THE PROCESS OF ANALYSING THE DATA

There are two main methodological stages to this research study which uncovers important issues and themes that emerged incrementally from each step of the research. The first phase was the pilot stage in which four participants from long term settled and recent arrivals were interviewed. It was followed up with the next stage of semi-structured interviews. The pilot stage was important as there were some modifications made to the interview questions.

Oppenheim (1992) stresses the importance of piloting the schedule as: "It is dangerous to assume. Therefore when in doubt and especially when not in doubt do a pilot run" (Oppenheim, 1992:48). I was concerned that if I did not ask the right questions then what I was trying to uncover about identity and language learning would not be revealed. I was not conscious of having a fixed idea of what I would find, and I felt that if I did not ask the right questions, I would not be able to do justice to their narratives and my research. Some questions in the questionnaire needed to be more open-ended. It was important to give the

opportunity to give an individual voice to respondents. More interviews were undertaken again to provide an individual voice to respondents and also to address the question of validity through the consistency of themes. To analyse the qualitative data, I transcribed the individual interviews verbatim and coded them manually for categories or themes. When I transcribed the text of the conversation, I changed the names of the participants for the purpose of anonymity and ethics. Names during data collection had helped me maintain the attachment in a powerful way. That is why changing names was difficult for me but being aware of the need to create some separation and for ethical purposes the names had to be changed.

In accordance with the guidelines of Feminist Research Praxis (Hesse-Biber and Leavy, 2007) the pointers used to analyse the data included:

What social actions and agency are taking place in a particular setting; what it means to the participant; what are the social and cultural constructions of this agency; does a pattern or rule exist; how these patterns relate to each other across different dimensions; and how the patterns of agency affect the power relationships.

Keeping these guidelines to analyse the data, I used different coloured highlighters to organize the data indicating their experiences and interactions associated with gender, language learning, race, family cultures, and religious contexts. By going over the content and re-examining them individually and grouped according to their colour code, I explored them for recurrent themes. The re-examination allowed me to further categorize the data according to specific subcategories contained within the larger classification.

While analysing qualitative data, deconstruction as an analytical tool rests on several assumptions. “Deconstruction turns attention to how language creates some meanings and suppresses other meanings” (Manning, 1992:203-204). “Deconstruction is a means to see words in context and to examine the effects of changing contexts on meaning” (Manning, 1992:202)

Deconstruction can be accomplished by looking at a text (transcript of verbal exchange in this case) and finding out what is said. It also includes looking at what is not said, silences and gaps, and analysing disruptions. For instance, none of the participants says specifically

that they are unhappy about the lack of information or provision of support when it comes to learning English, but at other places they mention that it would have been better for them had they started learning the language earlier (Feldman, 1990).

Within discussions of reflexivity, attention is often drawn to the importance of recognizing the social location of the researcher as well as the ways in which our emotional responses to respondents can shape our interpretations of their accounts. However, few methods offer concrete ways of doing this voice-centred relational method of data analysis. Ribbens and Edwards (1998) suggest reading for the lot, reading for the voice of ‘I’, reading for relationships and reading for placing people within contexts and social structures.

Although data analysis is an on-going process, it requires researchers to engage in many levels of cognitive analysis. A central task in analysing qualitative data is generating categories and examining emerging patterns from the data that assist in making sense of the information participants have offered. The development of categories and themes provide a description and explanation of cases, but it is also important to consider and identify potential relationships in the data (Hesse-Biber and Leavy, 2007). Therefore, using the central premise of generating categories, themes, and the relationships in the data, a latent content analysis was used to analyse text data.

This first stage involved in this process was identifying recurring patterns and concepts in the data (words, phrases, expressions). All of the data collected from focus groups and participant interviews was entered into Nvivo software. This helped me to organise and work through the texts and code blocks of text to one or more NODES or sub-nodes representing themes. I created attributes for respondents and assigned initial values to classify the primary data such as age, country of origin, marital status, employment, residence in the UK etc. With ‘open-ended’ questions Nvivo allowed me to actually see what the respondents are telling me before I construct the coding frame through which I constrain text – information held in the natural language of everyday life. (Hutchison et al, 2010). The process of data analysis began with the review of the first interview transcript and continued throughout the project. The general analytic procedures of content analysis were used to draw out general patterns and themes from the data.

