Ways of Doing Qualitative Content Analysis: Disentangling Terms and Terminologies

Abstract

In the discussion of qualitative content analysis different renderings of the method are considered, such as structured-thematic, evaluating, scaling, summary, or typological qualitative content analysis. There has been little discussion, however, of how these versions relate to each other. The present contribution sets out to describe the different renderings and to compare them to each other. This results in two basic versions of the method: structured qualitative content analysis and qualitative content analysis by extraction. The other forms of qualitative content analysis that are mentioned in the literature are reconstructed not as discrete versions of the method, but as variations on specific steps in the course of structured qualitative content analysis. The method lends itself to additional variations which are presented as part of a tool box for qualitative content analysis.

URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1401185