One of the biggest struggles that new qualitative researchers experience is how to make use of their data, specifically the use of quotes. The balance is a delicate one where you want to maintain fidelity to the voices of your participants and other data sources, yet you cannot simply dump pages and pages of transcriptions into the findings section. You have to identify the most central elements, pick out representative quotes, and at the most basic level tell a story about what you found. In this post, I want to provide tips for novice qualitative researchers when using quotes to help navigate this difficult balancing act.
It can be helpful to think about how a good journalist would convey information in a newspaper or magazine article. The best reporters are able to blend in the voices of their sources (using quotes) along with context setting prose.
There is a balancing act that conveys the information of the article using an effective mix of direct quotations and other text to understand and evaluate the facts being presented.
As the reader, you hopefully have enough information by the end of the story to understand what is happening but also to consider the various viewpoints presented in the story.
In many ways, this is exactly what you want to do with the presentation of your findings. You want to present the main ideas (i.e. your themes) along with supporting quotations.
The way you talk about the data, as in the case of the reporter, will provide additional context and a narrative to help guide the reader through the information presented.
Along these same lines, as the author, you will have to determine your voice in the writing of your findings.
Are you an impartial observer? Are you a participant in the conversation?
The type of study you are conducting will also provide some hints as to the approach you may take.
For instance, an ethnography would suggest the author as a more active participant as compared to a traditional case study approach.
Of course, as you discussed in your positionality section of your research, there are no truly impartial observers.
Rather, novice researchers often write their findings in a more neutral tone rather than overtly inserting themselves into the narrative. In many cases, this is because students so used to the rhetoric around bias as a negative try to remove themselves to make their research less biased.
In other cases, it is simply easier to “report the news” than be a part of the story.
Moreover, the author must decide how much of a quote to use in a particular section.
The options can range from a small phrase through a sentence to a longer block quotation. Often, new qualitative researchers will too liberally use block quotations.
In other words, a key phrase or sentence may be all they really want to convey but they include a paragraph to “provide context.”
Avoid this trap.
If you need to provide context for a quote, then put this in your own words rather than in the participants.
Along the same lines, nearly every qualitative research falls into the trap of falling in love with a one or two participants.
It is amazing to sit down with an interviewee who provides great insight, is exceptionally quotable, and hits on everything you want to address in your findings.
However, no matter how great a participant might be, you have to be careful that you are relying too much on a single or even a few participants.
Likewise, there will always be those dud interviews that do not provide much information.
As the author, try to vary up the participants you use in your findings. There may be a good reason to focus on one or two people in a section. For example, they may have been the only people with a given perspective.
Ultimately, to the extent possible, you want to vary how often you are quoting your participants.
If you see that you are using one or two for more than a paragraph or two, ask yourself if there are others who may not be quite as quotable, but still provide a shared perspective or view on the topic you are discussing.
There are two ways to approach which quotes you will use that will provide the best information while also demonstrating the range of your data (which is the primary reason to vary your sources).
First, your goal should be to begin by identify the best and most exemplary quotes for each point that you want to make, a process that begins with data analysis but is not completed until writing.
Second, you want to make sure to spread these quotes around across participants.
You will likely have a participant or two that have the most amazing quotes for every section of your findings. That is great and this is a good problem to have, but you obviously need to use more people or sources of data.
So after you identify the best quotes, look to see if you are relying too much on a few sources through the findings chapter or inside of individual sections.
If you are, then look at who has the second-best quote.
It might not be quite as pithy as your exemplary quote, but it still makes the point you are trying to convey. Replace some of your exemplary quotes with some second or even third best quotes to provide better balance throughout your discussion of the data.
Conclusion
Of course, there is far more that could be said when discussion how to write up qualitative data. My goal here as been to provide some tips for novice qualitative researchers when using quotes and discussing findings.
One of the great challenges of qualitative research is constantly working to improve your writing and how you convey the voices of your data.
Whether you are a novice or an experienced qualitative researcher, this is an ongoing challenge and I hope you continue working to improve the craft of qualitative research.
