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Last week I gave the keynote at the 1st International Symposium on Qualitative Research and the 5th Ibero-American Congress on Qualitative Research, in Porto, Portugal. It was a good crowd of 350-400 delegates. A few people have asked me what I spoke about so here's a brief summary.

I was searching through tweets using the #CAQDAS hashtag the other day and came across one that sent me reeling. And not in a good way. I've since been pondering why it prompted such a strong reaction, which might not have happened had I not been to the recent ICQI conference.

The language of determinism and constructivism in CAQDAS discourses.

At the opening plenary of the Digital Tools stream at ICQI, Kristi Jackson highlighted that critics of CAQDAS often frame their positions in the language of determinism, whereas advocates use the language of constructivism. She noted that to determinist critics
"the software limits personal agency by standardizing processes", whereas to constructivist advocates "the software expands options and promotes diversity". Spot on.

Digital tools for qualitative data analysis are powerful and sexy, but does everyone know? And what can we / should we do about it...here are some musings from some recent conference experiences.

Who would travel half way across a continent to a conference with less than 30 participants? Christina and I were recently at the ICQI 2016 conference in Champaign at the University of Illinois. Norm Denzin, the founder and organizer of ICQI, told me 1,305 qualitative researchers attended this year...

Nick emphasized in his first blog post that 5LQDA is not a new or different way of doing qualitative data analysis but a method of teaching how experienced CAQDAS users unconsciously harness their chosen software. This is a critical point that I want to bring to life by sharing an eye-opening conversation with Dr. Michelle Salmona of the Institute for Mixed Methods Research.

You may be wondering what Five-Level QDA is all about. Perhaps you're thinking it's a new qualitative data analysis (QDA) approach, like discourse analysis, grounded theory or thematic analysis. It's not. Here in a nutshell is what it's all about.

TOOLS AND MINDSETS

Those of us who do QDA, whatever approach we use, all have to choose how to go about it, how to get the thoughts we have when we read data out of our heads and on to, what? Paper, a whiteboard, a set of index cards? Not likely anymore. Almost everyone uses a computer in some way, which is just another kind of tool, like highlighter pens, or scissors to cut up interview transcripts. But