Analysing qualitative interviews

Each audio recorded interview was transcribed verbatim. I transcribed interviews conducted in English while interviews conducted in Luganda were transcribed and translated by a trained translator. I listened to all interview recordings in Luganda and checked corresponding transcripts to ensure completeness of the transcription. Furthermore, to ensure accuracy and consistency in the Luganda interviews, we discussed and reached a consensus on aspects of translations that I or the translator found challenging. Interview transcripts, all in English were imported into ATLAS.ti, a computer software for analysis of qualitative data and prepared for analysis following the approach described below. Each participating mother was assigned a pseudonym to ensure anonymity.

For the analysis of qualitative material in general and narrative interviews in particular, several methods and approaches exist. However, since narrative interviewing was undertaken for this study, I focused on available methods for analysing narrative materials including interviews (Riessman, 2008). Table 13 summarises some of the common methods.

122 Table 13: Methods of narrative analysis

Narrative analysis approach Description Relevance Thematic analysis Focus is on the content –the

“what” of the narrative

Helps to thematically categorise issues explored Structural analysis Focus is on both content and

form of the narrative

Helps identify an

overarching story or mini stories in the narrative Dialogic/Performance

analysis

Focus is on interactive

production of narrative among speakers

Helps identify the role of context in story told

Visual analysis Focus is on words and images from several visual outputs

Helps interpret images alongside spoken and written words

With the aim of generating an overarching childbirth story I conducted structural analysis of interview as it was the most appropriate method to gain the meanings mothers attached to their experiences as the study objectives. In particular, I employed Crossley’s (2000) approach focusing on content and structure of the interview in analysing the interviews about women’s childbirth experiences. The process of analysing narrative material according to Crossley is an interpretative one that requires the investigator to engage with the text so as to derive meaning through interpretation. Crossley suggested six key steps in conducting a narrative analysis which were followed in this analysis: 1) Reading and familiarising yourself with data; 2) Identifying important concepts to look for; 3) Identifying the underlying narrative tone; 4) identifying imagery and themes in the narrative; 5) Weaving all the above into a coherent story and finally 6) writing up. The steps suggested by Crossley though might appear linear, the actual process involves a researcher moving back and forth as illustrated below.

I reread each interview three to four times to familiarise with the content and structure of the mother’s narrative. To help better interpretation the narrative, I summarised the mother’s story in chronological order focusing on key experiences (Bold, 2012) of childbirth. Simpson, Heath, and Wall (2014) used this approach in analysing interview data on patients’ experiences of

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living with a pituitary tumour. It is recommended that participants are given opportunity to give feedback on the summarised interview material (Bold, 2012; Squire, 2008). For this study, however, participant’s feedback was not feasible due to difficulties in accessing participants as the analysis was conducted away from the study area. Due diligence was done to ensure that the integrity of participant’s narratives in the summary stories was maintained through use of excerpts from the original interview transcripts.

Whereas, I moved back and forth between the full interview transcript and summary story, individual summary stories were the focus of analysis. The analysis process proceeded by inductively identifying and coding principal elements in the women’s stories. These included characters in the story, key events, emotions, tone, imagery and themes. To enhance chronology of the women’s individual stories and subsequent comparison of these stories, I coded the women’s journey of childbirth into three key stages: 1) Issues leading to mother’s confirmation of pregnancy; 2) Pregnancy and related experiences; 3) Labour, delivery and post-delivery.

Crossley (2000) noted that the narrative tone is one of the most pervasive aspect of the story and can be optimistic or pessimistic regardless of the experiences narrated. I therefore paid attention to the tone underlying the women’s narratives. The coding process continued for all the interviews while keeping record of the process through the memo and comment functions of ATLAS.ti. Using the memo function, I kept a research diary and questions guiding the analysis process. The iterative coding and refining of codes of the principal elements continued until I was confident that all key elements listed earlier were appropriately coded.

Using the codes of principal elements and their corresponding quotations in each stage of the women’s childbirth stories, I constructed interpretative narratives of each of the mothers by weaving together all the principal elements and typology of narrative. This was done using the memo function of ATLAS.ti and linked to the parent interview transcripts and summary stories.

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Sample summary stories and my interpretative stories of women’s narratives are in Appendix 6.

My reflections on both content and structure of the interpretive stories revealed that although there were some differences in the women’s lived experiences of childbirth there were several similarities. The similarities and differences were expected as the interviews with mothers sought their lived experiences on a common phenomenon (Bold, 2012) of childbirth. Interpretative stories were used to generate a final narrative (Bold, 2012; Simpson et al.; 2014) of childbirth presented as ‘acts’ (Simpson et al., 2014) on key features forming the women’s childbirth experiences. Quotations were used throughout the shared childbirth narrative to highlight similarities and differences in the participants’ experiences. Wherever quotations from participants are used, (.) represents a pause, […] indicates omitted words and {} indicates an action by the interviewee (Simpson et al., 2014). Emergent themes (Appendix 7) underlying specific experiences in the shared narrative were also identified to facilitate further understanding of the women’s lived childbirth experiences. The overarching childbirth story is presented in the results chapter.