Brief Notes on our Different Approaches to Analysis: Example 1

Editor's Notes

• #2: Rohhss We are going to talk about analysis and how our team of six approached it on a project about self advocacy support across the UK. We used a number of accessible methods to investigate what was going on in the groups between members and supporters. These methods included interviews, the facilitation of focus groups, observations and the drawing and working of life size body maps.
• #3: I always thought that analysis was complicated and for some people it is but others it may not be. Everyone may assume that its only people like academics that can do analysis and don't find it difficult, but even they will find it hard at times. Researchers with the label of a learning difficulty may not even get the chance to do it because other people have made the assumption that it's too difficult for them or that there is no time to explain the process. As a team we strongly believe that there is no part of research that people with the label of a learning difficulty can't be involved in - we just need to look at other ways of doing it. Yes it is more time consuming to make things accessible but if it does - what’s the issue? It's important to rememberthat there is no right or wrong way.
• #4: Lets start with an example of the body maps. Group members drew this body shapes and used it as a tool to discuss the habits of support workers – both good and bad. These lists were noted and put into themes. Some aspects of good support were about knowledge and knowing how to do things, some were about the supporter personality – being kind or patient or having a sense of humour. Some aspects were about attitude and whether supporters had time for people. Other points were about the tasks undertaken. All of these points were grouped into themes. When we compared what had been said about supporters to what was in their job descriptions it was hard to find much match. Supporters were truly undertaking a mammoth amount of tasks not even listed. We also found that people wanted very contradictory things from supporters. For example they wanted them to be confident in a crisis and organise things for people, but at the same time stay in the background and not interfere. These contradictions were important because it demonstrated how complex and contradictory the role was.
• #5: Analysis doesn't always have to rely on writing, it can be done in many different ways. At the end of the day analysis is just another word for understanding and explaining what it was that we found out.  In our project of the self advocacy groups, at one stage we went through all the transcripts of the interviews. It became clear that this wasn't the most effective way to do analysis- this was because many of the research team members were unable to read and were very reliant on someone else doing the reading. So we thought it would be a much better idea to just listen to the recordings of the interviews and not get into a fuss about transcribing. We also made lots of copies of the tapes so that members could take them home and do the work at their leisure.  When we joined up again at the research meeting we would have lots of flipchart paper round the walls and write down all the themes from the interviews. This was a very good way of doing analysis but it has to be said it was also very exhausting. 
• #6: We had discussed beforehand what we might be looking for in the groups and this helped us organise the information we had. And example here is about support worker power. Many months before going into the field we discussed what we might want to look at in order to understand how power dynamics worked. We produced this model. When we went into analysing the interviews we could detail what happened in each group under each point of the model. This helped us deal with the information and led to much discussion about we thought about those aspects.
• #7: Rohhss – an example of some of these discussions are on the slide – (read through) . It helped us develop our ideas, based on the findings, of what was happening in the groups. Lou it was important to include peoples ideas and when they came up in this way. Everyone in the team had experience of working in a group so it was what is called insider research.These are just a few examples from our analysis – we are leaving it here but can discuss it further in discussion time later this morning.