ABSTRACT
This chapter goes into more detail about how you analyze qualitative data once you’ve gathered it. Focusing on textual analysis and interviews/focus groups, we discuss how you determine what to look for, and how to choose between a tightly controlled and structured approach and a loose, open one. It’s probably not a shock that we suggest something in between, a “managed” approach that draws from existing research and your research questions rather than hoping that the data will inherently guide you (or that it will do so without bias). In each case we suggest that you look at what might be “silent” or “erased” material rather than only what you see. Finally, we give you some hints about how to make this process easier for yourself as well in the way you go about it and by getting some help from a computer program.
