Quantitative Analysis Approaches to Qualitative Data : Why , When And

In many research studies involving the use of participatory tools, much of the information gathered is of a qualitative nature. Some of this will contribute to addressing specific research questions, while other parts provide a general understanding of peoples’ livelihoods and constraints. The aim of this paper is to focus on the former. The paper concentrates on some quantitative analysis approaches that can be applied to qualitative data. A major objective is to demonstrate how qualitative information gathered during PRA work can be analysed to provide conclusions that are applicable to a wider target population. Appropriate sampling is of course essential for this purpose, and it will be assumed in what follows that any sampling issues have been satisfactorily addressed to allow generalization of results from the data analysis to be meaningful.