Category Archives: data

devouring your data

You’ve read hundreds of books. You’ve waded through archival material. You’ve got mountains of surveys, folders full of transcripts, notebooks stuffed with barely legible field notes, and rather more photographs than you initially intended. Now what? How is it going … Continue reading

Posted in analysis, data | Tagged , | 10 Comments

a little Romantic messiness

A post for National Poetry Day. It is pretty common for research methods courses and books to suggest that qualitative researchers read through their data – such as interview transcripts – several times. Reading through happens before you get down … Continue reading

Posted in data, interview transcripts, John Keats, mess, negative capability | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

find a strategic entry to the data…

When I’m beginning a new slab of data analysis I try to locate a strategic way into the overall topic. I look to see if there are one or two things that I can do fairly quickly to create something … Continue reading

Posted in data, Tate Summer School, voice recognition software | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

after the field work – what next?

It’s summer in the UK and we are officially on leave. Well, only sort of. Most academics manage to squeeze in a bit of time off, but I had my week in France a few weeks ago because I knew … Continue reading

Posted in data, reflection, research project, Tate Summer School | Tagged , | 2 Comments

do we ‘collect’ data? or – beware the ontological slip …

A post where I have a small rant about one of my least favorite research expressions… We’ve all heard of a Freudian slip. This is where we inadvertently say something that unintentionally reveals an unconscious, or repressed, feeling, idea or … Continue reading

Posted in data, epistemology, methodology, ontology | Tagged , , , , , | 20 Comments

analysing blogs is messy, but that’s OK. #acwrimo work in progress

This post is from Inger, Thesis Whisperer, about the process of researching academic blogs. Here she discusses making decisions about method, and provides a glimpse, via a link to her google doc, of actual data analysis happening in real time. … Continue reading

Posted in academic blogging, acwrimo, data, epistemology, grounded theory, mess, qualitative data, spread sheet | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Writing for publication – it’s just a matter of meeting the conventions of a journal, right?

Well, no. Not exactly. There is more involved in making choices about how to write for your target journal than simply deciding to adopt their usual writing style. I need to explain this assertion. Let’s take the example of what … Continue reading

Posted in academic writing, data, epistemology, knowledge production | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments