Library Support for Qualitative Research

• NVivo
  The most popular qualitative data analysis (QDA) software supported at Harvard Library:
  • Free download available for Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) affiliates
  • Desktop access at Lamont Library Media Lab, 3rd floor
  • Desktop access at Harvard Kennedy School Library (with HKS ID)
  • Remote desktop access for Harvard affiliates from IQSS Computer Labs. Email them at iqsslabs@harvard.edu and ask for a new lab account and remote desktop access to NVivo, or use the online request form.
  • Sign up for lab access with IQSS and use NVIvo in person at the CGIS Knafel lab.
  • Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) access available to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health affiliates

Qualitative data analysis methods should flow from, or align with, the methodological paradigm chosen for your study, whether that paradigm is interpretivist, critical, positivist, or participative in nature (or a combination of these). Some established methods include Content Analysis, Critical Analysis, Discourse Analysis, Gestalt Analysis, Grounded Theory Analysis, Interpretive Analysis, Narrative Analysis, Normative Analysis, Phenomenological Analysis, Rhetorical Analysis, and Semiotic Analysis, among others. The following resources should help you navigate your methodological options and put into practice methods for coding, themeing, interpreting, and presenting your data.

• Synthesizing Insights From Data: Coding in Action
  This 3-minute clip from LinkedIn Learning demonstrates coding in action, to give you a taste of what coding is. Caveat: Although this segment regards user experience data, rather than data collected through more scholarly, social science research, the mechanics of coding exhibited are generally applicable (of course, the intellectual approaches will vary according to your theoretical paradigm and methodological approach).
   
• Sage Research Methods 
  The ultimate research methods library, this online database has more than 1000 books, reference works, journal articles, case studies, and instructional videos by world-leading academics from across the social sciences.
  • Users can browse content by topic, discipline, or format type (reference works, book chapters, definitions, etc.). SRM offers several research tools as well: a methods map, user-created reading lists, a project planner, and advice on choosing statistical tests.
     
• Abductive Coding: Theory Building and Qualitative (Re)Analysis by Vila-Henninger, et al. The authors recommend an abductive approach to guide qualitative researchers who are oriented towards theory-building. They outline a set of tactics for abductive analysis, including the generation of an abductive codebook, abductive data reduction through code equations, and in-depth abductive qualitative analysis.
   
• Analyzing and Interpreting Qualitative Research: After the Interview by Charles F. Vanover, Paul A. Mihas, and Johnny Saldana (Editors) Providing insight into the wide range of approaches available to the qualitative researcher and covering all steps in the research process, the authors utilize a consistent chapter structure that provides novice and seasoned researchers with pragmatic, "how-to" strategies. Each chapter author introduces the method, uses one of their own research projects as a case study of the method described, shows how the specific analytic method can be used in other types of studies, and concludes with three questions/activities to prompt class discussion or personal study. 
   
• "Analyzing Qualitative Data." Theory Into Practice 39, no. 3 (2000): 146-54 by Margaret D. LeCompte This article walks readers though rules for unbiased data analysis and provides guidance for getting organized, finding items, creating stable sets of items, creating patterns, assembling structures, and conducting data validity checks.
   
• "Coding is Not a Dirty Word" in Chapter 1 (pp. 1–30) of Enhancing Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research with Technology by Shalin Hai-Jew (Editor) Current discourses in qualitative research, especially those situated in postmodernism, represent coding and the technology that assists with coding as reductive, lacking complexity, and detached from theory. In this chapter, the author presents a counter-narrative to this dominant discourse in qualitative research. The author argues that coding is not necessarily devoid of theory, nor does the use of software for data management and analysis automatically render scholarship theoretically lightweight or barren. A lack of deep analytical insight is a consequence not of software but of epistemology. Using examples informed by interpretive and critical approaches, the author demonstrates how NVivo can provide an effective tool for data management and analysis. The author also highlights ideas for critical and deconstructive approaches in qualitative inquiry while using NVivo. By troubling the positivist discourse of coding, the author seeks to create dialogic spaces that integrate theory with technology-driven data management and analysis, while maintaining the depth and rigor of qualitative research. 
   
• The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers by Johnny Saldana An in-depth guide to the multiple approaches available for coding qualitative data. Clear, practical and authoritative, the book profiles 32 coding methods that can be applied to a range of research genres from grounded theory to phenomenology to narrative inquiry. For each approach, Saldaña discusses the methods, origins, a description of the method, practical applications, and a clearly illustrated example with analytic follow-up. Essential reading across the social sciences.
   
• Flexible Coding of In-depth Interviews: A Twenty-first-century Approach by Nicole M. Deterding and Mary C. Waters
  The authors suggest steps in data organization and analysis to better utilize qualitative data analysis technologies and support rigorous, transparent, and flexible analysis of in-depth interview data.
   
• From the Editors: What Grounded Theory is Not by Roy Suddaby
  Walks readers through common misconceptions that hinder grounded theory studies, reinforcing the two key concepts of the grounded theory approach: (1) constant comparison of data gathered throughout the data collection process and (2) the determination of which kinds of data to sample in succession based on emergent themes (i.e., "theoretical sampling").
   
