Presenting Qualitative Data

Presenting Qualitative Data: "Presenting Qualitative Data
by Ronald J. Chenail
The Qualitative Report, Volume 2, Number 3, December, 1995 (http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR2-3/presenting.html)
After all the data have been collected and the analysis has been completed, the next major task for qualitative researchers is to re-present the study in the form of a paper or a lecture. The challenge of converting mounds of data and analysis can be quite overwhelming even for the experienced researcher. To help you with your efforts at presenting qualitative research in your papers and in your talks, I ask you to consider the following ideas: Openness, Data as Star, Juxtaposition, and Data Presentation Strategies.
1. Openness
In 1993, Marc Constas wrote a very helpful article for those qualitative researchers who process, analyze, organize, and present their qualitative data in categories. In his paper, 'Qualitative analysis as a public event: The documentation of category development procedures,' Constas presented a simple chart which can help qualitative researchers make overt their assumptions, logics, and choices when conducting a research study. Constas wrote his article for a number of reasons. First, he was concerned that qualitative researchers make all sorts of choices in creating our research studies and methods, and that for the most part, we are not very good at sharing these decisions, and the rationales for these choices in our presentations of our work. He pointed out that quantitative researchers are also guilty of this oversight, but Constas also argued that qualitative researchers are especially vulnerable to this method-reporting-deficit. Unlike their quantitative brothers and sisters, qualitative researchers often create new methods for their particular studies, or they improvise and modify current, extant approaches.
Given this idiosyncratic leaning with their methods, qualitative researchers can be easily criticized for leaving the reader 'i"