Blog Posts

On the 17th March I was invited to give a keynote at the MAXDAYS 2026 Europe virtual conference. I was grateful for the opportunity to talk about the relationship between methodology and technology, which is something I’ve spent much of my career thinking about . Here's what I said. You can also watch the recording here. Image Source: Bart Fish & Power Tools of AI / https://betterimagesofai.org / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ To get straight to the point,

Are you struggling to align your methodology with your software? Discover how to bridge the gap between Braun & Clarke’s RTA phases and MAXQDA’s visual tools. From Creative Coding to MAXMaps, we show you how to maintain rigor without losing the "reflexive" heart of your research.

Dr Pat Bazeley is a renowned qualitative and mixed-methods methodologist with several decades experience in using and teaching qualitative software, and dozens of publications on the topic. She gave the keynote at the MAXQDA International Conference in February 2019. Here she reviews our textbook: Qualitative Analysis using MAXQDA: The Five-Level QDA Method. Anyone who has tried it will tell you that documenting software is a nightmare, like aiming to shoot a moving target. W

On 17th October 2018 I had the privilege of opening the Digital Tools day at the World Conference on Qualitative Research (#WCQR2018) in Lisbon, Portugal. My talk was called “Mindsets for harnessing digital tools in qualitative and mixed-methods analysis: The Five-Level QDA method”. My main message was that we need to be more explicit about the way we think about the role of digital tools in the research process and our engagement with them. View the presentation slides on Sl

Analytic strategies come before software tactics: that’s the Five-Level QDA approach. But there are times when software tactics can usefully inform analytic strategies. This leads to serendipitous exploration, and fits well with the emergent spirit of qualitative research. When analytic strategies drive software tactics the use of the software is meaningful – focused on the needs of the research rather than the capabilities of the program. But many CAQDAS advocates say that