Invited feedback from critical friends. Show your learnings to colleagues and invite them to offer their interpretations. As well, share your interpretations and invite their responses.
Connect your learnings to the literature. Connecting your learnings to other studies can serve to support your work. It also introduces the related work to others who read your report. As well, it helps to build the body of information about the topic you researched.
In my exploration about using arts-based approaches in adult literacy work (Norton, 2008), I decided to relate what I was learning from participants to what I was reading about expressive arts therapies and research about arts-based approaches in schools. It was interesting to see how practitioners' knowledge about using arts-based approaches related to what others know. I hoped that including ideas from the wider literature would help to support our efforts to move forward with the use of arts- based approaches.
Connect to theory. Making connections with theory links your work to broader issues.
This approach to analysis is based on pre-computer analysis methods and suggests that you cut and sort paper. If you are new to research, you may find the step-by-step procedure helpful, whether you cut and sort paper or use the and cut and paste functions in your word processing software.
Your analysis may include physically separating (cutting) out bits of information (words, phrases, etc.) from your printed data, then sorting it. Here are some ways to prepare for this.