Organizing Data in Qualitative and Quantitative Studies

¶ … Tracking Data In research, data and information collected needs to be organized in a manner that makes sense for the researcher at the analysis and report writing stages. Data can be organized depending on the data analysis objectives of the researcher. The researcher would organize qualitative data differently than a survey or quantitative data.

It is through data organization that the researcher, at times, would make sense of the data at hand and would either confirm or change the direction or focus of the data analyses (while keeping in mind that any changes should still be aligned with the study's objectives). Organizing data collected using qualitative methods require a different kind of organization or approach to data analysis.

Qualitative data are made up of text relevant to the study at hand, and may be in the form of a key word, phrase, sentence, or passage from a specific discussion into the topic. Qualitative data can be organized using software such as Nvivo, wherein the researcher is assisted by the computer program in identifying themes and categories that are recurring or salient in texts recorded/documented during data collection.

In the absence of a computer program to assist in the categorization and grouping of qualitative data, the researcher could use "manual" data analysis techniques for qualitative data commonly used in research. Data can be analyzed using a thematic analysis approach, wherein salient and/or recurring themes are analyzed and become the anchor themes from which the analysis and discussion of the study will be based. Another approach would be categorization or grouping of salient and/or recurring topics mentioned during discussions about the issue/research subject at hand.

Choosing the qualitative data analysis technique or approach would largely depend on the objectives and goal of the study. Organizing data from quantitative data collection methods requires the use of data analysis programs (software programs), simply because quantitative data can be so massive that it is not possible to organize them "manually" or case by case as one would do in qualitative data analysis. Using the quantitative approach, data is organized based on specific pre-identified groupings relevant to the data analysis and thesis of the researcher.

Organization of data could also be based on recurring data points, as quantitative research is more focused on the frequency or repeated occurrence of a data point throughout the chosen sample group. Recurring or repeatedly occurring data points are then grouped and analyzed based on the frequency of occurrence, and this in turn will be related to the objectives of the research. Tracking data in both qualitative and quantitative studies are done differently.

In qualitative studies, tracking data is done to gain more insights about a researcher's discovery or emergent theme from the data collected. In quantitative studies, tracking.