A GUIDE FOR QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS IN SOCIAL SCIENCES

Abstract

Ontological assumptions that social reality is standardized and predictable, or that it is constantly reconstructed through human interactions, affect the research topics choice of the researchers, how they formulate questions, and how they conduct research. The researcher's ontological perspective is reflected in these epistemological inquiries, which indicate how to obtain information about the nature of reality. These philosophical approaches serve as instruments for framing how the research process should progress, from the type of research questions to how data will be acquired and analyzed to data interpretation and provide a viewpoint on the social world. This research focuses on qualitative data analysis, which is one of the most difficult processes in qualitative research methodologies that aim to comprehend and interpret the social world in its natural setting and is critical to the research's success. It aims to develop a guide that will assist novice researchers who desire to conduct qualitative data analysis. To achieve this aim, the steps of qualitative data analysis are explained. Content analysis and thematic analysis which are the basic qualitative data analysis methodologies are described within the context of the disciplines on which they are founded. Qualitative data analysis methodologies, which are most used in the field of social sciences, are clarified by stressing the distinctions between the fundamental ideas.