PARI TWO SIARIINO OUT Exorcise 9.1 .110' Prepare a draft proposal aboul your research [no more than 1500 words) covering Ihe following olomonls: 1 Tille 2 Abstract 3 Background or introduction 4 Statement of Purpose or aims 5 Review or trie relevant literature ó Methods: description of casefs) c hosen, procedures for data co lection and data analysis 7 Ethical issues 8 Practical rolevanco 9 Timotable 10 Set of preliminary references. i.-r. 11« •>h 10 Beginning Data Analysis After their first year of research, people have varying degrees of certainty about the future. As Coŕťey and Atkinson (1996) put it, the end oi year one sees two kinds of researcher. The uncertain one asks: 'I've collected all these data, now what should I do?' The other, more confident, researcher states: 'I've collected all my data, now I'm going to analyse them and write up the project.' The temptation might be to find merit in both positions. After all, self-questioning and self-confidence both seem to be worthy qualifies in a researcher. In fact, neither position is satisfactory and both reflect a more or less wasted first year of research: Both positions imply a woeful lack of appreciation of what is and can be meant by analysis .. - [Such analysis] is a pervasive activity throughout the life of a research project. Analysis is not simply one of the later stages of research, to be followed by an equally separate phase of 'writing up results'. (1996:10-11, my emphasis) Research designs which devote the fust year solely to a literature review and/or data gathering may look excellent on paper. Indeed, they may be just the thing in quantitative studies more concerned with implementing predesigned 'measures' than with employing a theoretical imagination. But in most qualitative research, unless you are analysing data more or less from day one you will always have to play 'catch-up'. All very well, you might respond, but where on earth am I going to get my data from on day one? Surely, most of my first year is going to be spent on getting access to some research site or set of respondents and then, if successful, gathering my data. How is it going to be possible to start data analysis so quickly? m ]_ j . i . i is* j - ] PAřT THRU - ANALYSINO YOUR DATA KICK-STARTING YOUR ANALYSIS There are three very practical, complementary solution* to this puzzle: • Analyse «in(n already in the |»nl>ll*: sphere. • lieg or borrow other people'» data. • Analyse your own data as you gather them. I hi »-fly discuss each strategy below. Analyse data already in the public sphere Some types of naturally occurring materials are already waiting for you. For instance, when undergraduate sludents doing a dissertation at my London college approach me with their concerns about gathering and analysing data in, s*y, a three-month time-slot, I usually give the following advice. Hop on a (ram toColindale in North Ixmdon. Turn right out of the station and you will come lo a big building marked British Museum Newspaper Library. Now select a few newspapers which covered a particular story (e.g. Princess Diana'-, death, the O.J. Simpson trial or the trial of the British nanny, Louise Woodward). (>l • "u... you still lack .i n-- .u* h problem and a mi thud ol analysis anil you will newt lo think long ami haul about both. But you have your data, so go to 1(1 Needle» lo say, the public sphere contains much more than newspapers. There are all the other kimK nf written texts from novels lo the contents of different websites on the Internel Mien- are the product« of the broadcast medi.i, radio and TV programme I mm phone-ins to soap operas and news broadcasts. Then there are those rare qualitative studies which reproduce large portions of data, making them available for your own reanalysis, perhaps following up different questions from those originally asked. liven If you intend-in due course, to gather your own data, these materials are immediately available. As such, they provide a marvellous opportunity to reßnc your methods and to get a feci of the joys (and torments) of "hands-on' data analysis. Beg or borrow other people'* data Perhaps your research interests cannot be accommodated by data in the public sphere. If so, it is always worth making enquiries In your department about relevant data that other people may be willing lo .Inn- with you. Your supervisor is an obvious person to tum to. Having agreed to supervise you, and thereby acknowledged a common research interest, It 1« probable that your supervisor will have already galhemd data that may be relevant to your projeel Dun'l In: shy to ask it you might twtt OCCAM tO thtffl V. we saw in Chapter 2, this was exactly the strategy mat my student Wki Taylor followed. 120 ■1A , i , i ,i , i , i ; "i_r"i rr BEGINNING DATA ANALYSIS Of course, there may be ethical 01 other reasons why such access is not always possible. But most supervisors will be delighted, perhaps even flattered, if you are interested in then own data. After all, youi research may lead to new ideas which will help them in their own work. If your supervisor cannot deliver the goods, explore your various peer groups. Fellow research students in your department, perhaps two or three years into tbeii n search, may, like your supervisor, welcome passing on some of then own data. Or perhaps you ean turn to mcmlHTsol study groups in your area or even to visiting speakers talking on a relevant topic. Above all, you must remember that, In most disciplines, no 'Brownie points' arc usually given for having your own data. It is the quality of your datadndfysf.