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 poi

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...

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

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 th

A key principle of the Five-Level QDA(R) method is that analytic strategies drive software tactics. This ensures that software use is...

“Translation” is the key concept in our Five-Level QDA method, so it’s important to know what it means. The word just showed up in the...

This blog post is a response to Steve Wright’s reaction to this comment I made on Twitter on April 27th 2017: “There are no basic or advanced #CAQDAS features, but straightforward or more sophisticated uses of tools appropriate for different tasks” Thanks Steve for starting this conversation – it’s really important to debate these issues, and fun too! See Steve's comments here The sentiment behind the Twitter post underlies the Five-Level QDA® method that Nick Woolf and I h

Nick emphasized in his first blog post that Five-Level QDA is not a new or different way of doing qualitative data analysis but a method of teaching how experienced CAQDAS users unconsciously harness their chosen software. This is a critical point that I want to bring to life by sharing an eye-opening conversation with Dr. Michelle Salmona of the Institute for Mixed Methods Research . Nick and I recently went to the 12th International Congress for Qualitative Inquiry at Unive

You may be wondering what Five-Level QDA is all about. Perhaps you’re thinking it’s a new qualitative data analysis (QDA) approach, like...