2- Analysis

This assignment takes the form of an 800-1200 word memo. The goals of this assignment are to 1) reflect on your analytic process thus far, 2) describe emerging themes from your data, and 3) raise questions that still need to be answered. In a larger qualitative study, a memo like this would be an early analytic product that would help fuel the next stage of analysis.

Questions that you should consider for each of these sections are as follows.

Analytic processes:
• What process did you use to code and organize the data? (data management)
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of coding in the way you did?
• How might you approach coding differently next time?
• What techniques did you use to move toward description and interpretation?

Emerging themes:
• What appear to be the core themes thus far in the data you coded? What are the elements of these themes? What kinds of linkage have you identified, if any? (Please include quotes where appropriate to help describe and illustrate these themes; feel free to incorporate diagrams if you used these)
• Are there any examples of negative cases in the data? What kinds of negative cases could you look for in the data?

Questions to fuel analysis:
• What questions do you wish your analysis could answer that it has not yet answered?
• How might you pursue answers to these questions using additional analytic techniques with the current data?
• What additional qualitative data might you want to collect?