Exercises for Chapter 9 Communicating

I am sharing exercises to accompany each chapter of Qualitative Research Methods for Everyone: An Essential Toolkit (Policy Press). https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/qualitative-research-methods-for-everyone

Here are the exercises for Chapter 9 – the final chapter

Writer’s Block. Discuss with colleagues and friends their techniques for dealing with writer’s block. It will make you feel better even if it doesn’t help you get on and write!

We see a blank page, get scared, and believe we can’t do it. We avoid it, do the washing, walk the dog, anything else. How to get around this? Here are some of my tips. Set an alarm for twenty minutes and see how you go. If you are still not writing (or reading) then you can give up for a while. Get in the habit of spending one hour a day at the computer (doesn’t work for me). Tell yourself it will be rubbish/ write for your grandma or someone who likes straight talking. Read. Write something else, a map, a picture, a plan. Talk into a phone as you walk. Always leave a small job to go back to next time (great tip for me).

Higher level analysis. Work on a few themes from your data as developed in the previous chapter and see if you can usefully use some sort of higher level analysis to provide coherence.

Read/ look. Read, read, read. Read critically and analytically, examine writing styles and layout, organising principles, wording, quotations, how they make an argument. Read style books and grammar books, read poetry, examine art and literature, read pamphlets and leaflets. Get familiar with style and genre.

Evaluate. Read some published work based on qualitative research and first look for how they are organised their data or findings. Have they used a higher level form of analysis? Have they used disembodied quotes? Ask yourself what you value (and what you don’t) as you read. Establish a few key principles of writing and communicating for yourself.

Avoid over-quantifying. Find a report that reduces qualitative research to too many quantities or disembodied quotes and try to re-write it. Clarissa White (2014) and colleagues have a lot more to say on this and I recommend their chapter.

Comment below. Please share any tips or insights in the comments.

You might also enjoy the book’s accompanying Podcast series: Qualitative Research Methods for Everyone, wherever you get your podcasts.