« thai will matter, not wln-iher you can show how clever you were to access your data. Perhaps only in anthropology may the display of how, in pursuit of your 'tribe', you have travelled thousands of miles, leamt a foreign language and endured endless hardships count for something - but not much I suspect. You should now attempt Exercise 10.1. Analyse your own data as you gather them Say you decide lhal you will feel happier to have your own dala. Tlie first thing to remember is that this does not exclude the first two strategies. In the early stages, analysis of other people's data or public data may still give you the impetus you need for research 'lift-off when you are ready to analyse your own material* The second thing lo remember is th.it data analysis does not come after data gathering. If you only have one interview or recording or set of field-notes, go to it! Where appropriate, st.u t tiaie.. ril'tng. In all case-., .tart reviewing your data in the light of your research questions. Now is the time to test out methods, findings and concepts. Do you feel comfortable with your preferred method of data analysis (c.g, grounded theory, conversation analysis, discourse analysis, feminist methodology)? Is it suggesting interesting questions? And is it giving you a strong grip on your data that looks like it might generate interesting generalizations? Do previoui research findings seem to apply to your data? If not, why not? If so, how can you use your data to develop these findings? How do particular concepts from your preferred model of social research apply to your data? Which concepts work best and hence look likely to be most productive? None of these questions can be properly answered from the armchair or drawing board. No matter how elegant your original research proposal, its application to your first batch of data tfl dways salutary. In most qualitative research, sticking with your original research design can be a sign of Inadequate data analysis rather than demonstrating a welcome consistency. None of this.will you know until you begin analysing your data. Of course, this will mean committing yourself to writing up your analysis at a very early 121 97 PART THREE ANALYSING YOUR DATA stage. As Wolcott argues: 'You cannot begin writing early enough' (1990: 20). Even a 200-word shot at data analysis will give your supervisor something to go on- And even if understandable initial hesitancy means that you are not 'oft and running', at least you will have started. You should now attempt Exercise 10.2. So far I have been discussing ways to 'kick-start' your dala analysis. However, my attempt to offer useful tips foť any kind of study has meant that 1 have had to talk about qualitative research in general. I now want lo move to a lower level of generality and to examine how you may begin to analyse different kinds of qualitative data. I will consider four different kinds of data: " interviews • fieldnotes • texts • transcripts. For each data source, I will offer an example or how, in a particular study, data analysis took off. INTERVIEWS In Chapter 3, I examined the various ways that researchers can read sense into answers that respondents give to open-ended interviews. The most popular approach is to treat respondents' answers as describing some external reality {e.g. facts, events) or internal experience (e.g. feelings, meanings). Following tliis approach, it is appropriate to build into the research design various devices to ensure the accuracy of your interpretation. So you can check the accuracy of what your respondents tell you by other observations (see Chapters 8 and 13 on the method of 'triangulation'). Arid you can treat such measures as inter-coder agreement (see Chapter 13) and computer-assisted qualitative data programs (see Chapter 12) as a means of securing a fit between your interpretations and some external reality. Let us call this a 'realisf approach to interview data. As Clive Seale (personal correspondence) has pointed out, 'realism' is here used in the sense of the literary genre whose aim is to describe the 'gritty' reality of people's lives. In this approach, typical o/ tabloid journalism, 'confessional' stories are gathered and presented to the reader as new 'facts' about personalities. This form of realism has had much influence on qualitative research (see Atkinson and Silverman, 1997). An alternalive approach treats interview data as accessing various stories or narratives through which people describe their world (see Holstein and Gubrium, 1995). This approach claims that, by abandoning the attcmpl to treat respondents' accounts as potentially 'true' picture:* of 'reality', we open 122 -u» f '! somewhere else.' (1997:107) Here is another respondent's explanation of why she joined a gang: T didn't have no family ... I had nothin' else.' (1997:107) J Another