Qualitative Measurement in Driving Social Good: A Guide

Data is the cornerstone of effective decision-making, especially when it comes to maximizing your organization’s social impact. Only with comprehensive information and the tools to analyze it can you make informed decisions that further your mission.Of course, there are a few key numbers that are universally beneficial in data-driven decision-making, such as budget-related figures and numerical goals. However, qualitative data—though more challenging to define—is equally important. In this guide, we’ll break down  qualitative measurement by covering:

• Frequently Asked Questions About Qualitative Measurement
• How to Measure Qualitative Data
• Challenges To Be Addressed in Qualitative Measurement

Frequently Asked Questions About Qualitative Measurement

What is Qualitative Data?

To fully understand the process of qualitative measurement, we first need to clarify what the term “qualitative” refers to. Qualitative data describes traits or characteristics, often in the form of descriptive words that can reveal patterns or significance. To analyze this data, researchers use coding to help identify themes related to the research objectives.

Qualitative measurement is the method of collecting and analyzing qualitative data to determine the success of a social impact endeavor. This process focuses on the “why” and “how” behind the data, helping to tell the story of your organization’s impact with more than just numerical metrics.

What Are Qualitative Data Examples?

To truly grasp the value of qualitative information, it helps to see it in action alongside its quantitative counterpart. While quantitative data provides the "how many," qualitative data provides the "how" and "why."

Below is an interactive quiz designed to help you practice identifying these different data types:

What is the Difference Between Quantitative and Qualitative Measurement?

Qualitative data is often considered the opposite of quantitative data. Here’s how they differ:

• Quantitative data refers to data that can be given a numeric value.
• Qualitative measurements decipher ideas, thoughts, and experiences. This type of research allows you to learn more about issues that aren't well-understood. You can measure qualitative metrics via interviews, surveys, and literature reviews.
• Quantitative data captures qualities, characteristics, experiences, and behaviors in a descriptive or narrative form.
• Quantitative research relies on numbers and graphs to test or validate ideas and assumptions. This area of study may develop generalizable facts about a subject. You can measure quantitative data by conducting experiments, recording numerical data, and providing surveys with closed-ended questions.

When Should Quantitative vs. Qualitative Measurements Be Used?

When determining whether to utilize qualitative or quantitative data, a good rule of thumb is:

• If you want to confirm or test a theory or hypothesis, use quantitative research.
• If you want to learn more about concepts, opinions, and experiences, conduct qualitative measurement.

You can use a qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-methods approach to most research issues. Which kind you pick is determined by several factors, including:

• Whether you're conducting inductive or deductive research
• Your research questions
• Whether you're conducting experimental, correlational, or descriptive research

Although quantitative approaches generate data that can be pooled and analyzed to characterize and forecast correlations, a qualitative measurement may help explore and explain those relationships as well as contextual variations in their quality.

Qualitative research may use social analytical frameworks to understand observable patterns and trends, including the study of socially differentiated outcomes, and analyze poverty as a dynamic process rather than a static outcome.

Why is Qualitative Measurement Important?

While quantitative data can tell you the scale of your impact, qualitative measurement provides the depth necessary to understand its true significance. By moving beyond raw numbers, your organization can uncover the human element behind every statistic.

Qualitative measurement is essential for driving social good because it:

• Provides vital context: It helps you tell a more complete story of your organization’s impact.
• Explores complex relationships: Qualitative methods explore characterizations and forecast correlations, explaining those relationships and the contextual variations in their quality.
• Uncovers new insights: It allows researchers to learn more about issues that aren't well-understood. 
• Identifies observable patterns: Qualitative research helps identify and understand patterns and trends, including socially differentiated outcomes.
• Empowers program evolution: It equips organizations with actionable insights to refine their missions and deepen their social impact.

How to Measure Qualitative Data

Define Your Objective

First, determine what information you need to gather before deciding on a technique. 

For example, if your program strives to "empower women," you cannot choose a tool until you define what empowerment looks like in your specific context:

• If empowerment means financial independence, you need to track quantifiable data like income, savings, or loan repayment rates. 
• If empowerment means having a voice in the community, you need to know if women are attending and speaking at local councils.
• If empowerment means shared decision-making at home, you need to understand private family dynamics.

Collect Qualitative Data

Your organization may collect qualitative data through resources such as:

• Interviews and surveys: Qualitative measurement examples are typically generated through interviews and focus groups, which allow recipients and stakeholders to discuss their experiences and the program's results. Consider what you're measuring and whether a different approach could yield more valuable data.
• Journals and logbooks: People in charge of a program, participants, and stakeholders can benefit from diaries, logs, and journals. Participants might also be given a journal to record their experiences and ideas. Examining their diary entries may reveal if the training has influenced their thoughts or behaviors.
• Photographs and art: Pictures and photographs make for excellent qualitative measures examples and may be used to assess quality, as many people find it simpler to convey changes graphically. Vulnerable youth, for example, can be encouraged to make a painting depicting their lives before and after joining the program.

