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Qualitative Methods in Health Research

Office Hours — the companion podcast for the qualitative-methods course

Each episode is a relaxed walkthrough of the week's lesson — audio, summary, and full transcript on every page.

Foundations & design

Lessons 01 — 04

Foundations of Qualitative Data AnalysisWhat counts as qualitative data, the analytic stance behind it, the Bernard-Wutich-Ryan framework, types of qualitative data and analysis traditions, and why qualitative rigor is rigor — not a softer alternative to numbers.

Research Questions, Theory, and LiteratureMoving from a curiosity to a workable qualitative research question; positioning the project within theory and prior literature; the role of conceptual frameworks; and how to write a question your design can actually answer.

Sampling in Qualitative ResearchPurposive sampling families, snowball and respondent-driven sampling, theoretical sampling, saturation as a moving target, and how sampling logic differs fundamentally from probability sampling.

Qualitative Data CollectionInterview structure from unstructured to semi-structured to structured; focus groups; participant observation and field notes; document and archival sources; and the trade-offs each mode forces on the analyst.

Coding & frameworks

Lessons 05 — 07

Themes and CodebooksWhat a theme actually is, how codes differ from themes, codebook construction, the discovery-versus-application split, inter-rater agreement and kappa, and the practical mechanics of analyzing transcripts.

Analysis Frameworks and Conceptual ModelsFramework analysis, the Ritchie-Spencer tradition, building a conceptual model from coded data, mapping relationships between themes, and turning qualitative findings into transferable theory.

Comparing Variables and Grounded TheoryThe Miles-Huberman-Saldaña matrix tradition, magnitude coding and quasi-statistics, Glaser-Strauss-Charmaz variants of grounded theory, open-axial-selective coding, constant comparison, and theoretical sampling driven to saturation.

Specialized analytic traditions

Lessons 08 — 12

Content AnalysisLasswell through Krippendorff, manifest versus latent content, codes as variables, three units of analysis, Krippendorff's alpha, L I W C and keyness, and where content analysis sits between qualitative and quantitative.

Schema and Narrative AnalysisSchema theory from Bartlett to D'Andrade to Strauss and Quinn, scripts and prototypes, the narrative turn in social science, Labov's six-part model, Frye genres, Kleinman's illness-disease-sickness, and Frank's narrative typology.

Discourse AnalysisThe three strands of discourse analysis — conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, and discursive psychology — turn-taking, adjacency pairs, repair, Jefferson transcription, Goffman on face and footing, and Fairclough's three dimensions.

Analytic Induction, Q C A, and Decision ModelsZnaniecki-Lindesmith-Cressey analytic induction and Robinson's critique; Ragin's qualitative comparative analysis with truth tables and Boolean minimization; consistency and coverage; cs Q C A and fs Q C A; and Gladwin's ethnographic decision modeling.

Computational Text and L L M AnalysisK W I C, frequency, T F – I D F, keyness, collocations and n-grams; cultural domain analysis with pile sorts, M D S, and triads; Romney-Weller-Batchelder consensus; L L M-assisted coding, the five risks, and the three non-negotiable conditions for using it responsibly.