
The method analyzes content from many sources, including field observations, interviews, and surveys (Joss Elson & Hammack, 2021).

The process is often focused on achieving various predefined objectives, such as identifying the intention or focus of communication, revealing international differences in communication, and identifying visible patterns.Īs the name suggests, narrative analysis is a qualitative data analysis method that involves listening to verbal narratives and analyzing their content to derive meaning. Once the data is broken down into manageable categories, it becomes easy to analyze or look for patterns or themes. The researcher would then make inferences on the message in the article, writer, culture, or even the time it was written.įor a researcher to analyze data using content analysis, the text is first coded to break it down into manageable categories. For instance, a researcher can evaluate the words and phrases used in a news article in search of partiality or bias. The researchers use the technique to quantify and analyze the presence of certain words, themes, or concepts of interest to understand their meanings and relationships (Salvi, 2019). The method is used to ascertain the occurrence of certain words, themes, and concepts within a given qualitative data. Content analysis is most effective for analyzing interview responses and often depends on the research question.

It categorizes behavioural or verbal data to summarize, classify, and tabulate it (Salvi, 2019). Two of the most common qualitative data analysis methods are content analysis and narrative analysis.Ĭontent analysis is one of the most common qualitative data analysis techniques.

Qualitative data analysis involves examining, identifying, and interpreting themes concerning the research question (Joss Elson & Perry, 2019). Unlike numerical data that measure differences between variables and their relationships, qualitative data focus on exploring and describing the collected data. Qualitative data often comes in notes, interview transcripts, concepts, ideas, video recordings, and text documents. Qualitative data is a blanket term referring to non-numerical data or data that cannot be measured using a fixed scale.
