Making sense of qualitative data analysis: an introduction with illustrations from DIPEx (personal experiences of health and illness)

OBJECTIVES: This paper outlines an approach to analysing qualitative textual data from interviews and discusses how to ensure analytic procedures are appropriately rigorous. OVERVIEW: Qualitative data analysis should begin at an early stage in data collection and be highly systematic. It is important to identify issues that emerge during the data collection and analysis as well as those that the researcher may have anticipated (from reading or experience). Analysis is very time-consuming, but careful sampling, the collection of rich material and analytic depth mean that a relatively small number of cases can generate insights that apply well beyond the confines of the study. One particular approach to thematic…