A Decision-Making Heuristic for the Analysis of Unstructured Qualitative Data

Abstract

Based on the guidelines suggested by Côté, Salmela, Baria, and Russell in 1993, this article provides a decision-making heuristic addendum to facilitate the organization and interpretation of unstructured qualitative data. At each decision point of the qualitative analysis, criteria are suggested to explore the phenomenon of issue and guide the coding process. The objectives of these methodological procedures are to facilitate the task of organizing and interpreting large bodies of qualitative data and to enhance the reliability and validity of the coding of this inductive process.