Methodological and analytical techniques

As mentioned, I used a framework approach, described in the following list of stages of data analysis as outlined in (Pope, et al. 2000)

2) Identifying thematic framework 3) Indexing

4) Charting

5) Mapping and interpretation

I used this framework approach for determining cultural influences and manifestation as risk assessment was applied through the ANMVT policy for each birth situation

described by study participants.

2.5.1 Familiarization

While in the field, on each occasion i.e. preliminary and multiple fieldwork sessions in each community, I took notes regarding my observations as to what was happening and referred to the notes as I continued interviewing. During the preliminary phase, the videographer and I videotaped a conversation with a group of Buckland mothers and in the last phase of data collection, the research assistant and I recorded some of our unstructured interviews with participants in Point Hope.

As I originally began working on Version 1 data collection and analysis, I was preparing my first field notes and interview transcripts for entry into UCINET 6©9, a Social Network Analysis (SNA) software program. Since the nature and parameters of the research changed, however, I abandoned the SNA portion of the design, and simply transcribed the interviews into Microsoft Word© 201010 for later sorting, indexing and interpretation, as described in sections below. I had acquired and loaded Atlas.ti 6.2©11 for sorting, labeling and managing the data, but after a few attempts, and some further background investigation, I discovered that the software was more applicable for larger datasets. I could accomplish the same routines with Microsoft Word's search and compare functions and manually placing like-items in files together.

Before beginning these analytical processes, however, I played and replayed

recordings, viewed and reviewed the videotape, and read and re-read field notes. I looked

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Ucinet 6 for Windows: Software for Social Network Analysis. 2002. Analytic Technologies. Harvard, MA. 10

Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Microsoft Word 2010. October 26, 2010. Microsoft. Redmond, Washington 11

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over the secondary data like ANTHC and community and village descriptive reports; and statistics from the Alaska Bureau of Vital Statistics and the State's Alaska Native

Epidemiology Center. Immersion in the background material and especially in data collected from the field, led to discovery of certain themes. Certain words, ideas, or elements began to surface during the familiarization process of constant comparison that provided a sorting scheme from which I could begin to analyze the data.

2.5.2 Identifying thematic framework

With the list of discovered themes, I was able to construct a filing system of sorts, beyond the characteristics of age or community, that would become the framework with which the data to be examined and referenced. Using the issues and questions that were originally derived from the aims and objectives of the study, along with topics raised by the participants themselves and views and experiences that recur in the data, I was able to identify the key issues, concepts, and themes present. With these thematic headings I was able to categorize segments of conversations that stressed these different constructs and create an index of the data, labeling the data into manageable pieces for subsequent retrieval and exploration.

I used constant comparison techniques (Pope, et al. 2000) to accomplish

identification of these themes until I reached a saturation point, i.e. until further iterations began to reveal identical themes.

2.5.3 Indexing

Once I identified the thematic framework, I annotated the transcripts with numerical codes from the index. Some of the passages had numerous themes, and would therefore, be cross-referenced under several thematic headings. These cross-references were noted in the margins of each transcript.

2.5.4 Charting

According to Pope, Ziebland, and Mays (2000:116), charting is "the act of arranging the data according to the appropriate part of the thematic framework to which they relate, and forming charts." This basically means making tables or diagrams from the results of the indexing process. Done properly, there should be a chart for each key subject area or

theme with entries for several respondents. These charts will not contain simple cut and pasted verbatim text, but rather distilled summaries of views and experiences. Therefore, this step of analysis involves a great deal of "abstraction and synthesis (Pope, et al. 2000)."

2.5.5 Mapping and interpretation

With the chart I constructed to define concepts, I then created typologies and found associations between and among themes—concerning the range and nature of feelings surrounding the experiences of the participants as they delivered under different situations. In this way, I provide explanations for the findings of the research. The

original research objectives, then, have guided the process of mapping and interpretation, along with the themes that emerged from the data themselves.

2. 6 Summary

I have described the development and design and the framework approach used to analyze results for this thesis. Through a recursive process of first deductive, then inductive analyses, along with the development of grounded theory, I was able to code, compile, and analyze data gathered from the Arctic Passages ethnographic fieldwork.

I present the Anthropology of Birth as a theoretical framework in chapter 3 and include an extensive literature review i.e. Jordan (1996), Kitzinger (1991) , Davis-Floyd (1997), that covers the medicalization and surveillance involved in birth. Jordan's

explanation of how 'authoritative voice' operates in a maternal care delivery system is particularly useful to my analysis. Furthermore, I look at the network of individual birthing practices, culture, community, and in some cases, nationalism or factionalism.