Abstract

Qualitative data analysis plays a crucial role in the investigation of any research problem. According to D.T Campbell, “the ultimate basis of all research is the qualitative basis”. Observations, interviews, questionnaires, telephone conversations, personal and official documents, photographs, recordings, drawings, diaries, e-mails and their responses, as well as informal discussions can also be considered as sources of qualitative data (Gay et al., 2012)The representation of people’s life experiences, events or situations is referred to as “thick”, which means that the depth of the narrative, context, social and historical significance and emotional content of the experience are highlighted in order to gain access to the world of a person or thing. A characteristic of qualitative analysis is that it uses a conceptual-hierarchical network known as an analytical framework, which aims to understand an underlying process, that is, a chain of events or concepts and the relationships between them. This paper is an attempt to explore the importance of qualitative data in sociology. It includes topics such as sampling in qualitative research, types of qualitative data, methods of qualitative data collection, techniques for analyzing qualitative data, and the use of various software in qualitative data analysis including ATLAS.ti 6.0, Hyper Research 2.8, Max QDA, The Ethnograph 5.08, QSR N6, QSR NVivo, Weft QDA, and Open Code 3.4. This paper also aims to explore the constraints and opportunities associated with qualitative data in sociology research.