l have spoken a great deal about how analysis is tangled up with the data collection phase, with the presentation of descriptive data and even the project design phase, but what do I mean by analysis? Well, by this
I mean making some sense of it all. This is intentionally vague: making sense of it mean it, so that it is manageable, presenting it under certain headings that link relevant parts together, translating it so that others can understand it (some- times what you have collected is in a foreign language or sometimes it seems so strange to people from a different culture that it appears as a foreign language). But, in a sense analysis is all these things It is summarizing, sorting, translating and organizing. It is moving f a jumble of words and pictures to something less wordy, shorter and more manageable, and easier for an outsider to understand It involves exploring deeply to see what is there that might not be obvious, standing back to see what patterns emerge, thinking and theorizing to draw conclusions that can be generalized in some way or other Sorting So, how do you start? Well, as I have said over and over, you should have started to make sense of it all as you went along, as you collected data and thought about your research questions, and decided who to ask what questions and where to do the next piece of participant observation or interview. By the time you reach what we call the analysis phase you should have some idea of what it is you want to convey Nevertheless, you have to do something concrete with all the data you have collected. One of the first stages of analysis is moving from a chronological order to another kind of order. Field notes, interview and other kinds of data have been collected chronologically, as you went along, but it is unlikely that you will present them in this way.