Before you can find themes or identify major ideas in the qualitative research data, you need to organize the information. At this stage, keep all the information from one person or group together. Group your data by the type of interview or research method used (e.g. key informant interview, focus groups, etc). Within each group, organize the information temporally according to when the interviews were conducted. If you have multiple interviews with the same person or group, go with the first interview.
You're ready to start sketching out the ideas present in your data. Start reading through the data and track recurring ideas or keywords. If you have a lot of information, consider a content analysis program. These programs, however, often only search for key words and can miss similar ideas expressed differently. If different groups, for example with different education levels, speak about an issue using different terms, this could be an important trend in your research ideas.
At this stage, you can start separating content from specific interviews. Group common content and phrases, noting the respondents for each and when the remarks were made. Read through the grouped responses and consider the tone or the opinions of respondents on the common ideas. Group together those with similar views (e.g. positive, negative, neutral or scientific, layperson language used).
By this stage, you've sketched the main ideas in your data and how different respondents express these ideas. The analysis stage starts by thinking about who expressed the ideas in similar terms and if they share similar attributes such as education, gender, income or geographic location. The analysis then seeks to determine why some groups would share these views. Also look to see if attitudes changed over time and, if so, consider if the change was gradual or related to a specific event.