Here are some thoughts/queries I had while I was writing my first (not entirely satisfactory) bit of analysis of the interviews I did for my thesis.
• I didn’t realise until I really got into it that the analysis is a bit like fractal geometry - each individual section could grow to any size as the closer you look at an issue in detail the more you can find to say.
• It is hard to draw boundaries around an individual topic when other related topics keep intruding that would be dealt with in a separate chapter. When it comes to writing up I worry I might end up repeating key points several times in different ways (though perhaps this is not a bad thing?)
• I realise that it is harder than I thought it would be to use the interview text. I can easily characterise an interviewee as having a given attitude based on my familiarity with a whole interview but when it comes to substantiating it with excerpts often I find either the particular sentences are banal and/or they are embedded in a conversational context irrelevant to my theme but without which the sentence is meaningless. To what extent will the reader be willing to take my characterisation of the overall attitudes of interviewees on trust?

I don’t know if anyone out there has thoughts on these points - I imagine these are just concerns that will fade with practice, practice practice!

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