Qualitative Content Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners to the Method, Theories, Epistemology, Ontology, and Rigour

Qualitative content analysis (QCA) is a flexible method of analysis, applicable within many epistemologies and on many kinds of data. This makes it suitable as a general introduction to qualitative methods, but students and other beginners sometimes have trouble grasping the associated concepts and ways of thinking. To facilitate their first foray into this new territory, we propose a five-step process of QCA that does not presuppose any foreknowledge of concepts such as levels of abstraction or what coding and categorizing can look like in practice. In our step-by-step guide, we also depart from some staples of QCA, such as likening codes to labels and accepting topic summaries as categories, since this may hamper rather than help beginners’ understanding of the underlying principles. After a concrete how-to section, we offer a brief comparison between QCA and reflexive thematic analysis. To further the pedagogic uses of the article, we also discuss the philosophical underpinnings of the method, focusing on how to handle potential problems of establishing common ground, utterances that contain several ideas, speech acts, and contextuality.