• “Good enough” methods for life-story analysis, by Wendy Luttrell. In Quinn N. (Ed.), Finding culture in talk (pp. 243–268).
  Demonstrates for researchers of culture and consciousness who use narrative how to concretely document reflexive processes in terms of where, how and why particular decisions are made at particular stages of the research process. 
   
• The Ethnographic Interview by James P. Spradley “Spradley wrote this book for the professional and student who have never done ethnographic fieldwork (p. 231) and for the professional ethnographer who is interested in adapting the author’s procedures (p. iv) ... Steps 6 and 8 explain lucidly how to construct a domain and a taxonomic analysis” (excerpted from book review by James D. Sexton, 1980). See also: Presentation slides on coding and themeing your data, derived from Saldana, Spradley, and LeCompte
  Click to request access.
   
• Qualitative Data Analysis by Matthew B. Miles; A. Michael Huberman A practical sourcebook for researchers who make use of qualitative data, presenting the current state of the craft in the design, testing, and use of qualitative analysis methods. Strong emphasis is placed on data displays matrices and networks that go beyond ordinary narrative text. Each method of data display and analysis is described and illustrated.
   
• "A Survey of Qualitative Data Analytic Methods" in Chapter 4 (pp. 89–138) of Fundamentals of Qualitative Research by Johnny Saldana Provides an in-depth introduction to coding as a heuristic, particularly focusing on process coding, in vivo coding, descriptive coding, values coding, dramaturgical coding, and versus coding. Includes advice on writing analytic memos, developing categories, and themeing data. 
   
• "Thematic Networks: An Analytic Tool for Qualitative Research." Qualitative Research : QR, 1(3), 385–405 by Jennifer Attride-Stirling
  Details a technique for conducting thematic analysis of qualitative material, presenting a step-by-step guide of the analytic process, with the aid of an empirical example. The analytic method presented employs established, well-known techniques; the article proposes that thematic analyses can be usefully aided by and presented as thematic networks.
   
• Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology by Virginia Braun and Victoria Clark Walks readers through the process of reflexive thematic analysis, step by step. The method may be adapted in fields outside of psychology as relevant. Pair this with One Size Fits All? What Counts as Quality Practice in Reflexive Thematic Analysis? by Virginia Braun and Victoria Clark

Data visualization can be employed formatively, to aid your data analysis, or summatively, to present your findings. Many qualitative data analysis (QDA) software platforms, such as NVivo, feature search functionality and data visualization options within them to aid data analysis during the formative stages of your project.

For expert assistance creating data visualizations to present your research, Harvard Library offers Visualization Support. Get help and training with data visualization design and tools—such as Tableau—for the Harvard community. Workshops and one-on-one consultations are also available.

The quality of your data analysis depends on how you situate what you learn within a wider body of knowledge. Consider the following advice:

A good literature review has many obvious virtues. It enables the investigator to define problems and assess data. It provides the concepts on which percepts depend. But the literature review has a special importance for the qualitative researcher. This consists of its ability to sharpen his or her capacity for surprise (Lazarsfeld, 1972b). The investigator who is well versed in the literature now has a set of expectations the data can defy. Counterexpectational data are conspicuous, readable, and highly provocative data. They signal the existence of unfulfilled theoretical assumptions, and these are, as Kuhn (1962) has noted, the very origins of intellectual innovation. A thorough review of the literature is, to this extent, a way to manufacture distance. It is a way to let the data of one's research project take issue with the theory of one's field.

- McCracken, G. (1988), The Long Interview, Sage: Newbury Park, CA, p. 31

Once you have coalesced around a theory, realize that a theory should reveal rather than color your discoveries. Allow your data to guide you to what's most suitable. Grounded theory researchers may develop their own theory where current theories fail to provide insight. This guide on Theoretical Models from Alfaisal University Library provides a helpful overview on using theory.

If you'd like to supplement what you learned about relevant theories through your coursework and literature review, try these sources:

• Annual Reviews 
  Review articles sum up the latest research in many fields, including social sciences, biomedicine, life sciences, and physical sciences. These are timely collections of critical reviews written by leading scientists.
   
• HOLLIS - search for resources on theories in your field 
  Modify this example search by entering the name of your field in place of "your discipline," then hit search.
   
• Oxford Bibliographies 
  Written and reviewed by academic experts, every article in this database is an authoritative guide to the current scholarship in a variety of fields, containing original commentary and annotations.
   
• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) 
  Indexes dissertations and masters' theses from most North American graduate schools as well as some European universities. Provides full text for most indexed dissertations from 1990-present.
   
• Very Short Introductions 
  Launched by Oxford University Press in 1995, Very Short Introductions offer concise introductions to a diverse range of subjects from Climate to Consciousness, Game Theory to Ancient Warfare, Privacy to Islamic History, Economics to Literary Theory.