Analysis of Journals

There could be a tendency to believe that the evidence speaks for itself in a clean, objective, rational process. In reality, teasing out can reveal what can be a subjective, organic, and messy matter with subjective interpretations. The potentially contaminated aspect of the process overshadowed the analysis and drove a conscious search for bias awareness at regular intervals.

Appropriately, (in the spirit of individual Constructionism) each participant approached the journal writing with their own particular perspective; some had daily narratives of material, some with bullet points addressing the 18 reflective points offered as triggers. The freedom for them to use their own comfortable format was vital to the success of the project in establishing control for the release of information to the participants. They described their methods for journal completion: some carried their journal with them everywhere they went; others put aside time last thing at night as they sat up in bed; some met at lunchtime with friends to update their journal and offer their account with some commenting that their other Mature student friends (not participating in the study) had offered input. One female participant confessed it had become a joint project with her husband (another non-participant Mature student). One male wrote in narrative format, highlighting points of a particularly sensitive nature which he then that followed up at interview, (expressing shyness at writing it down). From the beginning, the level of personal feelings they were prepared to document was unexpected.

The data management was assisted, to some extent, by the documentation from the participants being already in written format. Five participants chose to diarise in computer format, with 11 bringing in hard copy journals. The focus of the initial analysis was on familiarising myself with the raw data, making connections, noting frequency of use of particular phrases and words, identifying patterns and structures in individual data sets and between participants’ personal accounts. Gradually key themes began to reveal themselves as patterns within, and correlating with, the literature pattern discussed in Part II.

Until this point, and in spite of my commitment to a qualitative approach, I had been deliberately erring on the side of mechanistic tendencies where possible. This, quite deliberately, was used as a defence against any perceived bias on my part by identifying what I would consider would be areas of importance. However, the second stage had been designed to allow more creativity with the assurance that the participants themselves had chosen the priorities up to this point. The assumption could be that the journals were self-declaring and this was all the participants had to say on the subject. However the hints of underlying reasons became apparent as the next stage involved close inspection of the raw data, interrogating it, splitting it up, taking alternative slices of it to find different angles of viewing it and different pathways through it, an intuitive process, described by Woolcott (1994) as “Transformation”. A similar process is described by Dey (1993) as “Classification” and by Huberman and Miles (1994) as “Data Reduction”. Personally preferring the Woolcott description, I found in the others an implication that the data is static, rigid or diminished throughout the process, by selection and even loss of data; and this was not my experience. In the spirit of the interactive process, the richness of the material in front of me was combined and consolidated in effect when links were found with other data; the raw material seemed to grow in terms of alternative meanings and questions were raised again and again with each segment identified and coding verified according to a code list (Appendix 9). Analysis maps helped to manage the data in a typology displayed pictorially as I worked (examples provided of two stages in Appendices 10a and b). The meanings were checked and expanded upon with participants in further interviews.

During the analysis process quotes were identified as representative of the labelled sections as in Appendices 10a and b. However, given the possible use of numerous alternative quotes, the eventual quotes used were chosen using the criteria of representation of the others. The dramatic or exceptions were avoided and attention had to be given to retaining the anonymity which could have inadvertently been betrayed. The eventual usage within the thesis was targeted at a fairrepresentation of the viewpoints raised by the participants.

What I found most appropriate throughout the analytical process was highlighted in the observation by Coffey and Atkinson (1996:10):

“data are segmented and divided into meaningful units, but connection to the whole unit is maintained”

This could represent a pre-emptory caution in response to those advocating narrative analysis as a useful tool for my work. The narrative approach had been the most obvious analytic style to consider. It seemed highly sensible to present the stories of the participants in terms of Labov’s model (1982) telling what the story is about, by examining what happens through to a final conclusion. The journals of two participants (Nigel and Margaret) did seem to fit well within this model in the way the participants formatted them. They also cross-linked many of their statements making division of data very difficult without losing some of the context and meaning. Expanding on the preceding statement, they presented an interpretation greater than the sum of the two separate statements, and this richness would have been lost if an individual segment in their journal had been taken out of context.

In considering and re-considering the journals and their contents, it became obvious that verification and further exploration was needed if meanings were to be drawn. More questions were raised than were answered by the process and so, after coding into the 18 themes, some areas of questions were identified within each which were worth exploring with each participant and the study was taken forward to the second stage of semi-structured interviews conducted throughout the second semester. In addition to the standard questions (listed in Appendix 11) which formed the outline of these second stage interviews, highlighted statements in the journals were individually queried with the appropriate participant assisting with clarification and avoiding erroneous interpretation. The objective was to ensure that the final resulting account was one with which the participant was content as being an accurate reflection of the personal meaning they placed on their experience.

8.10 Semi-Structured Interviews