Qualatiative to Quantitative

I have been thinking a lot about my IPT 550 assignment to do a quantitative research project. Most of the data I have collected over the last two semesters from my teaching projects has been qualitative in nature. It just hit me now that this is what I should do:

1. Complete my literature review to understand the principles of measurement and correlation of my research questions.
2. Organize my qualitative data.
3. Operationalize the data (translate the data from qual to quant data) using reasons and principles from the literature review to justify the way I operationalize the data.
4. Explain in my methods section the following:
A. Qual data collection instruments and rationale
B. Qual data organization and rationale
C. Operationalization procedure and rationale
D. Quant data organization and rationale

If I can do this effectively, then my quantitative analysis of my data will naturally flow from the organization of my original qualitative data and will be performed based on the principles of operationalization that I have explained in the methods section of my write up.

Even though this sounds plausible, I still believe that there will be something missing from the results of the quantitative analysis that is inherently destroyed in the process of operationalizing the qualitative data. Still, we'll see what I get...Perhaps the findings of this assignment will be more a measure of the influence of operationalization than that of correlation between the variables I am observing. Interesting...