Wednesday 14 November 2012

Narratives as a Process for Analysis?

Yin's article metions that one issue with case studies is that researchers are commonly inclined "...to develop well-polished narratives for such items as individual interviews, specific meetings or other major events, logs of daily or weekly activities, and summaries of individual documents or reports" (p. 60), explaining that unless these individual narratives need to be published, they take too much time to produce and it's hard to decide around which topics a narrative should be organized, and how data should be integrated. This particular criticism made me think...  In various points in two of my other classes this term, we've discussed Grounded Theory (Glaser & Strauss), where writing up field notes in the form of memos is a huge part of the process of data analysis, and the point at which important codes and categories emerge, and can begin to be compared. Maybe Yin's criticism doesn't make sense because I haven't read that many case studies (and maybe they're commonly really poorly organized?) but his argument that constructing narratives in the process of analysis is a problem because it takes too much time doesn't make sense to me - yes, it takes time, but doesn't the process of writing, and of trying to understand how the key elements of an interview or meeting fit together, ultimately help a researcher to think through the realities of her case? And wouldn't putting together a narrative (especially at an early stage) help to reveal the important topics/the topics it should be organized around? Both Luker and Knight (and especially Luker) hammer home the point that regular writing is essential to the research process. I feel like more time you spend trying to think through your research in writing, the better (which is at least partly because I know this particular process helps me). 


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