Your qualitative analysis “needs more depth”, but what does that mean?
Maybe you’re writing your qualitative findings chapter and getting feedback like:
“Needs more depth.”
“Push the analysis further.”
“This feels too descriptive.”
“Be more critical.”
Perhaps you’re sitting in front of your computer, staring at your work thinking, “I genuinely do not know what else I’m supposed to be seeing here.”
I often think this stage of the PhD feels a lot like starting a completely new job.
One of my earliest jobs was as a glass collector in a nightclub in the late 1990s. This was 1997, so people were still smoking indoors and every surface in the building seemed permanently sticky.
Everyone else working there looked incredibly competent.
They strutted confidently through the club in their blue polo shirts with their baskets, somehow already knowing where all the abandoned glasses would be hiding. Behind speakers. On windowsills. Balanced on top of door frames. Apparently nightclub customers in the 90s liked storing their used glassware in places no reasonable person would ever think to look.
Meanwhile, I would walk around with an almost empty basket thinking: “There genuinely aren’t any glasses anywhere.”
What I didn’t realise at the time was that everybody else who looked experienced had once been exactly the same. They had all learned gradually where to look, what mattered, what patterns to notice, and how the place actually worked.
That is often what qualitative analysis feels like at first.
Experienced researchers can seem as though they naturally “see” depth in the data, while you are left wondering whether you are somehow missing something obvious. What this actually means is that you have not fully learned how to do this yet - this will take practice.
What supervisors usually mean by “too descriptive”
When supervisors say findings are “too descriptive,” they usually mean you are telling the reader what participants said, but not yet explaining why it matters.
For example:
Description: “Participants reported feeling unsupported.”
Analysis: “Participants’ accounts suggest that support was experienced not simply as the presence of help, but as responsiveness during moments of uncertainty.”
One repeats the surface of the data, the other begins interpreting meaning.
The museum of qualitative findings
Your role in the qualitative findings chapter is to guide the reader through what your data actually suggests.
I sometimes tell people to imagine their thesis as a museum.
Your examiner is walking through it with you. You are not simply pointing silently at exhibits and hoping they understand why they matter. You are guiding them through the interpretation.
Why is this here?
What does it show?
How does it connect to the broader story emerging across the data?
An example: moving from description to analysis
Imagine you are researching newly qualified teachers and their experiences of interacting with parents.
One participant says:
“Sometimes parents email late at night and expect an immediate reply. I worry that if I don’t respond quickly, they’ll think I’m not taking their child seriously.”
A descriptive write-up might say:
“Several participants described pressure from parents to respond quickly to communication.”
There is nothing technically wrong with that sentence, but it remains close to the surface. A more analytical version might look like this:
“Several participants described pressure to remain constantly available to parents. For newly qualified teachers, communication appeared to extend beyond school hours, creating uncertainty around professional boundaries. Responsiveness was linked not simply to efficiency, but to concerns about appearing competent, committed, and caring.”
Now we have moved beyond the individual quote, towards a broader pattern, then into interpretation about professional identity and emotional pressure. Nothing new was being invented - you simply carried the thinking one stage further.
“I thought I’d feel more certain by now”
If you’re currently sitting at your computer in front of a findings chapter wondering whether your analysis is “deep enough” and fretting about not feeling as certain as you think you should, my From Data to Findings: Thinking, Methods and Meaning PhD Survival Guide was designed for exactly this stage of the doctorate.
It will help you move beyond surface-level description and develop stronger interpretation, clearer analytical thinking, and more confident findings chapters.
You can explore the guide here.
“I can describe what I did. I just don’t know if I trust my own judgement.”
Maybe you’re wondering how your PhD became this complicated.
You might be trying to work out whether your analysis is strong enough, if you’re making thoughtful analytical decisions - or just guessing your way through.
Perhaps you’re able to describe what you did methodologically, but struggle the moment somebody asks you to explain why those choices make sense.
That usually means you’ve arrived at the stage where qualitative research starts demanding something different: interpretation, judgement, coherence, and confidence in your reasoning.
This guide was written for that stage.
Across 12 carefully structured sections, I will help you reconnect the different parts of your study so your methodology, data collection, analysis, and research questions begin making sense together again.
Inside, you’ll learn how to:
align your research questions, methods, and analysis
understand what qualitative analysis is actually asking you to do
make methodological decisions you can justify with confidence
approach your methodology chapter with greater clarity and structure
move forward without constantly doubting yourself
This is a digital download, so you’ll receive immediate access after purchase and can begin straight away.
Swipe through the images above to see what’s inside.
If you’d like one complete system for your qualitative PhD, you can also access all four PhD Survival Guides here.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. I’ll be happy to help.
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