Advanced Qualitative Data Analysis

Description
This course elevates your knowledge and skills in qualitative data analysis by teaching the unique features, strengths, and limitations of four widely used qualitative designs in the social sciences. In turn, you will learn to plan, conduct, and present the findings of qualitative content analysis (Schreier, 2012), thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998), cross-case analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994), and grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) using NVivo software. The course fills a critical gap in both the scholarly literature and graduate training by bringing together the teaching of four designs and their application in NVivo. While each design taught in the course is often – if not always – taught from a theoretical perspective (its origins, ontology and epistemology) which focuses on “what” the design is, a critical shortcoming of such teaching is that it misses “how” to plan, conduct and report it. On the other hand, NVivo software workshops fail to move beyond the “point-and-click” pedagogy and omit guidance on which NVivo features to use when employing a given qualitative design. The strength of the course, thus, lies in its integration of the theoretical and applied aspects of qualitative research, using real-life examples and drawing on published qualitative studies that employed the four designs.

Objectives
At the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• To discuss the origins, epistemology and current debates of each design
• To describe how each design addresses specific research questions and yields specific results
• To implement each design’s coding and analytic procedures in NVivo
• To propose data visualisations to present each design’s findings
• To explain situations where method integration is feasible in a single study
• To argue their views about how the quality of qualitative data analysis must be appraised.

Prerequisites
As this is an advanced method and software course, participants must possess a solid foundation in qualitative analysis and be advanced NVivo users – meaning that they can teach a crash NVivo course to colleagues. Experience with other qualitative software (e.g., QDA Miner, Dedoose, Atlas.ti) does not qualify for the course.​

Schedule
The course is taught from 14:00-17:30 SGT from 29 June to 3 July 2026.

Location
This is an on-site course taught at the University of Singapore in Singapore.

Enrolment 
To enrol on the course, click here.

Fee
Early-bid (10% discount) and regular course fees are available here.

Combining courses
This course is the follow-up to Introduction to Qualitative Data Analysis, which I’ll teach the same week from 9:00 to 12:30. For further information, see the course details here.

Key readings

• Qualitative content analysis: Schreier, M. (2012). Qualitative Content Analysis in Practice. London: Sage.
• Thematic analysis: Boyatzis, R. E. (1998). Transforming Qualitative Information: Thematic Analysis and Code Development. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
• Cross-case analysis: Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
• Grounded theory: Strauss, A. L., & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory (2nd ed.). Newbury Park: Sage.