I got started with my interview analysis!

I carefully defined my core methodological steps for data analysis and created an excel tool (nvivo or other software didn’t match my intentions of working iteratively, being able to track my steps) to track my analysis. I began by reading the interview again, went on with initial noting of whatever comes to mind, paraphrasing (staying decriptive, no interpretation yet!) and finally coding. Then re-coding, formulating themes, grouping them to superordinate themes, re-working them again, going back to the original text (to check if it is „grounded enough – or if I just am seeing what I want to see…).The hermeneutical circle (checking how one part relates to the whole and vice versa) felt like a hamster wheel – endlessly time consuming.

One challenge in comparison to e.g. the Content Analysis of P. Mayring is my approach to leave out any prior categories and let the themes emerge from the text themselves. That was hard – and will be even harder when it comes to comparison of my different cases – no common structure! But still, the outcome is really impressive – a coherent story („themes“) around being „Fr-agile“ as a life motto and strong evidence how life mirrors our personal degree of development.

The problem now: I crafted a beautiful narration on my first case – 35 pages for one interview of around 30 pages… BUT: Who is going to read this? I must admit: I got „sucked“ into the single case and now, the challenge will be to reduce it and focus on answering my research questions – and leave all the wonderful extra work behind…

Current reading tip: „Antifragile- Things that gain from disorder“ by Nassim N. Taleb