Talk on “Evaluating and Analyzing Qualitative Data” @ Mobiento/Deloitte Digital

Download the charts

If your are interested in User and/or Market Research, and you happen to live in the wider Stockholm area, I can highly recommend you check out the MeetUp-group Stockholm User Research. Smart, inspiring people and burning questions of the User Researcher’s daily bread abound, the group meets regularly to discuss a broad variety of user research-related topics. MeetUps alternate between usually smaller morning/breakfast/coffee-discussion rounds in a café/restaurant and usually larger afterwork/evening-sessions; the latter normally with two speakers and hosted by one of Stockholms thriving tech/research companies or digital agencies.

The last MeetUp was on the 30th of May 2017 and generously hosted by Mobiento/Deloitte Digital. I happened to have been approached by one of the MeetUp-group’s organizers and asked to say some words about the evaluation and analysis of qualitative research. The talk I gave was organized into three parts:

  1. The soundness of qualitative data (as opposed to quantitative data)
  2. Approaching qualitative data analysis – with a focus on computer aided content analysis
  3. How to get started with CAQDA tomorrow

For those that were at the MeetUp – and anyone else that might be interested – I thought I’d make the charts of the talk available for download here. In case there are any follow-up questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

After the talk, I have been approached for some tips on good texts on qualitative and ethnographic research as well as qualitative content analysis – a couple of texts that I find helpful for further reading:

Qualitative Research

Gilbert, Nigel (2009): Researching Social Life. 3rd edition. Los Angles: Sage Publications.

This is an excellent handbook-style reading with many shorter articles on most aspects of qualitative research. Beside other things, the books also contains a section on different (computer assisted) data analysis and coding techniques. Here’s a Google books-link.

Ethnographic Research

Campbell Galman, Sally (2007): Shane, the Lone Ethnographer. A Beginner’s Guide to Ethnography. New York: AltaMira Press.

This is a fun and fast to read 100 page short comic-style introductory text to ethnography, touching onto most aspects of ethnographic research – from entering into a research setting until writing up a report. The book also contains some tips on data collection and analysis methods. Here’s a Google books-link.

Content Analysis & Coding Techniques

Cole, Patricia (1994): Finding a path through the research maze. The Qualitative Report, 2(1), 14–18.
This is an older but still very good and short article of only a handful pages on some helpful coding techniques. Available here for download.

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