Analysis Starts on Day 1

Both of the readings from Luker and Knight this week helped me add the finishing touches to my research proposal. What stood out to me in this week's readings was Luker's point about how the analysis portion of our research project is done throughout the entire data collection process. I was able to relate this point to one of the research methods that I have chosen to use for my project; which was the email interviews. The article that I consulted was called “Research Interviews in Cyberspace” by Reid, Petocz and Gordon (2008). In this article, the authors give suggestions in how to make effective use of this style of interview. How this article can relate to Luker is when they talk about how the researcher should spend a bit of time in reading and interpreting their respondents’ answers, before sending them another set of questions (Reid, Petocz, & Gordon, 2008, p. 54). This approach to me seems like an analysis-type of activity, because you are encouraged to look at your data right away so that you can start teasing out patterns or interesting ideas that you may want your respondents to continue to elaborate on. From an interpersonal level, it can also show your respondent that you are paying attention to their answers and taking them seriously. Overall, I think that there are benefits to doing the analysis of your data throughout the collection process, because you may find interesting patterns that you can quickly address since you are still in the process of figuring out what you research is telling you about the thing you are studying. And, as Luker states, there is less analysis work to do at the end.

Citation:

Reid, A., Petocz, P., & Gordon, S. (2008). Research interviews in cyberspace. Qualitative Research Journal, 8(1), 47-61.