Drawing the elements together

The analysis began with the highlighting of elements within the story, as discussed in the detailed reading approach of van Manen (1990) (see 4.1.7). This was achieved by going from the parts [of the text] to the whole and back again (van Manen, 1990) and was an iterative and inductive process of deep engagement with the data. I continually searched for possible meanings which could be followed up in the next conversation as I read and re-read what had been said and in what particular

context. This information was then entered into two tables 6.1 and 6.2 below. These tables were created for each conversation for all of the participants.

In Table 1 the elements were grouped and referred to as ‘Literal coding of content’. The first column is an extract from the conversation with the participant, referred to as the ‘Script’. The second column highlighted key words, phrases or sentences from the script, the third column summarised the interpretation of my understanding of the key words, phrases or sentences within the context of the conversation and the participant’s story.

The following table is an example of Jessie’s first interview. Table 6.1 Literal coding of content–words, statements, ideas

Transcript 1/1 Jessie

Script Word/phrase/

sentence

Understanding of this within the context of the interview and the life story

“I never, ever regretted it, never” Never regretted It

Positive outlook—always no regret

“Well, in a way when I come here, and my mother was here and different ones I did get a wee bit earnest and I thought I

wonder if I’ll like it and all that but we all come out my husband and I and the children Well I felt a bit excited coming to my mother ya know but deep down I thought “Am I doing the right thing?”

Am I doing the right thing?

This was a major risk for Jessie and her family

“I hope it’s all right especially for the men’s part you know because my mother was here”

For the men’s part

Concern about how her husband would cope and therefore

unwilling to make the decision to come to Australia

“I just got on with it, I just got on with it you’ve just gotta get up with life you know whatever happens not let it worry you”

Just got on with it

Coped with whatever came along

“You have something and then you lose it”

Something and lose it

Nothing is forever

In Table 2 incidental data highlights repeated words and phrases emphasised in their form of delivery and referred to as ‘Incidental coding’. These forms of delivery are demonstrated in three columns, the first being the relevant phrase or emphasised words, the second column displays the reason that the data has been highlighted and the third column ‘meaning’ provides a possible interpretation of the content of the first column, and a potential meaning unit.

Table 6. 2 Incidental coding

Transcript 1/1 Jessie Reason Potential meaning unit

“I’m quite happy” Repeated twenty

times

Kind of person that they are “Work-‘cos I’ve always worked”

“Try and keep it alright” (reference to when her husband had no job)

Referred to three times but with many

associated themes.

Work allowed her to get out of the house, make friends, meet people, pay the bills when her husband could not get work, we did alright

Independence

“I never, ever regretted it, NEVER”

Voice tone,

increased volume, emphatic delivery

Regret or lack of it

“If it’s something that I really want to do”

Repeated three times

Independence

These two tables demonstrate a process where similar meanings are grouped and labelled with a word or a phrase summing them up. This ‘phenomenological

reduction’ (Moustakas, 1994) is an iterative process of “looking and describing and then looking again and describing again” (1994, p. 90). This process is not only a way of seeing, but a way of listening to the phenomena, and this opens up its textures and other ways of meaning.

Both tables provided careful management of the data as it generated and provided subsequent reference points for discussion in ensuring conversations. Eight of these tables were completed for each participant if they took part in all four interviews. The process of grouping and naming continued until the completion of the data collection stage. Meaning units began to appear as can be seen in the right hand column of table 6.2, and they are increasingly horizontalised where initially, all meaning units stood alone. Overtime they may overlap or become redundant and may be deleted.

This leaves only the horizons: “the textural meanings and invariant constituents of the phenomenon” (Moustakas, 1994, p. 97). This is the gradual paring back, contrasting, comparing and exposing of a thought or statement in an effort to eventually

comprehend its essence.

The reading and re-reading of the transcripts and the listening to their telling

continued as the second phase of the analysis began. As the titles of meaning units were created, they frequently underwent multiple changes as they shifted in

emphasis, or were changed in order to make them transparent and relevant.

Listening and re-listening to the taped conversations invoked feelings, hunches and views that I needed to capture and ‘think through’. Aspects of speech such as a prolonged silence or a deep sigh added salience to an otherwise ordinary sentence or statement, and were noted within the transcript of the conversation. I also referred back to them by listening to the tapes again.

This process acknowledged the ‘being-in-the-world’ (Heidegger, 1962) of the participants and revealed their positioning within their stories. The lived experience made sense in these terms, and my understanding of the data was enhanced. This method also acted as a means of checking emerging issues from the data which I wanted to discuss with participants in follow-up conversations. The hunches and ideas maintained the hermeneutic focus of the research approach that is the making explicit of my ‘prejudices’ (Gadamer, 1975). For example, within the meaning unit of ways and means, deterministic words such as personality were replaced, and

became human nature, and finally became kind of person that they are. This thinking allowed the process to be less prescriptive and more open—always searching for nuances and other ways of expression.The contents of each meaning unit were then re-examined, and an expression or quotation from one of the participants within the unit was sought in order to encapsulate its meaning. For example ‘humour’ was a meaning unit as many of the participants loved to laugh. After Harriet accepted her diagnosis she said: I haven’t lost my sense of...joking [searching to find the word humour] (4: 200-201, p. 8). NVivo is designed to work with the rich text-based information of qualitative data and each conversation was imported, and meaning units and later minor themes were created from the tables. This system of gathering and collating the ideas is called aggregating, and it assisted with the refinement and

sorting of ideas within a very large amount of data. The interviews were pooled and contrasted after each one had been transcribed and uploaded into NVivo. For

instance, following the second round of interviews, Table 6.3 connected the previous interviews with similar statements. This table highlighted similarity in content and meaning, and over the two conversations, it emerged as a possible meaning unit. These transcripts were then uploaded to NVivo and the search continued for similar words and statements which uncovered patterns and replication of meaning—as seen in the table of 6.3. Florence for example exemplified this ‘building on’ from what has gone before in previous conversations. In the initial conversation, Florence said of moving to Nauru with her husband and children:

Oh yes, I think when you’re young is the time to do these things. You don’t want to be trooping somewhere with your husband and kids, take them out of schools to move them somewhere else. But [um] as I say I didn’t think of it as a risk I just went along. It’s probably the best thing that we did (1: 50-53, p. 3).

