An RQDA-Based Constructivist Methodology for Qualitative Research

Purpose — Qualitative research suffers from “contestation” and a lack of “boilerplate” problems to assessing and presenting qualitative data, which has hampered its development and the broader acceptance of qualitative research. This article addresses this gap by marrying the constructivist methodology and RQDA, a relatively new open-source computer assisted qualitative data analysis (CAQDAS)-based R extension and demonstrate how the software can increase the rigor, transparency, and validity of qualitative research. Design/methodology/approach — This article highlights the constructivist approach as an important paradigm in qualitative research and demonstrates how it can be operationalized and enhanced using RQDA. It provides a technical and methodological review of RQDA, along with its main strengths and weaknesses, in relation two popular CAQDAS tools, ATLAS.ti and NVivo. Using samples of customer-generated e-complaints and e-praises in the electronics/computer sector, this article demonstrates the development of a process model of customer e-complaint rhetoric.Findings — This article offers step-by-step instructions for installing RQDA, and using this software for data coding, aggregation, plotting, and theory building. It emphasizes the importance of techniques for sharing coding outputs among researchers and journal gatekeepers to better disseminate and share research findings. It also describes the authors' use of RQDA in classrooms of undergraduates and graduate students. Research limitations/implications — This article addresses the “contestation” and “boilerplate” gaps, offering practical, step-by-step instructions to operationalize and enhance the constructivist approach using the RQDA-based approach. This opens new opportunities for existing R users to “cross over” to analyzing textual data as well as for computer-savvy scholars, analysts and research students in academia and industry who wish to transition to CAQDAS-based qualitative research because RQDA is free and can leverage the strengths of the R computing platform.Originality — This article offers the first published review and demonstration of the RQDA-based constructivist methodology that provide the processes needed to enhance the rigor, transparency, and validity of qualitative research. It demonstrates the systematic development of a data structure and a process model of customer e-complaint rhetoric using RQDA