Qualitative Content Analysis

Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) is a systematic, inductive method for analyzing textual or visual data by identifying and categorizing meaning units into content categories. Developed and formalized by Klaus Krippendorff (1980), QCA can be purely qualitative (inductive, exploratory) or combined with quantitative counting; it analyzes manifest content (explicit, surface meanings) and latent content (underlying, interpretive meanings).