When talking of going overseas with her girlfriends at eighteen in the second conversation Florence recalled:

But I was the one who was least keen to go. I was more of a homebody and it all turned out wonderfully well. We did office jobs, we took time off, we hitchhiked all over Europe staying in youth hostels and sleeping out at times. Yeah you see the four of us were like sisters—why would I stay home? It was the best thing we probably ever did (2: 24-26, p. 2).

These interviews were imported in part into table 6.3 where many key statements were contained within a possible meaning unit.

Table 6.3 The linking of phrases and meaning over time

Conversation 1 Conversation 2 Possible meaning unit

“It’s probably the best thing that we did”

It was the best thing that we probably did

Kind of person that they are

“I haven’t got a boyfriend- wouldn’t know what to do with it if I did”

F: And we’re all still here. I often wonder which one of us will be the first to die I said to Gwen [laughing]

Gwen: And I told her to shut up [laughing all round] F: How will I know? I’m the first one to lose me [sic] memory [more laughing]

Humour

Within van Manen’s human science method (1990), interpretation begins with data collection, and as the data was transcribed, it was then coded and pooled in the search for meaning. Table 6.3 demonstrated how the meaning units of kind of person that they are and humour were created. The longitudinal nature of this thesis allowed for further conversations with many more statements and further ‘building on’ of these meaning units took place. By the completion of all four interviews, there were forty meaning units in total. While each meaning unit encapsulated an aspect or a thing, I was beginning to see statements that related and overlapped with each other within the data and eventually these combined to form the minor theme of ways and means of doing things. This minor theme is based on a quote from William who related the story of being in a shop when quite suddenly he heard the sound of shots being fired nearby. He tells it thus: And I got down on the floor and crawled under the edge and got out and went home and never went back at all. So there’s always ways and means of doing something (1:180-182, p. 9). This minor theme was abbreviated to ways and means. There were eventually five minor themes in total—ways and means, loss, thinking, age and risk (see Graph 6.4).

Tables 6.1 and 6.2 demonstrated how I laid bare the data as I searched for words and phrases which signified a deeper meaning. For example, the word ‘happy’ (table

6.1) was used by Jessie twenty times in her first interview—and the word ‘quite’ preceded happy on fifteen of those instances. This is the most outstanding use of one word in all the interviews. It demanded a reflexive search for a deeper meaning by asking myself:

Why the use of this word and not something else? Is quite happy the same as happy?

Or is it something similar? Did it really mean that she was happy? Could you really be happy that much in one interview?

Did the word have multiple meanings for Jessie? Or was it really saying that she was not unhappy?

In interview two, Jessie was ‘quite happy’ five times, but the word does not appear in the last two interviews except to comment on her move into a nursing home: Who could be unhappy in here? I think it’s good it’s up to yourself (2: 131, p. 2).

To establish its intended meaning I referred to the different contexts of being happy which were used by Jessie, and fitted into several minor themes. For example, but I do alright which is good and I’ve got Meg and the kids, oh no I’m quite happy (1: 60- 81, p. 4) which referenced her day-to-day life, which fitted into the minor theme of ; ‘kind of person that you are’ and: I enjoyed it, but I’m [sic], I was happy to come back, yeah, quite happy here (1: 3, p. 3), which was how she felt after her only trip back to her homeland Scotland. This fitted into the minor theme of ways and means as Jessie’s ongoing positive attitude reflected her approach to life—she accepted her lot and made the very best of it. In the last interview two years later, Jessie nominated dancing and her inability to work as two of the losses in her life, for she loved to do both but no longer was able to do so. Her optimism nevertheless remained

undaunted and the importance of work was reinforced in the context of the last interview when she asked me if I had a job and if I was happy?

Jessie: Are you out each day- do you work each day? Are you happy?

Researcher: Yes I do, I do, and I’m happy

(4: 31-33, pp. 15-16).

The meaning here is about being engaged and doing things that make you happy, and ‘work’ was coded in loss because it is something of value which Jessie can no longer do. It fitted into several minor themes. It was coded in loss and kind of person that they are as it also reflected Jessie’s strong work ethic. This demonstrates a “collaborative hermeneutic conversation” (1990, p. 99) where the participant may reflect on experiences in subsequent interviews, and where the meaning “a deepened and more reflective understanding of the meaning” can be determined (1990, p. 86). Reading the interviews may obfuscate their intended meaning in what can only be seen as highly nuanced language, and therefore the knowledge of the personal story of each participant is important. My experiential knowledge of communication in dementia, and the work of van Manen (1990) came to the fore. Going back and reading the reflective journal and field notes ‘grounded’ initial thoughts about minor themes and allowed the study to move forward reflexively.

The hermeneutic circle of understanding (Heidegger, 1962) was at work here, with three phases of analysis—prior understanding, interrogation of the social

phenomenon and reflection on presuppositions, all of which interrelate, and become the notion of ‘reflexivity’ (McCormack, 2001, p. 67). This enhances the rigour of the study (Guba & Lincoln, 1994).