Tips on data analysis

Hop over to the QualPage, where Kathryn Roulston has an informative post on strategies and tips for thinking through data analysis.

Becker reminds us that we can only “see” using the ideas that inform our thinking. Since our training as researchers shapes the kinds of ideas we can think with, it is useful to think about how our perceptions are shaped by our individual fields of studies and ways that research is usually done. Becker (1998, p. 18) writes:

… in a strong sense, there aren’t any “facts” independent of the ideas we use to describe them….Recognizing the conceptual shaping of our perceptions, it is still true that not everything our concepts would, in principle, let us see actually turns up in what we look at.

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