Qualitative data captures nuances that simple numbers cannot. It is the difference between asking someone to rate his happiness on a scale of one to 10 as opposed to describing the sensations that make up his emotions. Collecting this kind of data takes more time than collecting quantitative data, and pieces of qualitative data, such as field notes from an anthropologist's trip abroad, represent an expensive record of unique events. Losing this data wastes time and money, and the exact data can never be truly recovered.
Because qualitative data is so valuable, it is important to safeguard against losing it to accidents such as floods, fires, coffee spills, or careless research assistants. One easy way to do this is to make photocopies of each page of qualitative data. Proceed to store these duplicates in a secure location, such as a safe or safety-deposit box. This way, even if something happens to one set of the data, not all is lost.
With advances in scanning technology, it now takes less time to use a scanner to digitize documents than in the past. This means that in about the same amount of time it would take to photocopy handwritten pages, you or your research assistants could scan those pages into a computer document. You can then store these documents on multiple computers, multiple hard drives or with online services that offer Internet-based file storage.
A way of simultaneously storing and organizing your data is to enter your digital notes or transcribe your handwritten ones into a database. This way you can organize your notes by various factors such as the date the observation was taken, the subject the note concerns or another category that is relevant to your research. With a single computer command, you can instantly retrieve individual notes as opposed to scanning through text. You can also create database backup files and store them in multiple places as you would a raw document.