young woman, when asked to speculate on why young people join gangs, suggested: "Some of 'em are like me, don't have, don't really have a basic home or steady home to go to, you know, and they don't have as much love and respect in the home so they want to get it elsewhere. And, and, like we gel, have family members in gangs or that were in gangs, stuff like that.' (1997: 107) Let us assume that you have gathered these data and now want lo begin analysis. Put a*uts slarkcst, what are you to do with Ihem? In line with the lb __________________________________ PART THREE ANALYSING YOUR DATA realist approach, using programs such as ETHNOGRAPH or NUD'IST (see Chapter 12), you may start'by coding respondents' answers into the different sets of reasons that they give for participation in gangs. From these data, two reasons seem to predominate: 'push' factors (unsupportive families) and 'pull' factors (supportive gangs>- Moreover, given the availability of survey data on the same respondents, you are now in a position to correlate pach factor with various background characteristics that they have. This seems to set up your research in good shape. Not only can you search for the 'subjective' meanings of adolescent gangs, you can relate these meanings to 'objective' social structures. The realist approach thus has a high degree of plausibility to social scientists who theorize the world in terms of the impact of (objective) social structures upon (subjective) dispositions. Moreover, the kind of research outputs mat it seeks to deliver are precisely those demanded by 'users' in the community, seeking immediate practical pay-offs from social science research. However, say we are not entirely satisfied by the apparent plausibility or realism. How can the narrative approach kick-start data analysis? Miller and Glassner (1997:103-4) suggest that one way to begin is to think about how respondents are using culturally available resources in order to construct their stories. They refer to Richardson's suggestion that; Participation in a culture includes participation in the narratives of that culture, a general understanding of the stock of meanings and their relationships to each Other. (1990; 24) How, then, can the data above be read in these terms? The idea is to see respondents' answers as cultural stories. This means exarrurung the rhetorical force of what interviewees say: Interviewees deploy these narratives to make their actions explainable and understandable to those who otherwise may not understand. (Miller and Glassner, 1997:107) In the data already presented, Miller and Glassner note that respondents make their actions understandable in two ways. First, they do not attempt to challenge public views of gangs as bad. But, second, they do challenge the notion that the interviewee herself is bad. However, Miller and Glassner note that not all their respondents glibly recycle conventional cultural stories. As they put it; Some of the young women go farther and describe their gang involvement in ways that directly challenge prevailing stereotypes about gangs as groups that are inherently bad or antisocial and about female roles within gangs. (199?: 108) This is some of the respondents' accounts that they have in mind: 'It was really, it was just normal life, the only difference was, is, that we had meetings.' 124 *Jfl BEGINNING DATA ANALYSIS '[We] play cards, smoke bud, play dominoes, play video games. Thaťs basically all we do is play. You would be surprised. This is a bunch of big kids, lfs a bunch of big old kids in my set.' (1997:109) In accounts like these, Miller and Glassner argue that there is an explicit challenge to what the interviewees know to be popular beliefs about youth gangs. Instead of accepting the conventional definition of their'behaviour as 'deviant', the girls attempt to convey the normalcy of their activities. These narratives directly challenge stereotypical cultural stories of the gang. Following Richardson, Miller and Glassner refer to such accounts as 'collective stories' which 'resist the cultural narratives about groups ofpeople and tell alternative stories' (Richardson, 1990; 25). Miller's research on adolescent gang culture follows an earlier study of American adolescents' perception and use of illegal drugs. In this study, Glassner and Loughlin (1987) treat interview responses as both culturally defined narratives and possibly factually correct statements. So, for instance, when someone says she uses marijuana because her friends do, Glassner and Loughlin take this to suggest two findings: She has made use of a culturally prevalent way of understanding and talking about these topics [narrative]. We now have evidence mat marijuana smoking is part of peer gatherings (realism). (1987:35) Glassncrand Loughlin argue that narrative analysis works through examining the nature and sources of the 'frame of explanation' used by the interviewee. However, the character of what the interviewee is saying can also be treated, through a realist approach, as a factual statement and validated by observation (e.g. of the series of interactions through which her friends' use comes to affect her own). If we treat interviewees' responses as factual