Chapter

5
Data Analysis
Data analysis is the process of systematically searching and arranging the interview tran-
scripts, fieldnotes, and other materials that you accumulate to increase your own under-
standing of &em and to enable you to present what you have discovered to others. Analysis
involves working with data, organizing them, breaking them into manageable units, synthe-
sizing them, searching for patterns, discovering what is important and what is to be leamed,
and deciding whatyou will tell others. Formostprojects, the end pmducs
of research are
dissertations,
books, papem, presentations, of in the case of applied reiearch, plans for ac-
tion. Data analysis moyes you from the rambling pages of description to those products.
The analytic tash interpreting and rnaking sense out of the collected materials, appears
monumental when one is involved in a first research projecr For those who have never un-
dertaken ig analysis Iooms large, something one can avoid, at first glance, by remaining in
fie field collecting data when that period should have ended. Anxiety mounts: "I didn't get
anything good." "I'vewasted
my time." '"This job
is impossible."'My
careerwill end with
this mess of unanalyzed fieldnotes in my computer." These fears have crossed the minds
of most of us the hrst time we faced analysis. While analysis is complicated, it is also a
process that can be broken down into stages. Confronted as a series of decisions and un-
dertakings rather than as one vast interpretive effort, data analysis becomes a more man-
agcable process.
Our purpose
in this chapter is to help you learn to handie analysis. Some have written
about data analysis and we will refer you to them
@ecker,
1970a; Cassell, L978a;I-ofland,
1971; Schatzman & Strauss, 1973; Spradley, 1980; Strauss, 198?; Miles & Huberman,
t994), but one complaint by novices about ttre qualitative research literature is that analysis
has never received enough attention. This may be because no matter how much it is dis-
cussed in the li{erature, people who have not had experience doing it will never feel they
know ho% andconsistently ask for rnore. The inforrnation we provide in this chapter is ru-
dimentary and practical. We want to get you started. We provide some concrete suggestions
on how to proed to make analysis conceptually manageable as well as mechanically fea-
sible. But if you want to learn how to do it, you have to take data and work with thern, trying
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