RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

SYSTEMATIC APPROACHES TO DATA ANALYSIS 471
Associating: with other work that has been done
Hypothesis development
hypothesis testing
Immersion: in the data collected, to pick up all
the clues
Categorizing: in which the categories and their
labels must reflect the purpose of the research,
be exhaustive and be mutually exclusive
Incubation: e.g. reflecting on data and
developing interpretations and meanings
Synthesis: involving a review of the rationale
for coding and an identification of the emerging
patterns and themes
Culling: condensing, excising and even
reinterpreting the data so that they can be
written up intelligibly
Interpretation: making meaning of the data
Writing: including giving clear guidance on the
incidence of occurrence; proving an indication
of direction and intentionality of feelings;
being aware of what is not said as well as
what is said – silences; indicating salience (to
the readers and respondents)
Rethinking.
Content analysis is addressed more fully in
Chapter 23. This process, Brenner et al. (1985:
144) suggest, requires researchers to address several
factors:
Cull the data; being selective is important
because it is impossible to report everything
that happened.
Interpret the data, identifying its meaning and
implication.
Write up the report.
Rethink and rewrite: have the research
objectives been met
Hycner (1985) sets out procedures that can
be followed when phenomenologically analysing
interview data. We saw in Chapter 1 that
the phenomenologist advocates the study of
direct experience taken at face value and sees
behaviour as determined by the phenomena of
experience rather than by external, objective and
physically described reality. Hycner (1985) points
out that there is a reluctance on the part of
phenomenologists to focus too much on specific
steps in research methods for fear that they will
become reified. The steps suggested by Hycner,
however, offer a possible way of analysing data
which allays such fears. As he himself explains, his
guidelines ‘have arisen out of a number of years
of teaching phenomenological research classes to
graduate psychology students and trying to be true
to the phenomenon of interview data while also
providing concrete guidelines’ (Hycner 1985). In
summary, the guidelines are as follows:
Chapter 22
Understand the research brief thoroughly.
Evaluate the relevance of the sample for the
research project.
Associate their own experiences with the
problem, looking for clues from the past.
Develop testable hypotheses as the basis for
the content analysis (Brenner et al.1985name
this the ‘Concept Book’).
Test the hypotheses throughout the interviewing
and analysis process.
Stay immersed in the data throughout the
study.
Categorize the data in the Concept Book,
creating labels and codes.
Incubate the data before writing up.
Synthesize the data in the Concept Book,
looking for key concepts.
Transcription: having the interview tape transcribed,
noting not only the literal statements
but also non-verbal and paralinguistic communication.
Bracketing and phenomenological reduction:
this means ‘suspending (bracketing) as
much as possible the researcher’s meaning
and interpretations and entering into the
world of the unique individual who was
interviewed’ (Hycner 1985). The researcher
thus sets out to understand what the
interviewee is saying rather than what the
researcher expects that person to say.
Listening to the interview for a sense of the whole:
this involves listening to the entire tape several
times and reading the transcription a number
of times in order to provide a context for the