Qualitative Research in Practice : Stories From the Field - Blogs Unpad

Presenting and writing up
the principals of middle-class schools, and all the other combinations
of relations and school types created by cross-classifying relation and
class ...Either way, I would report the same results (although in a
different order) and arrive at essentially the same conclusions (though
the terms they were put in and their emphases would differ). What I
said about the implications for social science theory and social policy
would differ, naturally. If I used my results to answer different
questions, the answers would look different. But none of that would
affect the work that lay immediately ahead of me as I began writing
my thesis. Why worry about it? (Becker, 1986, p. 58).
While quantitative studies lend themselves more naturally to the
succinct presentation of results and discussion of relevant findings,
the distinction can be less clear-cut in qualitative research, where
description and interpretation are more closely interwoven. We have
found it helpful to divide a report into major topic areas and to
include a separate discussion section within each, after the thematic
description. In this way, the author’s interpretation does not become
too intermingled with the voices of the research participants, but
occurs close enough to the thematic analysis to allow the reader to
see how it has been interpreted. Whatever choice is made, it is
important to be clear about who is talking at any point.
We have been talking particularly about qualitative studies that
focus closely on participants’ accounts and draw their interpretations
from the data, developing theory using an inductive logic.
These comments are less applicable to theory testing studies. The
latter tend to be more conceptually driven than data driven and the
kinds of writing-up issues we have been addressing often do not
arise—the theory being tested, or the conceptual framework driving
the study, also provides the structure for the report.
In writing up qualitative research it is not always immediately
obvious what tense should be used for the various parts of the
report. This is especially so in studies which include direct quotes
from participants, where the primary inclination will often be to
present them in as immediate a way as possible. Wolcott provides
useful advice, however, in the suggestion to write descriptive
passages in the past tense right from the start, even if this seems
odd or even disrespectful to participants you may still be working
with or whose reported experiences are still vividly in your mind—
certainly one works with their words for a long time through the
analysis and writing up processes. He says:
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