As Patton so rightly said, “[Y]ou don’t want to wait until you’ve collected your data to figure out your analysis approach” (2015, pp. 527). You had some hands-on experience with this in RSCH 8310, in which you practiced hand-coding using two or more strategies described in Saldaña’s (2016) book.

Therefore, you focus here on the strategic aspects of planning your analysis. There are many ways to approach building your analysis plan.

• Reconnect with your approach: Revisit methodological books and articles and published research that uses the approach you proposed. Use these as guidelines for deciding where and how to start the analysis process.
• Connect your approach to your sample: Revisit why you chose the participants you did. What does your approach require in terms of information-rich cases for analysis? Were you considering intensity sampling to saturate a phenomenon? Diversity sampling to examine common experiences across diverse demographic or geographic criteria? Your analysis strategy must align with your approach and sampling purpose.

Be willing to be wrong: The phenomenological technique of epoche (also known as bracketing) is a helpful way to make visible all of your pre-existing notions and plans of what you hope to find by making a transcript or written document prior to beginning the data analysis. Compare this document against your analyses to make sure you are discovering new insights, unpredicted findings, and discrepancies; proving that “you were right” is not the purpose of your study.

In this Workshop, you will describe your analysis plan.

assignment: 

Post responses to the following:

• Restate your research question, your chosen approach, and your sampling plan.
• Identify the key elements of data analysis that are consistent with your chosen approach to propose your analysis plan. Be sure to cite sources specific to your approach as well as your textbooks.
• Choose one coding method and code both interviews. Indicate the codes in the text of the transcript or summary. You can use Excel or Word. Attach this document to your post.