Managing mountains of words in qualitative research projects can be exhaustive tasks. Unfortunately, there are no short cuts for planning, organizing, collecting, managing, storing, retrieving, analyzing, and writing about qualitative data. No matter how large or small the project, the qualitative research creates mountains of words. Even a small qualitative project easily generates thousands of words. Major ethnographic projects easily generate millions of words. Successfully recent advances in computer technology and software have made it possible to manage these mountains of words more efficiently. (Johnson, Dulap, & Benoit, 2010)
An organized program of research is important for building a body of knowledge related to the phenomena explained by a particular conceptual model. Volumes of data are gathered during a qualitative study. (Burns, Gray, & Grove, 2014) As a result, the researcher must develop means of storing the data in an organized manner. The technological advances for organizing, storing and retrieving data can help in this regard. Computers can promote creativity, facilitate documentation without the researcher loosing touch with the data, and support researcher access to data being analyzed as a team. (Burns, Gray, & Grove, 2014) Unlike quantitative research, qualitative research is far less structured and cannot be easily converted into numbers that can be analyzed by statistical programs such as: SAS, SPSS, or STATA. (Johnson, Dulap& Benoit, 2010)
The Center for Evaluation and Research (CER) of U.C. Davis gave these strategies for managing, reducing and organizing qualitative data:
- Check your data to make sure everything is together and accurate.
- Add an identification code to each respondent or interview; create a system of ordering before you begin.
- Prepare data for analysis and make a summary.
- Make a copy of all your data, one copy to work from and another for safekeeping.
- Keep track of the source of information and identify the source of all the data, such as by individual, site and date.
- Sort data and create files.
- Create and save a file based on the parameters that you decide on.
- Leave wide margins so you have space to jot down labels, codes and notes.
- Use abbreviations or symbols (codes) to label key themes, ideas, concepts, etc.
- Organize, combine, and label categories to create files (or Word document) for each major category.
- When cutting and sorting, keep track of the source of your data, so you can make sense of the words in their context.
- Write down your data analysis choices (in essence, providing a "methods" section). If others understand how you came to your conclusions, your results will be more credible. (CER, 2013)