Outcomes of this phenomenographic study

The aim of this study was to collect the three sets of data (semi-structured

[phenomenographic] interview, tutorial and video stimulated recall and reflection interview) from each of the 10 lecturers in nursing from England and Scotland and then transcribe all of the data. The 30 transcriptions were then uploaded on to Atlas ti ready for analysis. The data was segregated into three sections: initial semi-structured (phenomenographic), interview 2 (tutorial) and interview 3 (video stimulated recall and reflection interview). After 16 months, with the data collection completed, I was conscious not to move too quickly and attempt to categorise the data as Walsh (1994, p. 19) warns that there is ‘an inevitable tension being faithful to the data and at the same time creating, from the point of view of the researcher, a tidy construction that is useful’. By exercising interpretative awareness, I aimed for maximum fidelity to the data. Equally important was to avoid closing the analysis stage too prematurely for the sake of being tempted to arrange the categories of description.

Susan Harness 122 The initial steps to examining the data involved seven steps to analysis as shown in Table 5.

Table 5 Seven steps to analysis (Dahlgren 1991)

1 Familiarisation Reading through the interview transcripts to get a fresh impression of how the interview proceeded in this initial phase, all data in the entire pool are given equal consideration.

2 Condensation Identifying meaning units in the dialogue and marking or saving these for the purpose of further scrutiny. The size of the meaning units identified in this step varies: some researchers claim that these chunks can be fairly small, whereas others emphasise the importance of keeping the whole transcript more or less together.

3 Comparison Comparing the units with regard to similarities and differences 4 Grouping Allocating answers expressing similar ways of understanding the

phenomenon to the same category.

5 Articulating Capturing the essential meaning of a certain category.

6 Labelling Expressing the core meaning of the category. Steps 3-6 are repeated in an iterative procedure to make sure that the similarities within and differences between categories are discerned and formulated in a distinct way.

7 Contrasting Comparing the categories through a contrastive procedure whereby the categories are described in terms of their individual meanings as well as in terms of what they do not comprise.

Initially, it was imperative that I was familiar with the data, by reading and re-reading the transcripts as well as watching the video recordings multiple times. The next step was to condense certain sections of the data that were initially seen as representative as a conception of being a lecturer in nursing. The intention here was to gather the collective ‘conceptions of being’ into what Bowden (2000, p. 11) terms a ‘pool of meanings’ that describes their understandings of the phenomenon. This pool of meanings represents the multiple ways of experiencing being a lecturer in nursing. Following on from this, each meaning was compared to see if they had any similarities or differences to one another. For example, consideration was given to understand if being a facilitator or an educator were different and why. The next stage involved similar conceptions of identity being placed in the same group and then attaching a code within Atlas ti to the utterances and quotations, with a memo being added to each code to explain why a particular code had been given and what this meant. Once all of the initial conceptions were organised into initial categories, there was the final process of comparing and contrasting to ensure that the conceptions were as faithful as possible then subsequently arranged into five ‘categories of descriptions’. Marton (1994, p. 3011) explained that ‘categories of description are logically related to each other, and form hierarchies in relation to given criteria. Such an ordered set of categories is called the ‘outcome space’ of the phenomena’.

Susan Harness 123 The outcome space is represented by what Bruce (1997, p. 187) describes as a ‘tool to capture and communicate the features of the experiences or the phenomenon’. Furthermore, Åkerlind (2005a, p. 322) explains the outcome space as ‘the structural relationship linking these different ways of experiencing’. In this case, the outcome spaceincluded five

‘categories of description’ of how lecturers in nursing experience the phenomenon. The intention of the outcome space is not to provide individual experiences but to describe the variation in the different ways in which the collective group of lecturers in nursing experience the phenomenon. The categories of description emerged from the interpretative analysis of the collected data and within the pool of meanings, describe the different ways of being a lecturer in nursing. The ways of experiencing the phenomenon is focused at a collective level and it is important to note that in this phenomenographic approach to analysis, the categories of description were formulated after all of the data has been collected. The set of categories represent the collective experience of the lecturers in nursing being studied and is understood to be reasonably stable. According to Marton and Booth (1997, p.125) a set of categories of description need to satisfy three criteria:

• Each individual category of description should relate a distinct way of experiencing the phenomenon

• There should be a logical relationship, commonly hierarchical between the categories

• The outcome space should be as parsimonious as possible

The categories of description are relational to what the lecturers in nursing allied to their

experience of being and what Cope (2004, p. 18) considers as ‘qualitative and descriptive in that the categories are visible through language and represent one way of experiencing the phenomenon’. What is crucial to phenomenographic studies is that the categories of description must come from the participants very own words and that I, as the researcher needed to be sensitive to each individual experience of being, with data being grounded in the lived experience of being a lecturer in nursing. Without this, Ashworth and Lucas (2000, p. 297) argue that understanding will be ‘unsound and arbitrary’. As a researcher, I needed to ‘bracket out’ (Marton 1994, p. 4428) preconceived ideas around possible interpretations of categories and avoid bending the data to fit a particular category. I was mindful that I needed

Susan Harness 124 to listen very carefully to each participant and set aside any assumptions I had, so as not to threaten the lecturer in nursing revealing their experience and take care not to expose any of my own expectations. I have attempted to ‘bracket’ myself out of the process as much as possible as I recognise that Ashworth and Lucas (2000, p. 299) argue that these difficult considerations will only be partially successful.