statements, then it becomes crucial to ask: 'Can we believe the kids?' Clearly, the authors take this to be a serious question, arguing that, indeed, we should trust (their report of) what the kids are saying. They base this assertion on a set of claims about how 'rapporf was established with subjects: interviewers were accepted as peer-group members, showed 'genuine interest1 in understanding the interviewee's experiences and guaranteed confidentiality (1987:35). Calling their approach a 'methodology for listening', Glassner and Loughlin are thus centrally concerned with 'seeing the world from the perspective of our subjects' (1987: 37). in this respect, they share the same assumptions about the 'authenticity' of 'experience' as do other realists. However, their sensitive address of the narrative forms from which perspectives arise suggests an alternative path for interview analysis (for a more developed version of the narrative approach, see Gubrium and Holstein, 1997). .Olli , 125 PART THRU • ANALYSING YOUR DATA FIELDNOTES lape recorded Interviewe, ttka texte and tapes of naturally occunifu Inter« action. Allow you to return lo your data in theiroriginal ioim et often u TOU wish. The problem with fieldnotes is that you are stuck wilh ik>. form m which you madelhem at I Ik-(um-,umí that your readers will only have access to how you recorded event», There are Iwo partial solutions to this problem: following strict conventions in writing field notes; and adhering to a consistent theuiciu t their own activities might need explaining to him. Like I'oMkyl.i, by examining my own involvemenl In the 'framing' Ol the mi. 1 .nit« »n, and using my eyes as well as my ears. I had kick-started my analy-sis I lowevor. were then* othei ways in win. h I. mild systematically compare tin- tWO Nl IS clinics with the private clinic? In Chapter 11, 1 discuss some simple i|iiantitative measures I used in order to respond to this problem. TEXT5 Quantitative researchers try to analyse written material in a way which will produce reliable evidence about a large sample. Their favoured method is 'content analysis' in which the researchers establish a set of categories and then count the number of Instances that fall into each category. The crucial requirement is that the categories are sufficiently precise to enable different coder* to arrive at the same results when the same lnuly of materia I (e.g. neu 1 .i[Ti headlines) is examined [see Bcrelson !''>.') In (|ualltiitive research, small numbers of texts .mil documents may lv analysed for a very different purpose. The aim is to understand the participants' categories and to sec how ihese are used m concrete activities like telling (lories (Propp, I96H; Sacks, 1974), assembling files (Cicourel, l%H; Gubrium and Buckholdt, 1982) or describing 'family life' (Cubrium, 1992). The theoretical orientation of many qualitative rese.uchcrs, thus means t Im I they tire more concerned with the processes through which lextfl depict 'nalily' than with whether such lexts contain hue or false statements. Aa Atkinson and Coffey put it: In prying due attention to such materials, however, one must be quite cl«r obout what llwy can and cannot bo used for. They are 'social facts', in that they are produced, shared and used in socially organized way» They are not, however, transparent representations of organizational routines, decision-making proosMM, or professional diagnoses. They construct particular kind» of representations with their own conventions. (1997: 47) The implications of this are clear: We should not use documentary IOUICM as surrogate» for other kinds of data. Wo cannot, for instance, learn through records alone liow an organization actually operate« day-by-day. Equally, wc cannot treat records - however official' - as linn cvidViwv of what they rcporl Hint strong reservation does not mean thai we should ignore or downgrade documentary data. On tin? contrary, our recognition of their existence as social Im Is alerts us to the necessity to treat them v«'iv sell ously indeed Wc have to approach them for what they aie and what they are used to Accomplish. (1997:47) 128 ■ EOINNING DATA ANALYSIS What does it mean to approach texts 'for what they are'? Let us take a concrete example. In two of Harvey Sacks's lectures, he refers to a New York liiii'.< slory about an interview with a navy pilot about his missions In the Vietnam War (1992, Vol. Ii 205-22, 306 11). Sacks Is specially Interested in the story's report of thc^nnvy pilot's „.ported answer to a question in the extra, t below: Tlw navy pilot story 1 low did he feci about knowing that even with nil the care he took in aiming only at military targets someone was probably bring killed by his bombs? 'I certainly don't like I he idea that I might be killing anybody,' he replied. 'But J don't lose any sleep over It. You have to be impersonal in this business. Over North Vietnam I condition myself to think that I'm * military man being shot at by another military man like myself.' (Sacks, 1992, Vol 1: 205) Sacks invites us to see how the pilot's immediate reply (1 certainly don't like the idea .. .