nvivo and hyperresearch are statistical software packages

Her method can be described as attempting to understand social reality through a methodology that is at once subjective and scientific. It can be said that the qualitative researcher seeks to deduce general (or generalizable) meaning through to thorough investigation of concrete phenomena. Qualitative research aims at understandingindividual issues, cases, or manifestations, to answer general questions. Typically, these include spoken, written, or recorded word, imagery (drawn, painted, or photographed), as well as moving images. Qualitative research is thus a prevalent method of inquiry in a great variety of disciplines – it can be applied in nearly all fields, where human thought, notions, mindsets, attitudes, or characteristics are investigated through concrete expressions.

Qualitative research the exploration of human behavior as they are expressed in in individual utterances, manifestations, artifacts, and with the driving motives behind these expressions as they can be determined from them. Qualitative research has been defined as “a research method for the subjective interpretation of the content of text data through the systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes or patterns” (Hsieh & Shannon), as an “approach of empirical, methodological controlled analysis of texts within their context of communication, following content analytic rules and step by step models, without rash quantification” (Mayring), and as “qualitative data reduction and sense-making effort that takes a volume of qualitative material and attempts to identify core consistencies and meanings” (Patton). Although the term was originally coined in the social sciences, a great many related fields–from psychology to market research to media studies) today rely on methodology that can also be described qualitative research.

The term “Qualitative Research” is commonly applied to a set of methods that are used in the social and human sciences.

Nvivo and hyperresearch are statistical software packages