Qualitative Data Analysis using Excel

A two-hour Webinar

7th March 2024

Presented by: Dr Stephen Gourlay

This webinar is about using Excel as a means of analysing the content of free-flowing text typical of much research in the social sciences, as well as applied and policy related research.

The focus will be on the data-driven approach to analysis where categories are largely developed from the source materials. These approaches have been called framework analysis, template analysis, thematic analysis, and qualitative content analysis. In this webinar a hybrid of several of these approaches will be addressed.

This data-driven approach has been developed over a decade or more of working towards an effective way to introduce new researchers to this kind of text analysis. Guiding principles are that different activities should be described as clearly as possible, and that analysts will have the means to document their decisions clearly.

Dedicated software for these kinds of analysis typically involves a steep learning curve. Excel, on the other hand, provides sufficient functionality to perform many key analysis tasks without the need to use the program’s complex tools. In future a researcher should be able to translate the techniques and procedures discussed in this webinar into steps for using dedicated software.

This webinar will be relevant to anyone who has to systematically analyse and summarize document contents. This includes researchers who want to analyse a set of interview transcripts or perform a systematic review of literature, teachers marking student essays and reports, and other professionals who need to synthesize information from several sources.

Webinar Outline

Preparing for analysis

  • Acquiring the source materials for Excel – preparing the transcript or document for inserting into a spreadsheet.
  • identifying relevant document information – i.e. the equivalent of bibliographic data, but for interview transcripts or other documents.
  • reviewing data needs – revisiting project design decisions relating to specific aims, research questions, and data generation activities

Working with the source materials

  • becoming familiar with the materials – reading and annotating documents in the light of specific data needs.
  • developing, describing, and documenting
  • data categories – working with familiarization notes to describe and refine analysis categories and begin to document their inter-relationships.
  • marking up and categorizing the data – identifying and labelling segments of the source materials with the data category names or labels (codes)

Data matrix construction

  • extracting data from the source materials – creating data matrices to facilitate identification and exploration of patterns in the data.
  • creating and using data matrices to analyse the data – using the data to summarize, compare and contrast and answer your research questions.

This webinar delivers practical useful information which can be put to immediate use. It is relevant to academics and students from most Faculties, Departments and Schools.

The webinar will be held on 7 March 2024 from 14:00-16:00 (GMT) using Zoom. The Zoom Room will open at 13:45 (GMT) and the event will begin promptly).

The cost of attending the webinar is £40 and to book a place, please see:
https://shop.academic-conferences.org/?ec_store=webinars  

All enquiries about the Webinar should be sent to dan.remenyi@academic-publishing.org

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