Presenting your analysis can also be a time to ask participants if they agree with how you quoted or paraphrased them. To complete her research about group process, Andrea Pheasey (2000)
presented a draft copy of my interpretation of the group's development, with names attached to various comments, to all members of the Computer Group who were still at The Learning Centre. Betty and Madeline were able to read the document alone and both told me the evaluation and comments were fair.... Wanda, Ed, Joyce and I read the document together orally. We stopped many times for clarification of some of the quotes from the literature.... They seemed pleased to be identified and agreed that I had attributed comments correctly. (pp. 62-63)
Sharing your analysis with others is one way to extend your thinking. In a project about moving research about violence and learning into practice, researchers "workshopped" their data. Researchers presented their themes to other practitioners and invited feedback. Collaborative research projects and research networks also provide opportunities to share and respond to data analysis.
Research friends and support group members might assist with analysis. Dee McRae (2006) describes how she shared her journal entries by e-mail with Marina Niks, and how she was
able to launch into a trial analysis of the data that we could then discuss and work through as more data was collected. (p. 10)
There are software programs that can help you make sense of the information you have gathered. Such software can free you of many manual tasks associated with qualitative research by classifying, sorting and arranging your data. The packages can make the research process more efficient but will not perform any magic on your data. In that way, they are like word processing software-they help with editing and revising but don't do the writing.