The Most Common Considerations When Working With Qualitative Data (Essay Sample)

Working with Qualitative Data Name Institution Affiliation Working with Qualitative Data Qualitative research creates enormous text-based data, regardless of the size of the project. Unlike quantitative methodology whose data fit into rows and columns in analytics tools, qualitative data requires more operations to yield meaningful results. Fortunately, advancement in technology has led to the development of software tools that can manage text-based data efficiently. However, transforming such data into sensible information using software application is not a straight-forward process. The researcher has to follow series of steps to generate the required outcome from the qualitative data, based on the project requirements. To begin with, the researcher should develop a standard operating procedure for manipulating the data to create meaningful evidence. In qualitative methodology, the procedure typically encompasses transcribing text-based data into the electronic form and coding the data. Coding involves organizing, sorting, and labeling the textual data to simplify synthesize and analysis process (Chowdhury, 2015). Qualitative data coding acts as the bridge between data collection and interpretation. The coding process is based on a storyline that the researcher wants to convey to the audience. Once the researcher completes data coding process, the subsequent steps involve converting the unstructured data to the structured schema, which can easily be analyzed by quantitative approaches. The conversion process can be done by transferring the data to spreadsheet or data ...