Organizing and Analyzing Qualitative Data

Overview

Organizing qualitative data is an important step in the research process. Data from open-response survey questions, interviews, focus groups, observations, or content analysis can be complex and unstructured. Before beginning, it is important to reflect on the overall purpose or scope of your research project. Qualitative data provides a wealth of insight into the thoughts and perceptions of the population(s) you are examining, so organization and analysis data should be completed with integrity to ensure accuracy and make sure that you address your intended objectives.

Organizing Your Data

There are several platforms such as nVivo, ATLAS.ti, and Quirkos to support qualitative analysis. However, most districts and schools have access to spreadsheet applications such as Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel.

The following steps can be taken to organize data within a spreadsheet:

• Create a spreadsheet and add respondent ID in the first column; this will help track responses specific to each person, maintain validity, and ensure confidentiality of responses.

• Add each interview/focus group/survey question in a different column across the spreadsheet.

• Import corresponding responses to each question, for each respondent.

• Document your procedures as you go. Make sure to note whether you exclude any data such as incomplete responses or transcription content that your service did not accurately capture.

Once you have organized your qualitative data, you are ready for analysis. If you are taking an inductive approach, you will allow the data to determine codes and themes as you read. If you are taking a deductive approach, you will have preconceived codes or themes in mind based on your own knowledge of the context. 

There is no right or wrong way to organize and analyze your qualitative data. We describe two approaches that can be used and offer the following spreadsheet to support this work.

Analysis Approach #1: Organize into Themes

1. Read through the individual responses, paying careful attention to the frequency and commonalities that may be emerging. Make sure to document your thinking as you go.

2. Organize responses into broad themes and sub-themes. As you are developing broad themes, keep the survey/interview/focus group question in mind. Add each broad theme to the spreadsheet as a new column.

3. Begin refining broad themes to identify sub themes. For example, if you found a broad theme of improved teaching practices, two sub-themes could be fun learning and student collaboration. If you find sub-themes, add them to the already existing broad theme categories (one for each column).

4. Review responses, themes, and sub-themes again to examine if there are some that can be combined or even split to create new themes.

5. By noting each theme using the number one (1) in your spreadsheet, you can later add up the columns to examine the frequency with which each theme or sub-theme emerged.

Analysis Approach #2: Organize with Codes and then Themes

1. Determine whether you are going to begin with a pre-existing list of codes or keywords (deductive approach), look for emerging codes (inductive approach), or both.

2. As you read each response, type the code (or codes) that may apply into the Codes column associated with each survey/interview/focus group question. Especially in the beginning, use the notes column to document why you applied each code.

3. When you finish analyzing each question, review your codes and group them into themes.

4. Reread the responses and note the associated theme(s) in the Themes column on the spreadsheet while adding additional notes to document your thinking.

5. After you finish, determine the frequency with which you applied each code or theme. You could then decide to consolidate again to identify patterns or even group codes/themes into broader categories to better explain your findings.