Well, not actually starting. I’ve been doing it for some time, but I am finding it very difficult to come up with a conceptual framework which I can hang the analysis on. I’ve done four of my interviews, and I think I only need another two. (I must chase up access to the pre-1992 universities I’ve already contacted. And perhaps find some others if I can’t get participation)  And the fact that my book chapter is now officially “In press” might help with getting further participants. But I’ve got quite a lot to be going on with so I can at least start writing.

The trouble is of course, ordering my writing. My first idea was to use Nvivo to code all my notes that I’d taken from the literature, which did generate a set of concepts, and in that sense that has been quite valuable. But I think I may have fallen into the trap of stopping generating codes and tried to force things into nodes where they don’t belong.  I will probably have to unpack each of the 35 nodes I’ve already created and re code them. Actually, I doubt I’ll have to unpack all 35 of them – one or two of them only have a few references so I’ll have to think hard about whether I want to continue with them.  I’ve also melded the interview data in with the literature review, which might also have been a mistake, because I am going to want to highlight the differences between that data and the literature review. Still, they do appear separately in each node, so they shouldn’t be too hard to unpack.  I’ll be a bit more careful when I start on the documentary and photographic data which is next.

The other thing I’ve begun to do is a much cruder analysis technique, but I think it may have some potential. Essentially I’ve just created a document for each interview question, and am importing the respondent’s answers into those. Because the questions themselves were generated from the literature review they should reflect large themes which might contribute to a conceptual framework. On the bright side I have some holidays from work coming up, so I plan to use the first week or so of it to really crack on with it. And I shouldn’t get too frustrated. I just attended one of our regular study schools and in one of the sessions on “How to write the perfect thesis” I was relieved to be told that very few doctoral students know what they are doing when they start out.  – The trick is to make the thesis look like you did!