Nine Heuristics for qualitative analysis

In my new book, Qualitative Research Methods for Everyone: An Essential Toolkit (Policy Press), I outline a new approach for interpretive qualitative analysis using Nine Heuristics.

These are:

Learning as you go
Inductive immersion (becoming very familiar with all your data)
Annotating (adding notes)
Coding (making sure your notes can be found again and you can sort them into groups)
Sensitising
Seeking coherence (sorting and clarifying)
Memoing (making longer notes that make sense of your codes)
Iterating (always remembering to look back and forth from time to time
Being Reflexive

Heuristics are models that provide short-cut ways of thinking practically about something that is more complex and interlocking than appears. With any of these heuristics, try not to get hung up on semantics; it is the process that matters not how we label it. The nine ways for thinking about qualitative analysis also work as overlapping steps.

Use these heuristics to guide your analysis towards a rigorous, reliable, trustworthy, rich, deep interpretation.

Learning as you go. The heuristic of learning as you go emphasises the recursive and ongoing nature of interpretive analysis and asks that you do it consciously and overtly: take notes, write memos, add notes or codes, as you generate data.
Inductive immersion (becoming very familiar with all your data). Inductive immersion is like swimming in the data. Always begin any analysis session by looking, listening, hearing, and thinking (again).
Annotating (adding notes). Annotating simply means making notes: it is the act of noting what comes to mind, be it writing, drawing, sketching, or making a map.
Coding. This is a big one. Coding is the act of putting words or short phrases next to passages of text or visual data so that you can find them again and start to work on connections between elements, pathways, and processes. Open coding, analytical coding, structural coding are all discussed more in the book.
Sensitising. Sensitising is being constantly sensitive to what external ideas and literature might aid sense-making and carefully bringing in theories, concepts and frameworks to see where they help illuminate the data.
Seeking coherence (sorting and clarifying). Seeking coherence involves moving away from the data towards more abstraction, analysis, reduction, and synthesis.
Memoing. Memoing is writing, sketching, recording, or mapping, using whatever tools you wish to help draw connections between elements and elaborate what they might mean. While annotating involves creatively jotting down rambling thoughts, memos are more analytical, giving shape and meaning to notes, yet are still creative.
Iterating. Heuristically, iterating is checking you have not jumped to conclusions, that you have heard the data by going back through the steps above, engaging in inductive immersion, annotating, coding, memoing, and sensitising before rushing to seek coherence. There are some tips to help with iterating inductively in the book
Being Reflexive. Being reflexive can involve acknowledging any presuppositions you might have (for example in first defining your research problem), identifying any expectations, being clear about the literature you have read and how it shapes your research, clarifying any theories you favour, or your philosophical leanings.

You will need to read the book to fully understand what these heuristics mean for your analytical practice. You might also enjoy The Qualitative Research Methods for Everyone Podcast

or wherever you get your podcasts