By default, qualitative analysis often means presenting common themes and supporting them with representative quotes from participants.

This is a great starting point, but typically fails to capture the true complexity of the data. More importantly, this simplistic strategy can provide weak support for your argument.

Pat Bazeley, a qualitative and mixed methods data analysis expert in Australia, believes we can do much better.

In her paper “Analysing Qualitative Data: More Than ‘Identifying Themes’‘” Bazeley suggests using theme analysis as a starting point for more complete modeling and theory building.

To begin, says Bazeley, we should “describe, compare, and relate” our data. This means outlining the characteristics of the data, then describing how people are addressing certain themes. Who is talking about this? Who isn’t? Read more »

Jer Thorp gives a great talk at TEDxVancouver about looking at data in a human context.

Big data is big business. But as I’ve written about before, you’re missing the full story without humanizing your data in a historical context.

I’ve been working as a remote employee for almost a year now.

I wasn’t sure how I would handle the transition to distance work, but it has worked out quite well.  In many ways, I now feel more efficient and focused than I was working in the main office.

Along the way, I’ve learned some tricks to help remain a productive worker and a valuable teammate.

If you’re a distance worker, here are a few tips to keep in mind: Read more »

After a couple months of planning and design, we recently rolled out our new Idea Works website. I wanted to take a moment to explain our goals with the new site and a little about the process we took for the refresh.

The previous version of our site was up since 2008. Our technology, product offerings, and personnel have changed quite a bit since then. We needed a new web presence to better communicate what we do, and more importantly, who we are.

More than anything, we wanted to do a better job conveying our personality through the site. Read more »

We work with data — LOTS of it. But all too often before we can start the analysis, these data must first find their way into Microsoft Excel to be cleaned up, rearranged or reformatted.

As such I wanted to pass along a few time-saving tips I use to manipulate data in Excel and get it ready for analysis. This will be part one of a three part series on working with your data in Excel. Read more »