Step 1: Familiarize Yourself with Data

Begin the organization process by becoming very familiar with the data. This is accomplished through several types of readings: literal, interpretative, and reflexive.

Literal readings of a transcript may take into account things like spelling or grammar issues in your transcripts, pauses, agreements or disagreements in a conversation, or laughter. It might also include descriptive data, such as whether a respondent has children or not, marital status, and so on. A literal reading allows the analyst to become familiar with the structure and content of the transcript.

Reflexive readings reflect upon how the researcher played a role in the interview. Reflexivity is an attitude of attending systematically to the effect of the researcher at every step of the research process (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation). Malterud offers this on the topic of reflectivity in the analysis process: “A researcher’s background and position will affect what they choose to investigate, the angle of investigation, the methods judged most adequate for this purpose, the findings considered most appropriate, and the framing and communication of conclusions” (Malterud, 2001, p. 483–484). Reflexive reading can promote a critical engagement and awareness of subjectivity and bias through transcript reading process.

Interpretive readings are perhaps the most crucial type of reading an analyst will conduct. Interpreting is the ability to think abstractly, see patterns, and interrogate emerging patterns. Interpretation is involved in both data collection and data analysis, so the process is iterative. Ultimately analysts complete different types of interpretive readings to inform later analytic tasks like defining concepts, creating codes, and finding associations.