Hatch Chapter 5

1. Hatch Chapter 5 Reporting Qualitative Research

2. The Writing Process: tips • Just Write • Students sometimes not confident because • They are sure they cannot word it just right • They are sure they have nothing new to say • They are sure that what they express would say more about what they didn’t know than what they do know • Accept Anxiety • Common part of the creative process • The only way to work through it is to write • Avoid Avoiding • Recognize your excuses as devices for avoiding the anxiety of writing • Create a Writing Ritual • One that reduces the chances of allowing those excuses to get in your way

3. The Writing Process: Tips • Set Production Goals • Mark them off when completed • Number of hours • Number of pages or sections • Get Organized • Create outlines • Get Details Right the First Time • Keep up with references as you go • Edit Every Time You Reread • Woods (1999): writing is 10% creating and 90% editing • Rewrite, revise, reword, reorganize, restructure • Read over previous day’s work as a way to get you into each day’s writing

4. The Writing Process: Tips • Quit at a Good Place • Write the topic sentence for the first paragraph of the next section before you quit • Work through the Blockages, and Go with the Runs • If you’re on a roll, keep going • Read like a Writer, and Write like a Reader • Read widely in your field and make notes on writing styles • Put yourself in your audience’s shoes • Solicit Feedback • Be clear about what kind of feedback you want, invite your readers to be honest, then expect to learn from a critical reading • Expect to Revise • Make your manuscript as long as possible • Enjoy Having Written • Be proud of your work!

5. Writing Up Findings from Data Analysis • Qualitative finding sections • Seldom straightforward • The object is to bring understanding to complex social phenomena that cannot be reduced to precise, statistical relationships • Expect findings to be shaped by the writing process

6. Data Excerpts • Sufficient examples should be included to give the reader confidence that the researcher’s assumptions about the topic are supported by his or her data • Need to select the right data excerpts and put them in the right places • Also important to explain how the data excerpts support what you have to say • Do not assume that the connections you see will be picked up by the readers • Section will be improved with appropriate ties to the literature as the findings unfold

7. Editing Transcripts • Based on criteria that insure the integrity of the participants’ words while keeping excerpts manageable and on target • Don’t have to include every “um,” “uh,” or “you know” • Consider • Length: you don’t want excerpts to ramble endlessly • Relevance: you want to include the qualities that connect the example to your case • Readability: you want the excerpt to make syntactic sense • Comprehensibility: you want the reader to be able to understand what participants meant • Anonymity: you don’t want to reveal informants’ identities by including certain kinds of sensitive information • Edit with a light touch • Edits not justified if it deletes, changes, or distorts the meanings intended by informants

8. Visual Representations • Potential materials: • Data and analysis displays organized into graphs, charts, tables, matrices, and diagrams • Materials such as photographs or reproduction of artifacts

9. Creating a Narrative • Researchers will ask themselves what actors, groups, or social contexts are the focus of their research • Then frame the narratives that make up their findings based on their answers • The unit of analysis should have been identified at the design stage • Data collection and analysis should have led to findings that are framed in a way that now needs only to be described • List of different narrative forms on pages 228-229

10. Findings from Typological Analyses • Product from analysis: a set of one-sentence generalizations that capture patterns, relationships, and themes discovered in the data and data collection excerpts that support the generalizations • Organize writing around generalizations • Themes can be major heading, patterns and relationships that fit under themes can be subheadings • Objective: to provide evidence for the efficacy of your generalizations by displaying data and explaining how the data support your case

11. Findings from Inductive Analyses • Product from analysis: a master outline that captures the domains discovered in the data and the relationships of those domains to each other and to the whole • A ready-made organizer for writing up findings • Outline could be basis for headings and subheadings • Should at least be included as an appendix • The domains discovered in your inductive analysis carry the cultural meanings you want to share in your final report

12. Findings from Interpretive Analyses • Product from analysis: a “revised summary” • Developed through a process of writing interpretive memos, searching data for evidence that supports interpretations, drafting preliminary summaries, and reviewing these with participants • Convert revised summaries into final versions • Chronologies: the passage of time organizes the stories in the text • Confessional tales: highlight the researcher’s place in the study and report his or her own interpretations of what happened • Impressionist tales: emphasize the importance of literary devices to tell an evocative story, leaving much of the interpretation to the reader

13. Findings from Political analyses • Product from analysis: summaries (in narrative form) that have been revised based on feedback from participants and excerpts supporting the generalizations • They will be explicitly built around an analysis of the political dimensions of the research • Include generalizations that draw out relationships between participant experiences and the oppressive conditions in which they live • Critiques of particular circumstances that reflect the unequal nature of the broader social world • Organization: around how the entire study unfolded or how the transformative dimensions of the study influenced the development of findings

14. Findings from Polyvocal Analyses • Product from analysis: drafts of stories created through a process of studying data, identifying voices, drafting narratives, going back to the data and participants, and refining the narratives into individual or group stories • Putting stories into their final form and providing readers with enough information to make sense of the narratives being presented • Let each voice tell its own story in an effort to allow the reader to see a small part of the complex and sometimes paradoxical nature of the real life situations being examined • Present them to your readers so that they will be able to understand why the stories are included

15. Text excerpts taken directly from: • Hatch, J. A. (2002). Doing Qualitative Research in Education Settings. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press