Blog Posts

If you're on Twitter you've likely seen this image doing the rounds in recent weeks... And you've likely also seen many responses that indicate a resonance with this suggested contrast between qualitative and quantitative research - and perhaps you've been titillated by the image, smiled, laughed or thought "yeah", and maybe you re-tweeted or commented. After all...qualitative researchers know well the creativity and 'messiness' involved in research and analysis that the imag

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

A key principle of the Five-Level QDA(R) method is that analytic strategies drive software tactics. This ensures that software use is always focused on the objectives of the study and is appropriate to the particular methodological context. But what happens when software tactics drive analytic strategies? Here is the most extreme example I’ve observed. In my next post I’ll discuss when software tactics can usefully inform analytic strategies without actually driving the proc