5.5.1 Transcription and coding analysis
The method of data analysis was tied to the process of data collection, particularly “the iterative process whereby data analysis feeds into subsequent data collection with this then stimulating further analysis,” which is a common feature in the: “analysis of virtually all ethnographic studies” (Robson 2002a: 487). Generally, my approach followed what Miles and Huberman (1994) term “a fairly classic set of analytic moves” (9). My qualitative analysis was a mixture of Editing
Approaches and Immersion Approaches (Robson 2002a: 458). As an ‘editor,’ I
used very few a priori codes and my codes were: “based on meanings or patterns in the texts” (ibid). The data was coded through a reflection process while making some links to main themes highlighted in the literature review (Robson 2002a). However, my approach did not rigidly use grounded theory analysis. As an ‘immersed researcher’ my methods were ‘fluid’ (ibid), but the process was quite systematized and used very little intuition as I followed the plan I set forth.
135 Stake asserts that data from an investigation: “faces a hazardous passage from the writer to the reader…and that the writer needs ways of safeguarding the trip” (2003: 443). In transcription: “it is clear that even the most literal form of redaction (the simplest punctuation, the placing of a comma, for example can determine the whole sense of a phrase) represents a translation or even an interpretation” (Bourdieu et al. 1993: 621). I intended to conduct my analysis simultaneously with my data collection as: “every researcher must be able to generate theory as well as formulate methodology if the data collection process is to be relevant to locally situated research, effectively organized and readily interpreted” (Schensul, Schensul et al. 1999). The qualitative data collected in interviews in which pauses, utterances, intonation and non-verbal communication were noted was organized through Miles and Huberman’s (1994: 248) “clustering strategy” surrounding the main emerging themes.
To structure my data analysis, I utilized data display and conclusion- drawing/verification. With data display, the information must be organized and compressed. I read through interviews and documents several times in order to further my understanding of the data (Creswell 1994) and develop categories and relationships. I created organization categories, called ‘topics’ which acted as bins for sorting data (McMillan and Schumacher 2001). This method facilitated comparison. With conclusion drawing and verification, I wrote a “descriptive narrative” (Creswell 1994) about the experiences of my participants, in which emergent themes were noted (Denzin 1998), along with contrasts and patterns.
5.5.3 Hermeneutical Concerns in Data Analysis
No researcher can genuinely comprehend the perceptions of participants and this leaves all research – especially qualitative research – open to criticisms of bias and subjectivity. Substituting the terms ‘objectivism’ and ‘subjectivism’ with ‘determined’ and ‘constructed,’ Hodkinson (1998) argues that research falls into four ideal position types: “research findings determined by the researcher, research findings determined by the subject, research findings constructed by the
136 researcher and research findings constructed by the subject” (560). Given my constructionism/constructivism epistemology, I focused on the two most directly related to qualitative research; research constructed by the subject and also research constructed by the researcher. Through the method of one-to-one interviews and focus groups, participants had considerable choice in discussing what they thought was relevant and to relay stories and anecdotes that captured factors which could be attributed as barriers toward academic engagement. However, I must recognize that my research was inevitably influenced by my own subjectivity, though I consider Hodkinson’s use of the word ‘determined’ to be too strong. Adhering to the interpretivist theoretical position and utilizing Bourdieu’s concept of habitus strongly indicates that my findings were influenced by my theoretical framework. As a researcher, the hermeneutical paradox I encountered was centred upon the epistemological base and the theoretical position which had the potential to influence my work on accessing values, self- representations and social practices. In the cultivation of my own positionality there was a substantial risk to influencing the findings.
5.5.4 Reflexivity
For Bourdieu, reflexivity involves a looking back at “one’s own knowing practices” (Charlesworth 2000: 31) and throughout my research I made attempts to analyze my unconscious embedded social position and how it impacted upon my mode of analysis, developing what Bourdieu calls the “sociological ‘feel’ or ‘eye’” which: “allows one to perceive and monitor on the spot, as the interview is actually taking place, the effects on the social structure within which it is occurring” (1993: 608). Reflexivity, for Bourdieu, is essential to the research process as it is: “means a turning back on oneself, a process of self-reference” where “total reflexivity requires full and uncompromising, self-reference (Aull Davies 1999: 4, 7). Thus, it is argued, no process of knowing is fully reflexive until it is explicitly turned on the knower, who becomes self-conscious even of the reflexive process of knowing. I was conscious of falling into the main criticism of Willis’s ethnographic approach which is chastised for being:
137 remarkably unreflective on his own situated position. It is not so much his over-rapport as his failure to recognize and reflect, which is at fault. While acting as a spokesman and biographer he himself remains invisible in the accounts and text. He is there yet is not there. We never get any real sense of his presence as a critical social actor in the field. (Coffey 1999: 30)
As a researcher, it is my hope that I am not a “spokesman and biographer” but that my methods enable me to represent the world through the eyes of the participants. My position as relatively close in age and of a different nationality places me in an interesting research position, though obviously participants perceived me as middle-class and possibly as part of the institution (see 5.4.3). I am a white male; however students may not view me as having a social class
status, as I am not their nationality.62 Research into identity work contains
quandaries regarding reflexivity, particularly:
how to maintain a reflexive and critical lens on identities and identifications within any one of the influential contexts for identity making without losing sight of the impact of other, even broader contexts such as the policy field, the nation state and even the global arena. (Reay 2010: 281)
Reflexivity is always a balancing act where the focus must be equally distributed between researcher and participants.
Many sociologists, including Bourdieu, are critical of methodological imperialism yet methodology is essential as one cannot “disassociate the construction of the object from the instruments of construction of the object and their critique” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 30). Bourdieu’s attention to reflexivity intends to counteract this. In his analysis of his position as a researcher, Wacquant (2011) argues that one must go in “armed” with the knowledge of the:
problematics inherited from your discipline, with your capacity for reflexivity and analysis, and guided by a constant effort, once you have passed the ordeal of initiation, to objectivize this experience and construct
62 I recognise that: “male ethnographers of young men’s schooling have systematically failed to acknowledge the implicit male knowledges, understandings and desires that we share with male research participants’ schooling biographies” (Mac an Ghaill 1994: 174).
138 the object, instead of allowing yourself to be naively embraced and constructed by it. (87-88)
Wacquant highlights the effect the research can have on the researcher which I consider an essential part of reflexivity.