ABSTRACT
For qualitative data to become meaningful, a researcher needs to sift through it and identify issues of importance to the research project. Qualitative data analysis reflects the close relationship between data and theory in qualitative research. There are no hard and fast ‘rules’ for how qualitative data should be analysed. Rice and Ezzy argue that 'narrative analysis is distinguished from other forms of qualitative data analysis by its attention to the structure of the narrative as a whole'. Attempting to conduct an iterative/thematic analysis and a discourse analysis on the same data in the same project would be complex in terms of the language and ideas available to the researcher, their capacity to draw conclusions and problems associated with writing up the results. An issue that is often debated among researchers who use an iterative/thematic approach to analysing qualitative data is how to avoid reaffirming one's own assumptions/biases.