*) shows his commitment to the evaluations scheme offered by the journalist's question. For instance, if the pilot had instead said 'Why do you ask?', he would have shown that he did not necessarily subscribe lo the same moral universe as the reporter (and, by implication, the readers of the article) (1992, Vol. 1:211). I laving accepted Ihr. motal s. herna, Sacks -hows how the pilot now builds .in answei which help us lu see him in .1 favourable light Ihe category 'military man' works to defend his bombing as a category-bound activity which reminds us that this is, after all, what military pilots do. The eile, t of the e. magnified by the pilot's identification of his co-participnnl as 'another military man like myself. In this way, the pilul . reales a pair (military man m J military man) with recognizable mutual obligations (bombing/shooting at the other). In terms of this pair, the other party cannot properly complain, or as Sacks puts it: thea* are no complaints to be offered on Ihcir part about the error of his ways, exotpt if he happens to violate the norms that, given the device used, are operative (1992, Vol. 1: 206) Notice Also that the pilot suggests 'you have to be impersonal in this business'. Note how the category 'this business' sets up the terrain on which the spe. ihc pair of military men will shortly be used. So this account could be ottered by either pari of the pair. However, as Sacks argues, the implication is that 'this business' Is one of many where impersonality is required, ľ'or: il it were the case that, lli.it you had lobe uiipen.nnal in this business held only for ilus business, then it might be that doing this business would be wrong In (he flrsl Instance. (1992, Vol. 1:206) MoAMVtfi tlMMimpersonality involved is of a s|>ecial sort. Sacks points out 129 4 3 I . I . 1 . I J . J . ] PART THREE ANAIYSINO YOUR DATA thai we hear the pilot W saying mil that it is unfortunate that ho cannot kill 'personally' but rather that being involved in this 'business' means that one must not consider that one is killing persons (1992. Vol. 1: 209). However, the pilot is only proposing a pair or military man and military man In Ih.it sense In- is inviting the North Vietnamese to 'piny the game' in the same way as a child might nay lo another 'I'll he third base'. However, as Sacks notes, in children's baseball such proposnls can be rejected if you say 'I'll be third base', unless someone else says 'and I'll be , .' another position, and the others say they'll be the other positions, then you're not that thinK You can't play. (1992. Vol. 1: 307) OÍ course, the North Vietnamese indeed did reject the pilot's proposal. Instead, they proposed the identification of the pilot as a 'criminal' and defined themselves as 'doing police action'. As Sacks notes, these competing definitions had implications which went beyond rnexe propaganda. For instance, if the navy pilot ■.-.ire shot down then the Genevn Conventions aboul his subsequent treatment would only properly be applied if he indeed were a 'military man' rather than a 'criminal' (1992, Vol.: 307). Sacks's analysis derives from his particular way of treating lexis (like Atkinson .ind Coffey) as representations. Uketarflnkcl (1967), Sacks wanted to avoid treating people as 'cultural dopes', representing Ihe World m ways that some culture demanded ln-.le.ul. SaCkl approached Vulture' as an inli nine-in.ikine, tn.i. lime' a do* nplive apparatus, administered and vised m ipeiilu conte.xtri Hie issue foi Sacks was nol lo second gues i societal members but to try to work out: how it is ihat people can produce sets of actions that provide that others can see such things. |as| persons doing inlmucy... persons lying, etc (1992. Vol. 1:119) Given that many categories can be used lo describe the same person or act, Sacks's task was: to lind out how they |members| go about choosing among the available sets of categories for gratping some event (1992, Vol. 1: 41) So Sacks does not mean to imply Ihat 'society' determines which category one chooses. Instead, he wants to show the active interpretive work involved in rendering any description and the local implications of choosing any pa rtkular category. Whether or not we choose to use Sacks's precise method, he offers .in inspiring way to begin to analyse Ihe productivities of any texl. TRANSCRIPTS Like any kind of data, the analysis of tapes and transcripts depends upon Ihe generation of some research problem out of a particular theoretical orientation i i Í J Í I 1 BEGINNING DATA ANALYSIS As with the writing of fieldnotes. the preparation of B Iranscripl fmm an audiotape or a videotape Is a theoretically saturated activity. Where there is more tli.iii one researcher, debate about what you Ml seeing and hearing is never :„,,! .ihoiit collating dala: il is dala ijrw/ysis. Kut how do you push Ihe analysis beyond on agreed transcript? Ihe temptation is lo start at line 1 of your Iran:., npl and to work your way down Ihe page making observations as you go. However, the danger of proceeding in this way is that your observations are likely to be rtif hoc and com "nonsensical. Moreover, if you are committed to an approach (like CA or DA) which looks at how the participants co-produce some meaning, then beginning with a single utterance gels