Making sense of interviews, focus groups and responses to questionnaires primarily involves the researcher's judgements and categorizations.
The process for discovering themes from a text is called "coding." A new researcher may feel overwhelmed at how to make sense of all these words. But the process is much like doing an inductive study of a Bible passage.
It is possible to use a variety of tools for the coding process. The tools you use are only aids. People have effectively used paper and pencil, Microsoft Word or Excel as well as specialty software like QDA Miner. Therefore the choice of tools is largely how useful you find them.
Whatever tool you use, the process is quite similar. The following are suggestion for coding.:
