One of the key features of qualitative – non-numerical – data is that they are messy and usually voluminous. We wind up with huge piles of texts: transcripts, field notes, documents, questionnaires, pictures, audio, video, and so on, and have to sort our way through them. Add to this the need to find a rigorous approach to the analysis of these large quantities of data, and the researcher faces a daunting task. Researchers from different disciplines and different methodological perspectives will take different approaches to this task, but in most cases, computers can help.