you off on the wrong foot. How else can you proceed? In Chapter Pive. we came across Jennifer Mason's (1996) idea of formulating a research topic in terms of different kinds of puzzles. Identifying a puzut can also be the way to kick-start the analysis of a transcript. Once you have found your pu/zle, the best method is often to aw* backwards and foroHirds through your Iranscript to see how the puzzle-arises and is resolved. As In the other sections, let me take a concrete example. I was working on some transcripts of parent-teacher interviews gathered in Australian schools by Carolyn Baker and Jayne Keogh. The following examples involve a student. Donna (S), her parents (Fand M) and her teacher (T). In Extracts 10.1 and 102 there an- no audible responses from Donna or Donna's parent-, to .i piece of advice from the teacher {> indicates turn-slots where receipts are al.senl): ĽMriKtlO.l I mat's the only way I can really (I II) really help ll IM moment and () lor Donna herself !o um do a little bit more m das* and nol chat so much down the back wilh Nicky and (.) Joanne? > (1-0) I u in (2.0) Extract 102 T (Or we maybe, tl- our next unit of work, Donna' if it's (.) another group do you think you- you'd perform betler nut working with the same girl*? > (1.0) * T work with a different with someone different m the dass? > (2.0) T: you'd prefer lo work with the same girls In Extract 10.3, Donna's father eventually responds afler a pause in a turn-slot in which Donna might have spoken: Bxtnel 10.3 T: I- don't- know Hi really the Ihrtf of you got to pull up your sock» «ort of thing or (.) or you sll somewhere rfiflerent but > (2.0) T I. ) •""• V: jl think you should »I somewhere different 131 8 PART THREE ANALYSING YOUR DATA Finally, in Ľxtract 10.4, Donna does not respond lo her father's advice: Extract 10.4 F: l| think you should sit Noinrwlu-iť different M: Mm? P: well think of your marks II'» Just (4.0) it's pretty rubbishy The ibtinci of (spoken) resptHises by student* lo llwir teacher's or parents' ,id\ in- mi. h as in l-xlr.i« I'i III I Id 1. };.v. hü ll»' pu/./.lc which I i. I '.tailed our analysis (Silverman el aľ, ľl'17). Such silence Is a puzzle because il dot's nol appc u lol'it with whal we know about conveis.ition where Ihc al-sence of a response by someone selected for the next turn is remarkable and accountable t.Sacks el ,il . I'Oli To Iry lo solve this puzzle, we searched other data (or comparable findings. In over 60 advice sequences in pre-HlV test counselling, I have only one example of si«* a silent response to advice (Silverman, 1997b). This Is as follows (C - counsellor, P ■ patiŕnl): Extract 10.5 (SUverman, 1997b: 118) 1 i this is why wo My hh if you don't know the person ilui you're with (0.6) and you're going lo have sex with Ihein hh 3 iťů important th.il you tell them to (0.3) use >i condom 4 > (0.8) 5 C: Of I© practise i il< i ■ th-n's, what using ,i condom means. 6 > (15) 7 C; okay? 8 •i ľ uluim ID (0.4) 11 C: has your partner ever used a condom with y. >u ' Noli« i- the 1.5 second pause in line 6. Since this follows a possible tum-complelion point as C concludes her advice, tin- pause .an be heart) as P's pause. Moreover, C demonstrates that she monitors il this way by going in pursuit ot some response token {line 7) to indicate that at least P is listening. When, after a further pause, she obtains the continner uhum' (line 9), C can now continue (line 11). However, it is also worth noting C's explanation (or gloss) which follows 'use a condom' (line 3). Since that phrase could also have been heard as terminating C's advice, she seems to have inspected the 0.8 second pause that follows .is representing an absent continuer and, therefore, a possible lack of understanding. So she provides hor gloss (line 5) in order, unsuccessfully as it turns out, to create a stronger environment in which lo get a continuer. Extract 105 shares one fuilhei similarity with the le.icher-pupil .nlviie seqwnCN Here Ihepatienl is a 16-year-old person - by far the younge-.t 0< .ill the Cllwtl in our HIV counselling extracts, On a non-analytic level, whal we seem lobe dealing with here is the .<» i.il problem well known to both professionals ,ind parents namely, the common 132 if. BEGINNING DATA ANALYSIS non-response of adolescents when told what to do by adults (or even when asked questions). This social problem is seen massively in hospit.d clinics run for adolescents and evokes continual, unsuccessful attempts lo get the chlhl I" speak (see Silverman. 1987). In l-xtim Is 10.6-10.8, taken from such clinics, we also find not t-response to advice (D ■ doctor, P - patient and M ■ mother): Kxlract 10.6 (diabolic clinic I (NH: 17.7)) |>! What should we do about your diabetes? Because you've not been doing your testing (untuned pause) t); I know at the momenl you're feeling sod all ihis altogether P: Don't know D Would it help if we got o« your back? (untimed pause) Bxrracl 10.7(diabelicclinic 2 The blood sugar is really loo high (untimed pause) (P U hating mtserabit] M: We have to fight thin *ll the way 11: One or Iwo units, docs (lu:. really upset yon? (untuned pause) \ľ i» looking down and fiddling with her coat] t n .1 10.8 (cleft-palate dime (14.32-3)) Di Urn (2.0) but yiHi'ie i.ahsfied with your lip, are you, we don'l wanl anything done to thai' \t hv doesn't (1.0) it down'l HOB lo worry her I' I leh heh don't wanl anything done aboul any]thing? Mi [hohheh I): Nol your nose? (30) Throughout Extracts 10.5-10.8, adolescenls fail to respond in the second-turn posillon to advice and questions. In Extracts 10.5 and 10.6, they eventually offer a minimal response after a second prompt. By contrast, in !