although i have presented this figure at conferences, we did not include it in the published journal article version of the study. This illustration shows inductive analysis thatbegins with theraw data consisting of multiple sources of information and then broadens to several specific themes(e.g., safety, denial) and on to the most general themes represented by the two perspectives of social-psychological and psychological fac tors.
Hypotheses or propositions that specify the relationship among categories of information also represent information. In grounded theory, for example, investigators advance propositions that interrelate the causes of a phenomenon with its context and strategies. Finally, authors present metaphors to analyze the data, literary devices in which something borrowed from one domain applies to another(Hammersley& Atkinson, 1995). Qualitative writers may compose entire studies shaped by analyses of metaphors.