(Part 2 of 5 from the series: 5 Steps to Mastering Qualitative Data Analysis)
Once your data are collected, organized, formatted correctly and imported into Qualrus it’s time to explore.
In the left pane (Project overview) of the main Qualrus window, click the “+” sign next to “Sources”. This will reveal the list of every source associated with your project. Alternately, the drop-down menu immediately above the left pane displays this information as well.
Double-click a particular source to open it in the center pane. You can open multiple sources at once; each source shows up as a separate tab in the main window.
Now, open up all your sources and start reading. Your goal is to get a sense of the data as a whole.
As a designer in search of the perfect user experience, I’m used to employing quantitative measures to capture user patterns and preferences. Information about popular links, click-thru rates, average time spent on particular pages, traffic sources and browser specs (usually collected by Google Analytics) give me a sense of what our users are doing and how they do it.