Searching for meaning: a method of analysing interview transcripts with a personal computer.
Unstructured, qualitative data present a challenge to the nurse researcher. This paper offers a method of focusing on 'meaning units' as the basis of developing a category system for the analysis of interview transcripts. The use of the wordprocessing program WordPerfect is described as a method of automating some of the stages of this form of data analysis. Whilst the computer cannot replace the researcher as a critical reviewer and analyst, it can take over many of the more clerical tasks of the research process.
Burnard
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D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D015404:Nursing Methodology Research; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012984:Software; D015443:Word Processing