The earliest stages of developing a doctoral dissertation—most specifically the topic development and literature review stages—require that you immerse yourself in a ton of existing research related to your potential topic. If you have begun writing your dissertation proposal, you have undoubtedly reviewed countless results and findings sections of studies in order to help gain an understanding of what is currently known about your topic. 

In this process, we’re guessing that you observed a distinct pattern: Results sections are full of tables. Indeed, the results chapter for your own dissertation will need to be similarly packed with tables. So, if you’re preparing to write up the results of your statistical analysis or qualitative analysis, it will probably help to review your APA editing manual to brush up on your table formatting skills. But, aside from formatting, how should you develop the tables in your results chapter?

In quantitative studies, tables are a handy way of presenting the variety of statistical analysis results in a form that readers can easily process. You’ve probably noticed that quantitative studies present descriptive results like mean, mode, range, standard deviation, etc., as well the inferential results that indicate whether significant relationships or differences were found through the statistical analysis. These are pretty standard tables that you probably learned about in your pre-dissertation statistics courses.

But, what if you are conducting qualitative analysis? What tables are appropriate for this type of study? This is a question we hear often from our dissertation assistance clients, and with good reason. University guidelines for results chapters often contain vague instructions that guide you to include “appropriate tables” without specifying what exactly those are. To help clarify on this point, we asked our qualitative analysis experts to share their recommendations for tables to include in your Chapter 4.

Demographics Tables

As with studies using quantitative methods, presenting an overview of your sample demographics is useful in studies that use qualitative research methods. The standard demographics table in a quantitative study provides aggregate information for what are often large samples. In other words, such tables present totals and percentages for demographic categories within the sample that are relevant to the study (e.g., age, gender, job title). 

If conducting qualitative research for your dissertation, however, you will use a smaller sample and obtain richer data from each participant than in quantitative studies. To enhance thick description—a dimension of trustworthiness—it will help to present sample demographics in a table that includes information on each participant. Remember that ethical standards of research require that all participant information be deidentified, so use participant identification numbers or pseudonyms for each participant, and do not present any personal information that would allow others to identify the participant (Blignault & Ritchie, 2009). Table 1 provides participant demographics for a hypothetical qualitative research study exploring the perspectives of persons who were formerly homeless regarding their experiences of transitioning into stable housing and obtaining employment.

Table 1

Participant Demographics

Participant ID	Gender	Age	Current Living Situation
P1	Female	34	Alone
P2	Male	27	With Family
P3	Male	44	Alone
P4	Female	46	With Roommates
P5	Female	25	With Family
P6	Male	30	With Roommates
P7	Male	38	With Roommates
P8	Male	51	Alone

Tables to Illustrate Initial Codes

Most of our dissertation consulting clients who are conducting qualitative research choose a form of thematic analysis. Qualitative analysis to identify themes in the data typically involves a progression from (a) identifying surface-level codes to (b) developing themes by combining codes based on shared similarities. As this process is inherently subjective, it is important that readers be able to evaluate the correspondence between the data and your findings (Anfara et al., 2002). This supports confirmability, another dimension of trustworthiness.

A great way to illustrate the trustworthiness of your qualitative analysis is to create a table that displays quotes from the data that exemplify each of your initial codes. Providing a sample quote for each of your codes can help the reader to assess whether your coding was faithful to the meanings in the data, and it can also help to create clarity about each code’s meaning and bring the voices of your participants into your work (Blignault & Ritchie, 2009).

Table 2 is an example of how you might present information regarding initial codes. Depending on your preference or your dissertation committee’s preference, you might also present percentages of the sample that expressed each code. Another common piece of information to include is which actual participants expressed each code. Note that if your qualitative analysis yields a high volume of codes, it may be appropriate to present the table as an appendix.

Table 2

Initial Codes

Initial code	n of participants contributing (N=8)	n of transcript excerpts assigned	Sample quote
Daily routine of going to work enhanced sense of identity	7	12	“It’s just that good feeling of getting up every day like everyone else and going to work, of having that pattern that’s responsible. It makes you feel good about yourself again.” (P3)
Experienced discrimination due to previous homelessness	2	3	“At my last job, I told a couple other people on my shift I used to be homeless, and then, just like that, I get put into a worse job with less pay. The boss made some excuse why they did that, but they didn’t want me handling the money is why. They put me in a lower level job two days after I talk to people about being homeless in my past. That’s no coincidence if you ask me.” (P6)
Friends offered shared housing	3	3	“My friend from way back had a spare room after her kid moved out. She let me stay there until I got back on my feet.” (P4)
Mental health services essential in getting into housing	5	7	“Getting my addiction treated was key. That was a must. My family wasn’t gonna let me stay around their place without it. So that was a big help for getting back into a place.” (P2)

Tables to Present the Groups of Codes That Form Each Theme

As noted previously, most of our dissertation assistance clients use a thematic analysis approach, which involves multiple phases of qualitative analysis that eventually result in themes that answer the dissertation’s research questions. After initial coding is completed, the analysis process involves (a) examining what different codes have in common and then (b) grouping similar codes together in ways that are meaningful given your research questions. In other words, the common threads that you identify across multiple codes become the theme that holds them all together—and that theme answers one of your research questions.

