Interview analysis with cognitive maps.

Interviews offer an important source for capturing subjective descriptions of reasoning under complex real-world conditions.However, existing methods of interview analysis are not designed to systematically trace reasoning processes.Cognitive mapping addresses this gap by providing a structured methodology for identifying and visualizing how individuals reason.Cognitive mapping allows for a new way of coding interviews into the main concepts of reasoning-beliefs, inferences (connections between beliefs), and conclusions or decisions.Substantively, this makes visible the empirically grounded reasoning steps that lead to behavioral outcomes-which can subsequently be compared with the assumptions of existing theories.Methodologically, cognitive maps capture relationships between concepts.This enriches existing qualitative methods by providing systematic approaches to key goals of qualitative analysis-such as understanding how narratives are constructed, identifying links between recurring themes, mapping subjective experiences, examining patterns of conversational turn-taking, and developing theories grounded in data.