Entry for 17 May 2009:
I’m approaching the end of my 3rd year at the University of Strathclyde, which means that several of the MSc students who started with me in my first and second years are now trying to finish up. Since the beginning of May I’ve been auditing the qualitative analyses of four of these students. It seems that they are all converging at the same time, so I’ve spent many hours wading through draft analyses, which vary in length from 30 to 90 pages of meaning units and categories. Actually, this crop is looking pretty good, although I think all of them have discovered that there was much more to qualitative analysis than they had previously imagined. The auditing document is really the core of a qualitative research project, the goal to which many months’ of analysis and the basis for writing up a qualitative dissertation.
It’s a lot of work to go through them with a fine tooth comb, but it’s worth it for the quality control and the training aspect; the only way to teaching qualitative analysis is to closely supervise a student through the actual process. As I write, these students are busy revising their analyses and writing up their studies. I wish them well!
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