As with initial coding, grouping codes together into themes involves your own subjective interpretations, even when aided by qualitative analysis software such as NVivo or MAXQDA. In fact, our dissertation assistance clients are often surprised to learn that qualitative analysis software does not complete the analysis in the same ways that statistical analysis software such as SPSS does. While statistical analysis software completes the computations for you, qualitative analysis software does not have such analysis capabilities. Software such as NVivo provides a set of organizational tools that make the qualitative analysis far more convenient, but the analysis itself is still a very human process (Burnard et al., 2008).

Because of the subjective nature of qualitative analysis, it is important to show the underlying logic behind your thematic analysis in tables—such tables help readers to assess the trustworthiness of your analysis. Table 3 provides an example of how to present the codes that were grouped together to create themes, and you can modify the specifics of the table based on your preferences or your dissertation committee’s requirements. For example, this type of table might be presented to illustrate the codes associated with themes that answer each research question. 

Table 3

Grouping of Initial Codes to Form Themes

Theme Initial codes grouped to form theme	n of participants contributing (N=8)	n of transcript excerpts assigned
Theme 1: Assistance from friends, family, or strangers was instrumental in getting back into stable housing	6	10
Family member assisted them to get into housing
Friends offered shared housing
Stranger offered shared housing
Theme 2: Obtaining professional support was essential for overcoming the cascading effects of poverty and homelessness	7	19
Financial benefits made obtaining housing possible
Mental health services essential in getting into housing
Social services helped navigate housing process
Theme 3: Stigma and concerns about discrimination caused them to feel uncomfortable socializing with coworkers	6	9
Experienced discrimination due to previous homelessness
Feared negative judgment if others learned of their pasts
Theme 4: Routine productivity and sense of making a contribution helped to restore self-concept and positive social identity	8	21
Daily routine of going to work enhanced sense of identity
Feels good to contribute to society/organization
Seeing products of their efforts was rewarding

Tables to Illustrate the Themes That Answer Each Research Question

Creating alignment throughout your dissertation is an important objective, and to maintain alignment in your results chapter, the themes you present must clearly answer your research questions. Conducting qualitative analysis is an in-depth process of immersion in the data, and many of our dissertation consulting clients have shared that it’s easy to lose your direction during the process. So, it is important to stay focused on your research questions during the qualitative analysis and also to show the reader exactly which themes—and subthemes, as applicable—answered each of the research questions.

Below, Table 4 provides an example of how to display the thematic findings of your study in table form. Depending on your dissertation committee’s preference or your own, you might present all research questions and all themes and subthemes in a single table. Or, you might provide separate tables to introduce the themes for each research question as you progress through your presentation of the findings in the chapter.

Table 4

Emergent Themes and Research Questions

Research question	Themes that address question
RQ1. How do adults who have previously experienced homelessness describe their transitions to stable housing?	Theme 1: Assistance from friends, family, or strangers was instrumental in getting back into stable housing Theme 2: Obtaining professional support was essential for overcoming the cascading effects of poverty and homelessness
RQ2. How do adults who have previously experienced homelessness describe returning to paid employment?	Theme 3: Self-perceived stigma caused them to feel uncomfortable socializing with coworkers Theme 4: Routine productivity and sense of making a contribution helped to restore self-concept and positive social identity

Bonus Tip! Figures to Spice Up Your Results

Although dissertation committees most often wish to see tables such as the above in qualitative results chapters, some also like to see figures that illustrate the data. Qualitative software packages such as NVivo offer many options for visualizing your data, such as mind maps, concept maps, charts, and cluster diagrams. A common choice for this type of figure among our dissertation assistance clients is a tree diagram, which shows the connections between specified words and the words or phrases that participants shared most often in the same context. Another common choice of figure is the word cloud, as depicted in Figure 1. The word cloud simply reflects frequencies of words in the data, which may provide an indication of the importance of related concepts for the participants.

Figure 1

Word Cloud

As you move forward with your qualitative analysis and development of your results chapter, we hope that this brief overview of useful tables and figures helps you to decide on an ideal presentation to showcase the trustworthiness your findings. Completing a rigorous qualitative analysis for your dissertation requires many hours of careful interpretation of your data, and your end product should be a rich and detailed results presentation that you can be proud of. Reach out if we can help in any way, as our dissertation coaches would be thrilled to assist as you move through this exciting stage of your dissertation journey!

References

Anfara Jr., V. A., Brown, K. M., & Mangione, T. L. (2002). Qualitative analysis on stage: Making the research process more public. Educational Researcher, 31(7), 28-38. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X031007028

Blignault, I., & Ritchie, J. (2009). Revealing the wood and the trees: Reporting qualitative research. Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 20(2), 140-145. https://doi.org/10.1071/HE09140

Burnard, P., Gill, P., Stewart, K., Treasure, E., & Chadwick, B. (2008). Analysing and presenting qualitative data. British Dental Journal, 204(8), 429-432. https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.bdj.2008.292