Getting familiar with data Familiarize yourself with your data by reading and re-reading it thoroughly. Read the data with a question in mind: ‘What’s going on in the data?’ You may also try to break...

Getting familiar with data

Familiarize yourself with your data by reading and re-reading it thoroughly. Read the data with a question in mind: ‘What’s going on in the data?’ You may also try to break the surface of the data by coding it in some preliminary, even mechanical, manner. Or you may focus on the use of rhetorical tools, such as metaphors After this, you will probably have some sort of an idea, presumably vague, of the nature of the data, and perhaps also of some features that attract your attention. Then, apply some creative analytic practice in order to figure out what you have learned from the data. You may for instance try to consider your phenomenon as a play to be performed at a theater. What sort of play would it be? Who would be the actors? What would happen on the stage? What is the audience like? What would happen backstage? After writing this down, submit your ‘play’ to a reflexive analysis. What made you write like that? What does it imply? How does it differ from other sorts of ‘plays’? This sort of exercise is likely to focus your attention on the very essence of the phenomenon under study. Instead of a play, you can take any other form of creative analytic practice – poem, novel, TV program, performance, and so forth.