Qualitative Content Analysis: Conventional, Directed and Summative

What is qualitative content analysis?

Qualitative content analysis is a method for systematically describing the meaning of qualitative material. You do this by classifying parts of your material as instances of the categories of a coding frame (also called category system). The method grew out of quantitative content analysis in communication research but shifted the focus from counting manifest features to interpreting meaning, including latent meaning that depends on context.

Schreier (2012) emphasises three features: QCA reduces data (you focus on selected aspects that matter for your research question), it is systematic (every part of the relevant material is examined with the same procedure) and it is flexible (the coding frame is adapted to your material). This makes QCA attractive for dissertations in health sciences, education, nursing, social work and business, where examiners value transparency and replicability.

Running example: in your master’s project you interviewed 12 first-generation students about their sense of belonging at university. With QCA you would ask, for example: which kinds of support do these students describe, and which barriers do they report?

Three approaches according to Hsieh and Shannon (2005)

Hsieh and Shannon’s paper in *Qualitative Health Research* is one of the most cited method papers in qualitative research. It distinguishes three approaches by how the coding categories are developed. Choose the approach that matches the state of knowledge on your topic.

Schreier’s eight steps

Margrit Schreier’s book *Qualitative Content Analysis in Practice* (2012) gives the most detailed English-language step-by-step guide. Its core is a carefully built coding frame that is piloted before the main coding. You can follow these steps directly in your methodology chapter.

Building a good coding frame

A coding frame has main categories (the dimensions you are interested in) and subcategories (what is said about each dimension). Schreier names requirements that are useful for every student project: categories should be unidimensional (each main category covers one aspect), subcategories within a dimension should be mutually exclusive (a segment can be coded only once per dimension), the frame should be exhaustive (every relevant segment fits somewhere, if necessary in a residual category such as “other”) and it should be saturated (no subcategory remains completely empty without a reason).

Each category needs a name, a definition, an example and, where confusion is likely, decision rules. Our free tool at /codieren is built exactly around this structure: every category has a definition, an anchor example and a coding rule, and you can export the result as a codebook.

• Main category “Sources of support” with subcategories peers, staff, family, institutional services
• Main category “Barriers to belonging” with subcategories financial pressure, hidden curriculum, commuting, discrimination
• Residual subcategory “other support” to keep the frame exhaustive
• Decision rule: support from a student tutor is coded as “staff”, not as “peers”

Qualitative content analysis vs thematic analysis

Students often ask which of the two methods to choose. Both work with codes and categories, and the boundary is blurred. The main differences lie in purpose and depth of interpretation.

A note on Mayring and Kuckartz (German context)

If you study at a university in Germany, Austria or Switzerland, or your supervisor was trained there, you will probably be expected to follow Philipp Mayring or Udo Kuckartz. Both are the standard references for qualitative content analysis in German-speaking countries and have published English versions of their books.

Mayring distinguishes basic techniques such as summarising, explication and structuring and describes inductive category formation and deductive category application with precise rules. Kuckartz describes content structuring, evaluative and type-building QCA and integrates computer-assisted analysis. In the English-speaking world these authors are less known, so explain their approach briefly if your readers might not know it. In all cases, departments and supervisors may require a specific approach: follow your university’s guidelines and upload them to Professor Digital so that the feedback is aligned with them.

Reporting quality in a QCA dissertation

Examiners want to be able to follow how you got from transcripts to categories. Put the full coding frame in the appendix and summarise it in the methods chapter. Report how you developed the categories (deductively, inductively or both), how you segmented the material, what happened in the pilot phase and how consistency was checked, for example by recoding after two weeks or by a second coder with percent agreement or Cohen’s kappa.

In the findings, present each main category with its subcategories, a short description, typical quotes and, if meaningful, how many participants or segments each subcategory covers. Frequencies support description; they do not replace interpretation.