Gathering Data

After the initial rush of the project, and spending many useful weeks travelling around speaking to a variety of different people, there has been a noticeable slowing in the pace as I try to follow up with various people and arrange times for interviews. I have agreements in principle with many different people to get my interviews going, but finding times that work for everyone has been difficult so far. I remember this occurring in my project on diversity in church schools as well, that trying to get the last school interviews was much more difficult than the first three and we spent several months trying to work out an agreeable time. Of course, after the project is done, the month or two or three you waited seems insignificant. You can barely remember it.

While I am changing gears for the project, I am beginning to think about how I will analyse my data. One thing I am interested in how people understand their experiences in common sense ways. Like, if someone mistreats you, or treats you well, you’ll have some reason for why it happens. And the reasons you give will likely relate to what you believe about the world and the sorts of things you expect to happen to you. This is, of course, a problem when the common sense beliefs we have about the world are problematic in some way, like when they include some stereotypes or prejudices. I’m hoping as I gather stories about experiences, I am able to understand better how those stories start to become common sense. And if, in understanding how these stories turn into common sense narratives, we can better identify and disrupt the production of stereotypes. And from that, perhaps we can encourage people to tell new, positive stories about their experiences of people not exactly like themselves.