Analysis in Qualitative Research: Identifying and Tracking Webs of Meaning

This article shows that description and interpretation are foundational to analysis in qualitative research. Both informants and researchers engage in them. Through case examples, I show procedures of analysis when researchers first construct descriptions and then do interpretations. When researchers do this, they then can identify the many connections within the texts and the multiple connections outside of the texts. Researchers’ subjective reactions are part of these webs of connections.

Credible interpretations of informants’ accounts require that researchers have a broad view of these webs of connections and deal with each connecting piece one at a time, progressively and systematically. Researchers gradually become aware of the whole, even as they have some idea of its components at the onset of their descriptions. Case examples clarify these abstract principles.