Contrasting to the numerical mechanism in the quantitative approach, the qualitative way draws on categories and themes through the interpretation of the text. The major processes are to code the data, reduce a large amount of text into ideas or themes, compare and condense to few major themes or categories for abstraction.

Within qualitative content analysis, there is a further division on how the analytical approach is applied to the content, mainly inductive or deductive application of defining categories or themes.

The Content Analysis pocket book by James Drisko and Tina Maschi (2015) provides a comparison of the quantitative, interpretive, and qualitative content analysis with examples. For software application in qualitative content analysis, the SAGE Research Methods collection provides case studies or instructional videos for teaching and learning.