Qualitative Content Analysis

A systematic qualitative research method for interpreting the content of text, interview transcripts, or other communication data by coding recurring patterns and organizing them into categories. QCA can be inductive (categories emerge from data) or deductive (categories derived from theory), and it prioritizes interpretive validity over statistical inter-rater reliability. In accessibility and HCI research, QCA is used to analyze interview data from studies involving small, hard-to-reach populations — such as adults with intellectual disabilities or people using emerging assistive technologies — where rich description matters more than sample-level generalization.