strives to find a meeting ground between the nomothetic and the idiographic. That is, in re-storying, narrative
researchers look for broader themes that apply to participants across the data in addition to presenting evocative examples from
distinctive personal experience. “In these individual stories, the unique way each participant interpreted his experiences came
into view” (Goodman, 2004, p. 6). Quotations from individuals can foreground the unique encounters and language of individuals
while the re-storying elevates the individual voices to narrative themes (e.g., Poveda et al., 2004). In Ahlsen et al. ’s 2014 article on
310 Qualitative research methods: approaches to qualitative data analysis

men’s and women’s stories of chronic muscle pain, the researchers focus on a narrative account from one man and one woman, then
demonstrate how each of these illustrate the gendered difference of chronic pain evident in the rest of the participants’ stories, how
women’s stories “displayed selves that were actively trying to transcend their former identifies and life conditions” while men’s
stories “tended to display selves that were actively working to find a solution to the problem within the context of medicine” (p.
6). Researchers might also use diagrams to illustrate individual chronologies and a composite diagram to illustrate a common trajec-
tory and perhaps identifiable variations. See process mapping in Miles et al. (2020) and mapping individual narrative plots using
space, time, mind in Ryan (2007).

Phenomenologies
Phenomenology is a philosophy, a perspective, and a qualitative research tradition (Farrell, 2020). As a research tradition, it is
aimed at “opening up” our understanding of complex experiential accounts, moving beyond a simple description of participants’
opinions, attitudes, and feelings “after the fact.” A phenomenological approach is instead aimed at the “living now” (Van Manen,
2006), at how the “thing-in-itself-as-it-shows-itself in consciousness” (p. 63). In looking “through” what we normally look “at”
(Vagle, 2018), researchers engaged in phenomenology attempt to see through assumptions that have shaped our understanding
of the world (Van Manen, 2006). Phenomenology is engaged in pre-reflective experience, in how we live through encounters in
the moment such as attempting to speak a new world language or how to program in a technical, computer language. Hence,
phenomenological interviewing attempts to invoke the “living moment of immediate experience” (Van Manen, 2006, p. 59)d
something that highly structured interviews are not designed to dodrather than post-reflective theorizing, conceptualizing, and
polemics. Phenomenology is guided by the concrete, direct contact with the world, rather than an objectification of it and is focused
on the phenomenon more than on the psychological self of the individual. Various genres of phenomenology have been developed,
including transcendental phenomenology (Husserl, 1970), personalistic phenomenology (Scheler, 1970), and ontological
phenomenology (Heidegger, 1962).
Even though experiential accounts of a lived experience are not identical with the “living now” itself, we use open-ended inter-
view data as an entry point into the experience and as content that we can use for analytic reflection. These accounts can come in the
form of phenomenological interviewsdconversations designed to invite participants to walk us through an experiencedor in
written accounts provided by participants. In either case, we are interested in the experience from the “inside,” how individuals
inhabited space, how things sounded, what stood out as vivid in the moment.
In analysis, researchers take on both description and interpretation, uncovering evocative moment-by-moment experience.
However, creating standard procedures for phenomenological analysis is antithetical to the approach given by phenomenology.
Each study has its own approaches to uncovering the phenomenon, to making its “essence” apparent. Nonetheless, this chapter
will attempt to provide guidance on how a researcher might proceed to describe and interpret a phenomenon. The analytic labor
of phenomenology involves reducing the experiences of the phenomenon to its identifiable structures across individuals. Van
Manen (2006) offers different possibilities of reductive reflection: thematic reflection, linguistic reflection, etymological reflection,
conceptual reflection, exegetical reflection, and hermeneutic interview reflection (p. 312). This list gives us options in our attempts
to condense textual accounts into meaningful parallels across participants, opening up the phenomenon thematically and
linguistically.
Rather than coding, developing taxonomies, or assessing the frequencies of topics, phenomenologists might instead first mark
transcripts to identify “meaning units.” These are evocative paragraphs that bring us into the living now. We might assign titles to
these units to not only help organize them but to begin the process of condensing the data to its essential meanings. The title might
be part of the participant’s own language as a way of elevating particular evocative language. Next, a researcher might write a reflec-
tive memo on the meaning unit capturing the implications of the paragraph, then title the memo. Van Manen (2006) outlines an
intermediate step whereby the original paragraph is turned into an “anecdote,” (p. 29) with much of the same language as the orig-
inal but with unnecessary detail removed. The anecdote is intended to focus on the details of the phenomenon. A reflective memo
could then be written based on the anecdote, with an eye to reducing the datum to its phenomenological essential meanings. If
writing this memo proves challenging, the researcher might, as Van Manen suggests, write a reflective sentence of each sentence
of the original paragraph or anecdote to identify moment-by-moment significance. This invites the researcher to slow down and
think more intentionally about the experience as it is unfolding. As we move through data and write more memos, we might
also notice how participants engage time, physical settings, and other elemental structures of the phenomenon. More specifically,
we might assess meaning at the level of the transcript, paragraph, or sentence, writing memos to keep track of our reductive
reflection.
The product of a phenomenology is not theory but highly relevant description. Phenomenologists gather together percep-
tions and sensitivities across participants’ open-ended interviews and synthesize these data into a structural description of
the phenomenon. This description is less idiographic than it is summative of the common structures that hold together the
phenomenon as a distinctive unfolding of moments. Hence, we might outline a phenomenological structure, organized by
time or other common features. For example, a phenomenology of living through a hurricane might locate common moments,
embedded in time, such as incremental awareness of danger and survivors’ attempts to validate their fears by communicating
with a neighbor or stranger (For other examples, see Callister and Cox, 2006; Eddles-Hirsch, 2015; Mihas, 2019). A product of
a phenomenology might also include central featuresda list of statements about the phenomenon that allows us inside of it
 Qualitative research methods: approaches to qualitative data analysis 311

