3. Research process
3.3. Phase three: Data analysis
There was no definite beginning of the data analysis and writing. Even before I developed a research proposal I was in a sense writing M.’s story.
This ‘internal writing’ in fact became the very rationale for the research. I found it necessary to develop a recognition of the importance of how my past experience influences the way I understand another’s past experience, what Connor (1999:16) describes as a “hermeneutical consciousness.” This is particularly important in view of my relationship to some of the participants – mother to one, friend and ex-clinician to another. I am also aware that like Meier (1998) my clinical knowledge has no doubt also shaped my interpretation of the narratives and the analysis.
The data analysis process began during the data collection phase, as emerging insights suggested direction for further data collection. There were levels of data interpretation even before data analysis began.
Interpretation occurs by the informant during the telling and again by the listener/researcher in the listening (Bruner, 1986, Churchill, 2000, Goodson
& Sykes, 2001). It is not possible, according to Salter (1998), to listen to a story with absolute impartiality, or “to still our ‘theorising voices’ as we constantly reflect and seek explanations for our own experiences in the stories of others” (Salter, 1998 citing Bishop, 1996). It was important through this first level of “listening analysis” not to succumb to the desire to ignore parts of the story told that may not have seemed useful for my research purposes (Kazmierska, 2004). Indeed there were entire themes I may have missed had I not “listened beyond the research questions,” such as the type of support sought and the persons approached for that support, as well as the issue of blaming extrinsic factors, all discussed in Chapter
& Reiff, 1991:3) states is a strength of qualitative research: “…qualitative data are more likely to lead to serendipitous findings and to new theoretical integrations; they help researchers go beyond initial preconceptions and frameworks.”
Another level of interpretation occurred between listening to and transcribing interviews (Bruner, 1986). As this is an inductive research process (Creswell, 1994, Meier, 1998), I found that even as I transcribed all interviews and audio journal entries I made choices about how to
“clean” the data (Lemke, 1998, Plummer, 2001) by electing to keep in the interjections and hesitations where I felt they added to the text. There were times when it was clear form the hesitation that the informant was discussing a difficult or painful experience, and here I elected to leave in the ”ums and ers”. The interjections and nonfluency in one informant’s speech was particularly important as this was clearly part of his experience of LD. It can also be claimed that analysis even began in the transcribing (Bartlett & Payne, 1997) in the way I chose to break lines and separate propositions.
According to Plummer (1983, in Cole and Knowles, 2001:99) analysis involves: “ brooding and reflecting upon mounds of data… until it makes sense and feels right.” In transcribing the “brooding” started and it was these early reflections on the data from initial interviews that dictated to some extent the need for and the direction taken in subsequent interviews. It is interesting that the interviews with the female informants yielded rich data almost at the outset. There was a shared vision for the research and commitment to telling the story in a “no holds barred” manner. Although this can be accounted for in part by the fact that one of the female informants was my own daughter, and therefore the relationship between
’interviewer’ and ‘interviewee’ was not a typical one, and another of the female informants was a friend who had known me for a number of years, even the third participant, who had no prior relationship with either me or my daughter, was very open and forthcoming in the initial interview.
However the male informants were more reticent. The one, who had a previous relationship with me as I had been a therapist at the school he attended some years before, and in fact had been his speech-language therapist briefly, was extremely reticent. The planned “guided conversation” turned into a question and answer interview where answers were limited. However what was interesting was that very often it was necessary to note his nonverbal responses as these would not support his verbal response. Gorden (1980:355), cited in Fontana and Frey (2003:87) describes four types of nonverbal communication: proxemic, which refers to interpersonal space; chronemic or the pace of the speech and pause duration; kinesic which refers to body movements and posture and fourthly paralinguistic, which includes features such as tone, loudness and pitch.
For informant B., who gave so little verbally, the kinesic aspect gave information, for example when asked to recall a particular grade he would respond verbally by saying he couldn’t remember, but the body movement, breaking of eye contact, agitation of his foot seemed to say “don’t go there, I’m not prepared to discuss it.” The second male informant was extremely open, but his responses were constrained by his nonfluency, word-finding difficulty and poor oral language.
3.3.1.Data analysis process
In approaching the data I tried to avoid “preconceived notions, expectations, or frameworks” (Creswell, 1994 :94) in the data analysis process. However I was aware that by making interview content data, by transcribing and even through selecting how and what to transcribe, I was already providing a specific framing for my own purpose (Lemke, 1998).
The following procedures were followed in order for qualitative thematic categorization of the data to be obtained:
• Scanning and cleaning of the data:
In transcribing what was spoken in the interview and audio journals into written test for the purpose of analyzing there was a risk of
“sanitizing” the text by removing the hesitations, false starts and nonfluencies. As this provided some useful information, especially
vocalisations, and I used diacritics such as dashes to mark the duration of the pause or hesitations. I found this meaningful especially for the two male informants. Informant A. presented with nonfluent speech due to word finding difficulty, which resulted in false stars, re-starts, hesitations, ellipsis and even ungrammatical sentence forms. However the meaning of the message was apparent.
In B.’s case the verbal response was at times inconsistent with the nonverbal, for example he would say he didn’t remember an incident but body movement, breaking of eye contact and even his eyes tearing up sent a different message. As three of the informants became tearful during the interviews, I used a symbol in the transcript to denote tears when this occurred.
• Thematic analysis:
Identifying the “smallest elements” without losing meaning: these meaning units (Ely et al., 1997) were of varying lengths, ranging from single words to phrases or even paragraphs. Such elements included identifying “moments” e.g. happy moments, distressing moments, moments of shame/ embarrassment (Alant, 2003)19
• Units were then coded (Creswell, 1994 :156).
I developed a story matrix 20 which served as a framework for the initial analysis. These matrices were then used in constructing the stories. The initial elements were sourced from the literature (Alerby, 2003, Augur, 1995, Doherty et al., 2000, Frank, 2002, Riddick, 1996), and then additional elements were added as I went through the data. This became an iterative process: new elements or units expanded the matrix, and I then went back to each transcript with the expanded matrices and looked for similarities across stories, and shared experiences. Themes were identified.
• Thematic categorization:
Categorisation for sorting had to be flexible with the organizing system dictated to some extent by the data generated and by the patterns of experiences that were noted (Creswell, 1994 :157). Like
19Dr. B. Alant Personal communication Seminar series 7/06/03
Connell, Lynch & Waring (2001), I developed initial themes from the literature, and developed others as they became apparent in the data.
One area where I exercise caution is, that whilst I accept and even
“embrace” the subjective nature of this research, as discussed above, I have a commitment to tell the insider’s story, not mine. The importance of plausibility, authenticity or verisimilitude (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) is paramount. Therefore in writing up the data I was constantly mindful of the danger of my voice predominating (Mehra, 2002). During the writing up of the report and representation of the data, in attempting to establish the veracity or truth of my analysis and conclusions from the data I would frequently set up an iterative process with two of the informants with whom I had frequent contact: my own daughter being one.
3.3.2. Data analysis tactics
Multiple analyses of the same data were done, utilizing the following tactics:
• Factoring data into themes;
• Data clustering or grouping of similar data;
• Weighting the data – data set 1 was given more weight, considered stronger than sets 2 and 3 in order to privilege the child’s voice.