Let us say we have 10 interviews of 10 men. People doing qualitative analysis are often confused with sentences like "Some men said that", "Many said that...". They are even worried if it does matter if only few men said some thing.
It is a typical confusion in qualitative analysis, however. The common question is: Should I count the number of men who says something, or should I count the number of meanings mentioned by those men?
The answer is entirely at your research design. If you are doing a semi-structured, qualitative research, it sounds acceptable when you counts the number of MEN who say something. However, the 'statistics' (sum, percent) you get at the end should not be abused. In other words, you can only use the statistics to say about similarity/difference within that particular group of men, not any larger population. The nature of your research is, still, qualitative.
If you are doing an ethnographic study, you should not count the MEN who mention issue A, but the MEANINGS they associated with issue A. Why? Because, you are interested in representativeness of meanings, rather than population.
Let us say 10 men when said about issue A, they gave 25 meanings.
You should never be worried about: how many men said a meaning of issue A.
But, you should care about: whether the given meanings are all, or at least most, 'attributes' of issue A. Furthermore, you should be able to see that men with different characteristics associated different 'attributes' (meanings) to issue A.
