I have never been given a qualitative paper during my university. I have had thoughts and have been interested in working on one.
I am aware that some of the questions are generated by the study members themselves.
But how is that presented? What is the goal if not scientific, experimental?
Are there softwares respected or known to academia that aid with the process of a qualitative study?
Thanks!
(Edit: I am a clinical psychology student)
In: 2
Try to objectively quantify the data as much as possible, then use normal data analysis. That is easiest at the data gathering stages, by using Likert scales for example.
First off: qualitative can sometimes mean different things.
It’s sometimes used to mean data about subjective qualities. This can be quantified, eg. “”how happy do you feel on a scale of 1-5?” You can then do stats with the data.
The other kind of qualitative data is specifically data you *can’t* do stats on. That might be because the volume of responses is too low, because the data itself can’t be quantified and/or because numbers aren’t right to meet the objectives of your study.
For example, imagine you come across a person with a novel psychological condition. Your study will likely be a qualitative description.
This second meaning is the more common in my experience, but ymmv.
Methodologies and good practice for qualitative research probably vary a bit between different fields, and definitely different depending, what kind of research you’re doing and your research objectives. For example, in my field of market research there’ll be a big different in how you analyse responses to depth-interviews about business management and videos of children playing with toys.
It may be possible to create a layer of quantitative metadata by using cognitive services (e.g. Azure) on your qualitative data to perform sentiment analysis and extract new insights.
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