100 8 Outcomes and Results
What ‘the Data’ Is Comprised of..................................................................
One thing that these examples illustrate is a critical but hidden issue: each of these
students had been making decisions as to what body of material they were think-
ing of as ‘the data’, and were managing that data somehow. That is, before you can
begin analyzing your data, you have to have some data to analyze.
A first step is to decide what is ‘in’ and what is ‘out’. This is perhaps most
obviously an issue in Don’s case—what actually constitutes a ‘meal episode’?
What is the basis for choosing novels to analyze? What literary traditions should
be sampled? These were issues that he had tackled in his early chapters.^2 Once the
inclusion criteria were settled, and he was reasonably sure he had a representative
selection of cases, he could then proceed to use the cases to develop his findings.
A next step is to systematically organize the data. I cannot emphasize this
enough. You need to create spreadsheets in which the data is laid out in a regular
way, or build files in which material has been categorized by key criteria, or draw
pictures showing how the data items relate to each other, or something else; but
whatever you do, get the data under control. When a student walks into my office
clutching a big pile of scruffy printouts, or shows me a Windows folder full of files
with no idea of what the file names mean or what is in them, or has lost track of
which version of the data is correct, or which graph is current, I know the student is
in trouble. A casual approach to managing your data may not seem to create issues
early on, but leave things too long and the complexities will compound and soon
get out of control.
Materials that are in a mess suggest that the thinking is in a mess. This is a good
point for self-reflection: if you find that your arrangement of the materials has be-
come chaotic, then maybe your grasp is chaotic too. Take yourself back to first prin-
ciples, ask basic questions about the data and what it is supposed to represent, think
about how you would like to see it organized—and then make it happen. Remember
that a core skill of research is careful thinking. Take heed of signs that suggest that
you can improve, and act on them.
A good presentation of results rests on having the data—which as I noted above
may be voluminous and contradictory—organized and under control. And this, in
turn, rests on clear principles for what the data is: what is valid, what is included or
excluded, and so on. The lesson for your thesis is that the reader needs to know too.
An examiner won’t trust your results unless they understand that your data is fair.
A clear presentation of how the data was chosen, what its properties are, and so on,
is essential to establishing trust with the reader, and, just as importantly, satisfying
yourself that your data is complete and correct.
(^2) When faced with doing the analysis, Don began to made some fresh judgments as to whether
something should be included; an obvious risk in making judgments during the analysis is that
subconsciously he might exclude cases because they did not fit his hypothesis, and initially he did
make errors of this kind. What it also reflected was that his thinking had developed, and he needed
to adjust his early chapters accordingly.