How can qualitative findings be quantified?

Quantifying qualitative findings involves transforming non-numerical data into a format that allows for statistical analysis. This is effectively achieved through the process of coding responses, where themes or categories are identified and assigned numerical values. By doing this, researchers can use statistical methods to analyze the frequency of themes, correlations, or other patterns within the data, thus enabling a more systematic examination of qualitative information.

Coding is crucial in this process as it helps organize the qualitative data into manageable categories, which can then be quantified. This allows researchers to measure the prevalence of specific responses and draw broader conclusions about the data collected. For example, if a study involves interviews about people's experiences, certain sentiments or ideas can be coded, counted, and analyzed statistically, thus providing quantifiable insights into the qualitative data collected.

The other approaches listed do not achieve quantification. Conducting live interviews focuses on data collection rather than analysis and does not inherently bend towards numerical data. Presenting findings in narrative form maintains the qualitative essence of the data, without transforming it into numeric codes suitable for statistical analysis. Finally, using graphical representations can illustrate qualitative insights visually but does not provide a quantification of responses unless that data has first been coded and quantified in some form. Thus, coding responses and calculating statistics