While manual collection methods like journaling and photography capture the heart of your mission, the true challenge lies in organizing this narrative data to reveal actionable trends. At UpMetrics, we believe that qualitative stories and quantitative metrics should live side by side, ensuring that every aspect of the human experience is accounted for in your final analysis.

Tag Qualitative Elements With Sentiment

Once you’ve collected quantitative data, the next step is to categorize these pieces of information according to their sentiment. Sentiment analysis assigns an emotional tone, such as positive or negative, to the data you’ve gathered. Think of this as a way to measure the feelings and perspectives behind qualitative information.

According to Qualtrics, there are several types of sentiment analysis:

• Fine-grained: This classifies sentiment along a scale to signal how strongly respondents feel. For example, volunteers may rate their satisfaction with your recent appreciation event on a scale from “Very Satisfied” to “Very Dissatisfied.”
• Aspect-based: This tags qualitative elements, such as open-ended comments or reviews, with sentiment by analyzing the feelings expressed in the text. Continuing with our earlier example, a volunteer may leave a comment about your appreciation event, saying the food was delicious, but the event speaker was boring. Aspect-based analysis would associate a positive feeling with the food and a negative feeling with the event entertainment.
• Intent-based: This identifies sentiment by analyzing the reason behind certain feedback. For example, one volunteer may have submitted a survey after your event to express their satisfaction, while another one submitted a survey to complain. 
• Emotion detection: This type of sentiment analysis is especially useful for quickly flagging negative feedback and addressing problems before they escalate. With emotion detection, which analyzes the feelings behind text, your organization can separate positive feelings from negative and respond accordingly.

Dedicated software exists to help you automatically parse through qualitative data and tag pieces of information accordingly. This way, you can streamline the analysis process to identify patterns and overall sentiment more quickly.

Communicate Your Findings

Here are some methods foundations can employ to communicate the data they've acquired from qualitative data: 

• Create separate outputs for each target audience. You may wish to reach out to various people, including the general public, legislators, and specialists in a specific sector. Consider producing a series of brief outputs for each of them. A summary prepared for general readers may lack the degree of information that a government body requires. You may also wish to highlight facts that are of particular relevance to specific readers.
• Link to current events. Qualitative measurement frequently takes a highly in-depth approach to a single research issue but may also engage broader, related themes. Consider concerns that aren't only part of a short-term media cycle but rather longer-term trends that are likely to resurface, such as housing prices or obesity, whenever feasible. It's not essential to twist your key results to make them fit; simply create a meaningful link.
• Create a compelling narrative. Clearly communicating a story is the key to effectively communicating qualitative data. Individuals are more engaged by stories about people than they are by cold facts and numbers. Give your stories context and causality (this occurred to this person as a result of this), and you'll be following the same fundamental guidelines for excellent storytelling that screenwriters and novelists do.
• Describe the method. When presenting qualitative data, consider that many people are unfamiliar with qualitative research and the methodologies you may have employed. Provide a brief description of your research methodology. If the reader is intrigued, provide them a means to learn more about it elsewhere, like a publication or a project website. It's preferable to tease the reader and make them desire more than to offer too much information up front. 

Challenges To Be Addressed in Qualitative Measurement

While qualitative measurement provides rich, human-centered insights, it comes with unique hurdles that organizations must navigate to ensure their data is both reliable and actionable. Addressing these challenges is key to maintaining the integrity of your social impact story.

For example, qualitative data relies on human experiences and interpretations, which can create a risk that researcher bias influences how data is collected or analyzed. Also, collecting in-depth data through methods such as open-ended interviews or detailed observations requires significant time for both data collection and subsequent coding.

Time, money, data availability, and responders' access are all practical issues that researchers should consider before conducting qualitative measurement. Regardless of these challenges, the insights gained from qualitative measurement are invaluable for refining programs, empowering beneficiaries, and building more compelling narratives for donors.

Wrapping Up

Data-driven decision-making is essential to maximizing social impact, but numbers alone rarely tell the full story. To truly understand the "why" and "how" behind your mission, qualitative measurement is an indispensable tool. 

By capturing the nuances of human experience through testimonials, interviews, and thematic analysis, your organization can move beyond surface-level statistics to uncover the deep-rooted impact of your work.

As you look to optimize your organization's strategy, remember that the most meaningful insights often lie within the stories and experiences of those you serve. For more resources on understanding (and amplifying!) your impact, check out these resources:

• What Is Impact Measurement? Here’s A Complete Rundown
• Impact Frameworks: 10+ Leading Options & How to Get Started
• Impact Reporting: 6 Steps to Creating an Exemplary Report