(Wertz, 2011). Some researchers might even use found poems or other artistic forms to capture the living now of the phenom-
enon as it is revealed across data.

Conclusion

Deciding on a qualitative research tradition and analytic approach depends on the research questions and the intended scope and
analytical depth of the inquiry as well as on the receiving audience for the research. Research traditions can also be blended in inno-
vative ways that fuse two or more approaches, such as using narrative inquiry to build a grounded theory (see Williams and Keady,
2012). Claiming a particular research tradition should come from attention to one’s ontological and epistemological assump-
tionsdthe amniotic fluid of the inquirydas well as from the research question itself. Ontological and epistemological consider-
ations point to what will be considered “evidence” for a given study and whether textual data represents reality or generates its
own narrative reality.
If the researcher is viewed as a reliable agent of logic (Vagle, 2021) who, with sufficient evidence, can discern an event or situ-
ation, then collecting qualitative data can sufficiently represent the reality they seek to uncover. But if one sees reality as a negotiated
space co-constructed continuously, then this perspective alters one’s stance in relation to the generated data and findings. This is
why constructivist grounded theorists make no claims to stand outside the theory; they are aware that the interviews (or other
data forms) are co-constructions, not a precise mirror of an objective reality. Narrative researchers, too, are aware that interviewees
are telling a story to the interviewer in a manner than may differ from how they perform the story to others. In phenomenology,
epistemological concerns also lead researchers to bracket their own experiences of the phenomenon and to un-learn what they
thought they knew (Vagle, 2021). Epistemological paradigms also determine, in part, the language of the analysisda constructivist
researcher might talk about “constructing” themes whereas a pragmatic researcher might discuss “identifying” them. More impor-
tantly, knowledge might be discerned as derived from direct observation (discovered in a single reality “out there”), co-constructed
with participants, or derived from a deep analytic dive into the intentionality of subject-object. Hence, one’s reporting of what one
knows, has constructed, or has found will be shaped by one’s epistemological positioning. Researchers should consider these
assumptions when embarking on analysis to not only understand how to share findings but to communicate what constitute
and what problematize them.

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