The first phase of analysis involved thoroughly sifting data into segments as individual files in the computer. At this stage of analysis I drew data segments that exemplify particular themes. My aim this was to attempt to provide as detailed a picture as possible of the participants’ post-migration settlement trajectories through their experiences of learning and speaking English, and to forefront their reporting of it. In each of the resulting analysis chapters a theme-based approach is taken which deals with issues relating to self in the family and the issues of language, gender, parenting by elaborating the theme and drawing on one or two specific women as examples. Most of these issues cut across all participants, however, taken as a whole they are revealing of the kinds of transformations of the self that can accompany transnational migration involving language change.

After initial enthusiasm for NVivo, I realised that it is mainly acting as an excellent organiser. I was able to search frequently occurring words and find relevant themes. For example, I realised that the word confidence occurs almost 63 times in the data. Although it was helpful in the beginning, I felt a disconnect with the data while using Nvivo and decided to move away from it and resort to traditional method of working with a hard copy of the transcript. To reconnect myself with the data, I listened to the recordings again and assigned labels to sections of the text to identify and summarize the content and topic of each section. I tagged data with labels (Hutchison et al., 2010), highlighted segments of the text with neon markers, and wrote labels in the right hand margins. Each transcript was labelled in this manner, resulting in a broad and general list of labels outlining salient elements within each transcript and across all transcripts. This list consisted of approximately 20 labels, including the motherhood, the experiences of racism, discrimination; personal process; identity issues; language socialisation, difficulties with access and progression; personal challenges; coping strategies; family/upbringing; social networks and language socialisation; workplace experiences, connection to their community; cultural values; domestic responsibilities, changing roles; childcare; and religion. The list of labels became more comprehensive as I worked with each successive transcript. This process of coding allowed me to become familiar with the text data and with each participants' unique experience of living in London as a migrant trying to learn English.

This process also allowed me to begin asking more analytic questions of the data, for example "What are the significant influences in these women's lives? ", and "What are commonalities in their stories?"

The second step of analysis involved shifting focus from individual participant experiences to a broader focus. l reviewed the transcripts and began developing broad categories to reflect the common elements of participant experiences. This process required working alternatively with hard copies of transcripts and creating individual category files on the computer. Using the summarized lists from topic coding assisted me in identifying links between topics and thereby initiated the process of developing general categories. As categories were defined and developed, text data were cut and pasted and added to separate category files. Some text segments included multiple themes and were therefore included in multiple categories. I used different font colours for my own convenience to sort data under multiple themes and within each category file, the text segment was identified by a title header that included the transcript and relevant sections of interview. This made all text segments easily retrievable and identifiable as to original data source and transcript. Following this, I explored the themes under the labels such as ‘self’ in the society, family or at work and post-migration language, race and gender issues as they emerge. Reflecting on the research questions about identity, subject positioning and agency and the ability to access and develop and maintain social networks essential to learn a language, I analysed the data to expose the power relationships that operate in the negotiation of identity. Following the core framework (Hesse-Biber and Leavy, 2007) mentioned earlier, I focused prominently on the power imbalance caused by the process of othering; discrimination resulting from gender, race, ethnicity or class; as well as language socialisation resulting from social turn in second language learning; recording these through the lens of poststructuralist approach to identity throughout the process of analysis.

Qualitative research involves interactions with individuals and as consequence of developing rapport with participants and getting them to trust, the researcher may find they open up in very personal ways. During the interviewing session in one of the temple visits, one of the participants was curious about my temple visits and the frequency of it. Instead of giving a

straightforward answer to her question, that I do not practise religion, I circumvented the question by answering that I visited a different temple on certain occasions. Reflecting on this, I realised that this could raise an issue of ethical concerns over not being honest and transparent with the participants in order to establish rapport with them. However, I did not feel that by answering the question in an indirect way I was being untruthful. Although I do not practise religion, I visit religious places on certain occasions such as weddings or family events. I was concerned that being totally honest about my religious (non)beliefs might have created a gap in our connectedness, and participants would not have opened up to discuss their inner feelings wholeheartedly. Martin Buber defines relational ethics as doing what is necessary to be “true to one’s character and responsible for one’s actions and their consequences on others” (Lincoln, 1995) Relational ethics recognizes and values mutual respect, dignity, and connectedness between researcher and researched, and between researchers and the communities in which they live and work (Lincoln, 1995, p. 287)

In this chapter I have discussed the rationale underpinning the choice of methods and methodology in detail to clearly establish the theoretical stance of this project. I have explained the process of data collection and data analysis. The next chapter will introduce the background of my research participants and examine the general findings of this study.