Multi-level Qualitative Analysis design: a practical application for the analysis of interviews

In this article we present the use of what we have called a Multilevel Qualitative Analysis (MQA), a procedure for analyzing qualitative information, and in particular for analyzing the information provided by in-depth interviews. The features of this analytical design are the following: a) it contains procedures for quantifying information, other than the ones used by qualitative data analysis programmes; b) it requires the qualitative information to be operationalized in the form of categorized variables and always respecting the principle of parsimony; c) it is an open model, which can incorporate a variety of quantitative analytical developments and procedures; d) it is a combined design that requires the sequential use of various procedures; e) finally, it can create types that can be used to better interpret discourse, so it contextualizes the discourse analysis. The stages of analysis design are sequential and begin at the level of text categorization, which operationalizes the information. In the second stage, the structural-relational stage, the relation between the categories is analyzed and the distance between the subjects (proximity/difference) is measured. And in the third, social-hermeneutic stage, the significance of the discourse is reproduced and contextualized.