AI-ready Qualitative Analysis: Menstrual Health in Khulna

According to the PLOS ONE article published July 24, 2026, the study of Khulna Railway Slum shows menstrual experiences are shaped by three domains: structural-environmental constraints, socio-cultural stigma, and gendered inequities in resource access (PLOS ONE).

• The PLOS ONE study collected 18 in-depth interviews and five key informant interviews between 01 September and 31 October 2025, providing rich, contextual accounts for thematic analysis.
• The PLOS ONE article reports participant ages ranged 15–45 years with 39% aged 20–30 and education levels of 39% non-literate, 33% secondary, and 28% primary schooling as of data collection in 2025.
• The PLOS ONE study documents direct impacts of inadequate WASH and disposal systems, exemplified by the quote, "When water stops coming from the tap, I wait for hours. If it doesn’t come, I can’t clean myself properly." (IDI-08, Housewife).
• The PLOS ONE study was published on July 24, 2026, and recommends integrated WASH, education, product access, and stigma-reduction policies for informal urban settlements.

Answer: The PLOS ONE study used qualitative interviews to map lived menstrual experiences in Khulna’s informal settlements and to produce thematic findings ready for synthesis.

According to the PLOS ONE article (Alam & Al-Mamun, published July 24, 2026), data collection occurred between 01 September and 31 October 2025 and included 18 in-depth interviews (IDIs) and five key informant interviews (KIIs).

According to the PLOS ONE article, the authors used a Feminist Political Ecology framework and combined deductive coding (three pre-defined domains) with inductive coding to capture emergent sub-themes, and they used NVivo v12 for coding.

According to the PLOS ONE article, participants described specific operational constraints: communal toilets without doors, intermittent water supply, lack of disposal bins, and single-room overcrowding that constrained private washing and drying of materials.

According to the PLOS ONE article, ethical approval was granted (IRB Approval No. 473478-FY 2024–2025; Approval Date: 10 August 2025) and interviews were conducted in Bengali then translated into English with back-checking for accuracy.

Answer: The PLOS ONE study shows that qualitative analysis must preserve local language nuance, stigma markers, and spatial context to produce program-relevant insights.

According to the PLOS ONE article, transcripts were collected in Bengali and translated with back-checking, which indicates the importance of preserving linguistic nuance in qualitative analysis to avoid losing culturally specific stigma terms.

According to the PLOS ONE article, the combined deductive-inductive coding approach produced both pre-specified domain comparators and emergent sub-themes, which researchers should replicate when analyzing menstrual health in other informal settlements.

According to the PLOS ONE article, concrete steps for analysts include: (1) separate adolescent and adult strata for cross-segment comparison, (2) tag environmental constraints (water, toilets, disposal) as distinct codes, and (3) retain verbatim shame-language for stigma-focused interventions.

Recap: According to the PLOS ONE article published July 24, 2026, menstrual health in Khulna’s informal settlements is shaped by environmental scarcity, stigma, and gendered resource gaps, evidenced by 18 IDIs and five KIIs collected in late 2025.

Next steps for researchers: replicate the study’s mixed deductive-inductive coding, preserve source-language nuance, and integrate WASH and stigma codes into program metrics.

If you want to operationalize these steps, Evidano can speed transcription, translation, thematic coding, and cross-segment comparison while protecting participant confidentiality.

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