Atrapos.eu » Data Analysis

‘Inner Data Analysis’ (West, 2005)

atrapos — Thu, 07 May 2009 12:36:53 +0000

It has been a long time now that i am trying to write and constantly manoeuvre the findings chapter of my thesis, it is like driving a big van where you need to have awareness of its size and its edges without really being able to see them. I realise that the analysis and the writing are two activities that happen simultaneously. My methodology and particular research process has not got clear-cut steps of analysis (like in grounded theory for example) and sometimes this makes me feel on edge about what i am doing. On the other hand, the more i get into doing what i keep doing intuitively and the more i read about how others did a similar process, it all feels right somehow, although quite stressful. It is again the whole reaction to the unknown and the surrendering to the process. I have been doing it for so long now, i am kind of not that scared of the deep sea, i am a good ‘swimmer’. It is just that it is exhausting and i find that i need to be sleeping longer hours, as if my body and mind need to switch off…and then, more dreams come in my sleep, so not much ‘escape’ really! i am now more comfortable with the idea that this journey is to be taken very consciously and i see how i transform in the way that i am reflecting on things, the researcher in me keeps maturing and growing…and the practitioner too, i see how sharp i am with supervising the Diploma students at work. The whole process is so eloquently discussed by my supervisor in his 2005 book, where he calls it ‘inner data analysis’; i have been reading this section again and i am re-visiting the writing of the findings chapter, still a lot to do, still decisions to be made there, i try things and see if they make sense, my meaning-making process is quite deep at present…i immerse, incubate, illuminate, explicate and so on, all over again, variosu times, the whole research process has its own temperament and mood – i try to respect the natural flow but also remain disciplines, as much as i can, whilst looking after myself with short breaks or nurturing treats (good food, sleep, going for a walk, seeing friends, dance, exercise)

Analysing interview transcripts and writing

atrapos — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:06:26 +0000

It has been nearly a month since i wrote a post in this blog, this having to do mainly with some health-related issues that have run me down but also cause i needed to withdraw from the public sphere and immerse in the interview transcripts that am working on…it is a slower and more time-consuming process than one may think!

I had some very positive feedback by two participants in response to the refelxive summaries of our interview that i had sent me which gave me a further boost to continue as i do, even if slow, i want to respect my heuristic pace and also make good justice to the transcripts.

A fellow research student was asking my advice about how to go about heuristic data analysis, in order to help her make a start with handling her own interview data. I am recording my email response to her below, which was agreed also by our supervisor that it is a good understanding of heuristics and good way forward: (more…)

organising, structuring, meaning-making…as you write

atrapos — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 10:53:59 +0000

It is a couple of weeks that i am trying to draft the Findings chapter of the Thesis, as a first attempt of doing something more focused and organised…and finding it hard and slow process. I have written down a general outline of how the ‘scaffolding’ of the chapter would be and what it may include, i showed it to my supervisor and he encouraged me to proceed with it. The target a have set for myself is to have something written before i have supervision again so that we can talk with things on paper. As i am trying to write, i see that the data is still all cluttered in my head and in my ‘ raw papers’ of transcripts if you like, although i have done some work with finding important verbatim quotes from participants and so on.

I think that what is happening is that i am trying to construct meaning whilst am looking at the transcripts and reading the participants’ stories. I am writing a couple of paragraphs for each participant so that i can introduce them to the reader and i see that this may take up a lot of word count. I am doing this now without thinking too much about it and will decide later, in supervision, whether i will leave at the main body of my text or in an appendix. As i read the transcripts to remember the stories and write the portraits, i am also finding the quotes that seem significant. I haven’t used any package to systematise those and i do wonder sometimes if i should have done but actually i think that this would not suit my methodology which requires that i have more freedom with the handling of the data rathern that squeezing in boxes etc…at this stage, i am accepting that it is all confusing still and that it will be getting more clear as i write and re-write, even if that is going slow for now…the more clear it becomes, the more easily it will ‘write itself’ .

working on research transcripts

atrapos — Tue, 13 May 2008 11:18:10 +0000

It’s been a coupleof weeks that i havent written anything on this blog as i am working on the research transcripts and trying to see how i will analyse the datqa heuristically speaking. I guess it in another process of ‘immersion’ in the material where i try to find the meaning units and see the patterns or any insights emerging from the interviews. I am writing summaries of each interviews and intend to send back to each interviewee for verification and any feedback. The whole Phd project feels huge at the moment, i need to be making a plan of smaller goald and work within deadlines. I am now focusing on the interviews i conducted with Greek immigrant therapists (some still in host culture and some who have returned to Greece) and i am going to write a case study that will be presented at the IAAP conference in Berlin in July…will write more here as i proceed….

working on data analysis with interview transcripts

atrapos — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:26:08 +0000

During the last few days, i have been working closely with an interview transcript to see how i approch the data analysis. there are many challenges that appear and decisions that are to be made, i will discuss all my concers with supervisor and the PhD group this coming week. I have just sent my analysis notes to my supervisor by email and wrote the following to him, amongst else: (more…)

Listening to and editing interview transcripts

atrapos — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 16:06:36 +0000

During the last couple of days, am trying to organise the data i have gathered through research interviews and start working on data analysis more systematically. What i see as needing to do is:

- listen to the recordings as am reading the transcripts and make any grammar and content corrections

- see what themes stand out in the first instance

- send transcripts back to interviewees, together with any emerging comments that would potentially generate more reflections in a post-interview phase

From the very beginning of my research, i was aware (and still am!) of the fact that my topic raise issues that are hard to put into words and this is why i often feel as if ‘i do not really have any data’, although i have a good number of recordings.Now i am in the phase of getting into the words/text of my research and try to make sense of it as well as attempt to make a syntheiss at a later stage…all this needs a lot of discipline and i shall keep having a rythm of working that can contain all this process

about ‘interpretation’ in counselling research

atrapos — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 06:30:34 +0000

My fellow student S. has posed via email the following very interesting question:

“What do you think the difference is between: a therapeutic interpretation of what is being heard by the therapist and a methodological interpretation of text being read by the researcher? It is not a trick question”

Our supervisor has answered as follows:

“The big difference is the intention. I would expect a therapeutic interpretation to be part of the client’s moving on therapeutically, so how it timed and how it is said etc all crucial as well as actual content. In research it has to convince the reader – right language, right references, good rhetoric, add a dash of surprise to keep the reader awake e.g. use of images, unusual references, language, puns etc, so it has to work as text whilst the therapists has to work embodied“

I found this very important to keep in mind, especially when we know that as counsellors (especially those following relational models) we are used to bring a lot ourselves in the dynamic, we are not detached whilst operating within certain boundaries. the researcher and the data also form a ‘relationship’, which however has different dynamics, difficult to put into words though. So, the interpretations we make of the data, in order to ‘work as text’ as William is suggesting, seems to me that it requires this kind of ‘synthesising’ angle that reveals the phenomenon under investigation as much vividly as possible

Paper on thematic analysis

atrapos — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:11:23 +0000

I was sent an interesting article about thematic analysis that i shall definitelly look at and use it as i will be working on the interview transcripts. Here is the reference, before i forget!
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101.