■ x tracts 10.7 and 108, when these young patients fail to take a tum when nominated as next speaker, their mothers speak for them, offering a commentary on their child's behaviour or feelings. Finally, in R x tract 10.8, when D oihq more renominates the patient as next speaker, nothing is heard. However, if we had stopped at the observation of a congruence between professional-client encounters involving young people in both medh ,il and educational sellings, we would only I"' restating a social problem Well known to parents and professionals dealing with young people. I work on the assumption that the skills of social scientists arise precisely in their ability lo look at the world n fresh and hena* hold out Ihe possibility of offering msighls lo practitioners, the question is, then, how can we move from our commonplace observation lo a social science analysis? One familiajj,soiution »to look Miiml our dala in order to find explanations 133 08 n^n^n^"i^"i_in_jn_n_n PART THREE I ANALYSING YOUR DATA for our observations. To this end, we might note various features of the apparent contexts in which communication is taking place here. For instance, we might expect that advice giving is more problematic in those service encounters, like health visiting, HIV-test counselling and diabetic and cleft-palate clinics, where the professional's advice is not necessarily sought by the client and where the professional's role is mainly that of gatekeeping (offering a blood test, supplies of insulin or cosmetic surgery). By contrast, when parents attend interviews with teachers, they may be expected to be advice seekers and any gatekeeping aspect of the encounter is difficult to detect. However, there is nothing to suggest that the students at such interviews are there because they are themselves seeking advice or even information. Therefore, if the student rather than the parent is treated as the client, then these school interviews fall into line with the other settings where reluctant advice recipients are common. If the student is constituted as the client, parent-teacher interviews arc like health visiting, HIV counselling and consultations with adolescent diabetics where advice has not been sought by the client. Indeed, like the adolescent diabetic and the first-time mother, the student may hear a disciplinary intent behind the 'advice'. This suggests another, more local, explanation of advice non-recipiency. A common feature of both teacher-parent and paediatric interviews, although not found in most pre-test counselling, is that there are potentially multiple clients. Therefore, we might speculate that one party (namely, a parent) might non-problemaücally claim the right to speak on behalf of another part)' (the student or patient). This allows parents to enter instead of the child and children to remain silent {after all, their parents can respond, as In Extracts 10-7 and 10-8). In this way, by working as a hearable 'team' (Goffman, 1961), they maintain the rules of turn-taking. However, the danger is that we become so obsessed with finding an explanation of some phenomenon that we fail to investigate adequately whether there is, indeed, such a phenomenon and, if so, how it is locally 'put together'. This danger has been characterized as the problem of 'relevance' and 'procedural consequentiality' by Schcgloff (1991) and as the 'explanatory orthodoxy' by Silverman (1997b: 23-6). Our initial response was to shift the focus away from explaining our observation towards locating its interactional achievement. Thus we ask; how is questioning and advice giving interactionally managed, turn by turn, where the ostensible answerer or advice recipient is apparently non-responsive? In multi-party professional-client settings, line recipient of a particular turn is not given by some institutional rule but is actively 'worked ať by the participants. Extract 10.8 is a very nice example of this, and is given again here: Extract 10.8 (Cleft-palate clinic (14.32-3)) 1 D: Urn (2.0) but you're satisfied with your lip, are you, wo don't want 2 anything done to that? 3 M: She doesn't (1.0) it doesn't seem lo worry her »34 (f, h ~i n n h h n BEGINNING DATA ANALYSIS 4 D: Heh heh don't want anything done about anything? 5 M: (lieh lieh 6 D: Not your nose? 7 (3.0) As f liave already remarked, notice that, in lines 1-2, D appears to nominate as next speaker someone who might appropriately make an assessment about their 'lip'- However, although next speaker orients to this nomination (talking about 'she' and Tier' rather than 'ľ and 'me' in line 3), she is not the next speaker so nominated. Moreover, when D appears to renominate M's daughter as next speaker (lines 4 and 6), aldnough she is silent, M claims recipiency via her laughter at line 5. Extract 10.8 shows that recipiency is constructed on a tum-bv'turn basis. Moreover, even within a single turn, the recipient may be redefined. Notice, for instance, how D switches from the voice of 'you' to 'we' within line 1. Such a switch is interactionally ambiguous. First, 'we' may be heard as no more than the patronising way of referring to organizational clients quite common in England (and, sometimes, the object of a sarcastic response, e.g. 