Keep a Record

Record keeping seems like a very dull activity BUT………. Good record keeping not a dull. It is a fruitful, even enjoyable, way of establishing a dialogue with other people.

A record of your reading. A research diary. Two principal areas of record keeping

A record of your reading Reading Notes Reading notes are important because you do not simply collate books or photocopies of articles for later reading. Your notes should not just consist of chunks of written or scanned extracts from original sources BUT…………. Represent your ideas on the relevance of what you are reading for your research problem.

Straus and Corbin suggest that the existing literature can be used for five purposes in qualitative research To stimulate theoretical sensitivity ’providing concepts and relationships that checked out against actual data’. To provide secondary sources of data to be used for initial trial runs of your own concepts and topics. To stimulate questions during data gathering and data analysis. To direct theoretical sampling to ‘give you ideas about where you might go to uncover phenomenon important to the development of your theory’. To be used as supplementary validation to explain why your findings support or differ from the existing literature.

Following Strauss and Corbin, you should always approach any publication with a set of questions, for instance What are relevant findings? What are the relevant methodology? What are the relevant theories? What are relevant hypothesis? What are the relevant samples? What is the relevant to how I now see my research problem? What possible new directions for my research are implied?

Research Diaries Unless you are careful, you may forget important aspects of your early thinking about your research which may be crucial to your readers ‘understanding’ One way to ensure that you spell out your reasoning is to keep a research diary. Keeping proper records, including a research diary, helps to make your reasoning transparent- to yourself as well as to your readers.

Why keep research diary To show the reader the development of your thinking. As an aid reflection. To help improve your time management. To provide ideas for the future direction of your work. To use in the methodology chapter of your thesis.

Extract from Vickes diary covers most of what a research diary should contain. That is Your research activities with dates Your reading Details of data collected Directions of data analysis including' special achievements, dead-ends and surprises’ Your own personal reactions Your supervisor’s reactions and suggestions.

Formalized approach, Glaser and strauss(1967), Richardson (2000:923-49) has suggested to organize your notes into four different categories. Observation notes ’fairly accurate interpretations of what I see, hear, feel, taste’ and so on. Methodology notes ’message to myself regarding how to collect data’. Theoretical notes ‘hunches, hypothesis…critiques of what I am doing/thinking/seeing’. Personal notes ‘feeling statement about the research, the people I am talking to…. My doubts, my anxieties, my pleasures’

Concluding Remarks Keeping a record should involve both making an ordered record of your reading and keeping a research diary. In a research diary, you can show your reader the development of your thinking, help your own reflection, improve your time management, and provide ideas for the future direction of your work.

Thank You