(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.

Taking an objective look

You probably collected your data over a few days, weeks or even months. Now is your chance to take a step back, get in an objective mind-set and see the forest through the trees.

Keep a pen and paper handy and start jotting down major themes you run across as you read. It’s okay to generalize at this point. You’ll get more specific when we start coding in Phase 3.

You may be tempted to skip this step, but skimming through all your data will give you a good overall sense of your project’s major concepts and how those concepts fit together. When you start coding, you’ll be able to generate codes that makes sense in the context of your entire study.

In addition, reading through your data in this way keeps you close to your data, which leads to a more thorough analysis and a scrupulous final report.

Backing up your project

Last, let’s practice one of the most important things to learn in Qualrus: How to back up and export your project.

Exporting creates an exact copy of all your project files and sources files. We recommend you export your project often as a method of backing up your project. This technique can also be used if you’d like to work on your Qualrus project on different computers.

To export:

1. Open the most up to date version of your Qualrus project
2. Click File > Export > All project files
3. A box will pop up asking where you want to save the project. This will create a folder that has the same name as what you type in the box for the file name. This folder will include all of the Qualrus project files and all of the sources. Save this folder temporarily on the desktop or in a backup folder.
4. If you’re exporting your project in order to back it up, you may want to name each exported project something slightly different, like “My Project June 12″ so you can keep multiple backups.

All right, Phase 2 complete! Next time we’ll look at starting to code your project.