'me and who else?'). Second, in this local context, it creates the possibility that D's question about 'lip satisfaction' is addressed to both or either mother and daughter. Indeed, it may be this very possibility that allows a parent to respond without a pause (in line 3) in a slot in which the child might have been expected to answer a question. Extract 10.8, from a cleft-palate clinic, shows how the parties play with the ambiguity about who is the recipient of a particular question. Rather than treating ambiguity as a communication problem, the analysis has begun to show how the intcractants can use ambiguity as a resource. 'Hie same interpretation may be attached lo the child's silence. Instead of treating this silence as indicating some deficiency on the part of the child, we argue that, faced with the ambivalence built into such questions and comments by teachers (and parents), silence can be treated as a display of interactional compelcnce. We can speculate that this is because silence (or at least lack of verbal response) allows children to avoid implication in (he collaboratively accomplished adult moral universe, and thus enables fhem to resist the way in which an institutional discourse serves to frame and constrain their social competencies. CONCLUDING REMARKS In this chapter I have shown how, using the four main kinds of qualitative data, you can begin data analysis. By generating a puzzle by early inspection of some data, whether your own or borrowed, you can kick-start any research project. In Ghnpter 11, we examine how data analysis can be developed after these first slages. i 135 SUMMARY Avoid spending the first period of your research without analysing any dat». There are three ways to kick-start data analysis: • Analyse data already in the public sphere. • Beg or borrow other people's data. • Analyse your own data as you gather them. When analysing different kinds of qualitative data, the following issues arise: » Interview Is your aim to describe the 'gritty' reality of people's lives (realism) or to access Ihe stories or narratives through which people describe their worlds (narrativisin)? • Fietdnotes You need lo note what you can see (as well as hear) as well as how you arc behaving and being treated. • Texts is your goal precise content analysis, in which you establish a set of categories and then count the number of instances that fall into each category? Or is your aim to understand the participants' categories and to see how these are used in concrete activities like telling stories, assembling files or describing 'family life'? • Transcripts The preparation or a transcript from an audiotape or a video-tope is a theoretically saturated activity. When* there is more than one researcher, sorting out what you are seeing and hearing is never just about collating data: it is data analysis. Further reading Harry Wolcott's little book. Writing Up Qualitative Research (Sage, 1990), especially Chapter 2, is a helpful, informal guide lo beginning data analysis. Other relevant sources are: Amanda Coffey and Paul Atkinson, Making Sense of Qualitative Data (Sage, 1996}, Chapter 2; and Jennifer Mason, Qualitative Researching (Sage, 1996), Chapter 6. For further details oftfie case studies discussed in this chapter, see: Jody Miller Qnd Barry Glassner, The "Inside" and the "Outside": finding realities in interviews', in David Silverman (ed.). Qualitative Research {Sage. 1997); my two monographs. Communication and Medical Practice {Sage, '987) and Discourses of Counselling (Sage, 1997); and Harvey Sachs lectures on Ccflversation (Vol. 1, Blockwell, 1992), pp. 205-22 and 306-11. 136 ■«/i BEGINNING DATA ANALYSIS Exercise 10.1 This gives you the opportunity lo think about relevant dalasets to which you may nave earfy access. 1 Review relevant data already in the public sphere, lor instance in the media (from newspapers to television and radio to tne Internet). Select a dalaset and begin to analyse it. 2 Ask your supervisor and/or fellow students about any relevant data ihot they might have which you could borrow, either as a preliminary exercise or possibly to develop long-term collaboration. Do a brief analysis of somo of them. Exercise 10.2 This gives you an opportunity to analyse your own data as soon a» you obtain it. 1 Which questions does your preferred method of data analysis suggest? What interesting generalizations can you start to pull out of your data? 2 Do previous research findings seem to apply to your data? If not, why no'8 if so, how con you use your data to develop those findings? 3 How do particular concepts from your preferred model or social research apply to your data? Which concepts work best and hence look likely to bo most productive? ■ ■it- 137 i