ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the basic principles for conducting a qualitative study. Qualitative data are non-numeric—words, images, objects, or sounds that convey or contain meaning. Qualitative methods generally involve three phases: observation, recording, and systematic analysis to derive patterns. Qualitative research has its own standards of rigor: credibility, transferability, and dependability. The qualitative methods commonly used in technical communication research are interviews, focus groups, usability tests, and document analyses. Analyzing qualitative data consists of coding the data, categorizing the codes, and drawing models from the emergent categories and their relationships.
