Dr. Carin Strydom, Prof Stephan Van Der Merwe

Abstract

As background in the study “Developing a framework for SMME survival based on events during COVID -19 in the Western Cape of South Africa”, the researcher did not want to take the risk of making use of Artificial Intelligence and CAQDAS programs to analyse the complex data encompassing economic, financial, emotional and mental factors, all due to the economic lockdowns of COVID -19. This article aims to provide a scientific method of manual qualitative data analysis that was followed to analyse this wide variety of data. The motivation for developing this manual method was due to the emotional upheaval experienced during difficult economic periods of lockdown by the participants.
The research methodology followed was a study conducted via 16 face-to-face semi-structured interviews with the successful SMME owners secured via snowball sampling. The study’s main findings indicated that a framework could be developed based on the manual data analysis process by applying scientific methods and using a Thematic Analysis Process and a wall-coding concept. The contribution of this research is that it was proven that CAQDAS programs or AI-generated software are not the only solution when a researcher has to analyse qualitative data.