The first step is to sift through your data and prepare it for analysis. In other words, read through all your observations and use tags to describe the key concepts in each observation. You’ll do this in the ‘Review and tag’ tab in Qualitative Insights.
As you revisit the discussions and observations from each session, you’ll get a more coherent sense of the patterns emerging from your data. It also gives you the chance to read through any parts of the session your notetakers have observed that you may have missed while moderating.
Plus, tagging has the additional benefit of being able to quantify your data later on – it is a valuable step in turning your notes into themes and eventually into insights.
Editing observations
When you’re going through your observations, it’s a good time to fix up any typos or add any additional data that you may not have had time to include during your session. You can edit your observations by clicking directly into the observation. You can also delete an observation if it isn’t useful, or star it if it’s particularly significant.
Consolidating repeating observations
If you come across observations that make a similar point, you can consolidate them to save some analysis time and reduce false positives.
You can use keyword search to quickly find observations with similar wording and decide if some of them are repeats. To consolidate two observations, you can copy the text from one observation into another, and delete the duplicates.
If you want to quantify your qualitative data and identify the recurring patterns, concepts, topics or themes that appear from your participants, it’s vital to tag (or “code”) your data. Tagging is especially useful if you are doing a more robust analysis process along the lines of thematic analysis.
Tag one or more observations
Adding tags to your observations after your sessions will give you the time and flexibility to ensure they’re as relevant and useful as possible. The more accurate and refined your tags are, the more meaningful your results will be.
You can tag individual observations by selecting them and clicking on the relevant tags, or multi-select and tag several observations at once.
You can also remove a tag from an observation by clicking the ‘x’ icon to the right of the tag’s name.
Assigning a task to an observation
If your discussion guide has tasks (i.e. predefined questions or question topics) added to it, you can assign or reassign any participant observation to that task.
Assigning tasks works the same way as tagging. You can assign a task to individual observations by selecting them and clicking on the relevant tags, or multi-select and assign a task to several observations at once. You can also remove a task from an observation by selecting ‘No task assigned’.