Qualitative Content Analysis: A Reflection

Abstract

Like many public services librarians, we spend much of our time focused on improving service quality. We think of excellent service quality as meeting or exceeding customer expectations consistently over time. One approach for fostering consistent service delivery for libraries is to implement standards like those found in a service philosophy statement. A service philosophy statement communicates directly to users what they can—and should—expect from library services. We decided to study service philosophy statements in a formal way using qualitative content analysis to learn how one might benefit our own public services units. This chapter addresses key questions we had about our research project: Where do we begin? What method or approach is most appropriate to answer our research question? How will we learn to use this method? This chapter describes the challenges we faced while simultaneously learning and applying the method of qualitative content analysis to our study of service philosophy statements.