Qualitative data analysis

From Dar

Emergent coding analysis

Stakes Countenance model of evaluation

See also

Hughes, J "The Evolution of evaluation theory" http://www.evaluate-europe.net/eval3/Modelsandtheories/

qualitative or quantitative?

I don't think that quantitative and qualitative need to be seen as two distinct types, indeed they nearly always need to be understood through a mixture of both ways of looking at reality. Both numbers and language are nothing but useful approximations which reflect only a fraction of the full reality. A set of quantitative data might need to be checked by taking a few instances and examining their quality. A set of qualitative data can reveal further insights through coding analysis which may involve counting instances. Indeed it is at the point where incremental small quantitatve changes suddenly turn into a large qualitative change that action research may be most effective in helping to understand roughly where that tipping point is located and how to bring it about.