Blog Posts

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 hav

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 Univer

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 discourse analysis, grounded theory or thematic analysis. It’s not. Here in a nutshell is what it’s all about. TOOLS AND MINDSETS Those of us who do QDA, whatever approach we use, all have to choose how to go about it – how to get the thoughts we have when we read data out of our heads and on to … what? Paper, a whiteboard, a set of index ca