at least you've moved on from dog barking!

Emily's quotes sound good to me :-)

Sounds good to me, too!

Excellent. Here's a present for being so knowledgeable (gift)(gift)(gift)

PS - just checked my Findings chapter, but please bear in mind that it was ALL qualitative, and was an holistic view of data with long quotes in places. And that I divided it into four sections: 1. What did they say? 2. How did they say it? (ie was it evidential, experiential, or socially constructed) 3. What mediating factors did they access to expand, limit, or explain that view? 4. What were the themes arising from an holistic/multi-standpoint view of 1,2 and 3? So it was 17,000 words! The Discussion was a further 7,000 words. My biggest chapter was the Lit Review 29,000, followed by Methodology, 20,000. References (thankfully not counted!) were 20,000 words. All told, I did 95,000 as a special dispensation because it's such a complex subject!

I used the Review mode of Word to do what I'd have done manually with highlighter pens and handwritten comments. I used different highlighting colours to highlight which interview sections (in big chunks) might relate to each sup-question (and did multi-options on this where necessary) And I used the Comment facility to add my thoughts as I went along.

I then created a Quotes and Notes file where I placed all data relating to each sup-question, and dragged those with the Comments into each. It was a techno kind of use of the Review facility. So basically, I colour-coded everything, and also had the notes attached as Comments. It was fairly speedy, and very useful. I like colour-coding. It gives you a visual map.

But I only did that at the very end, and retained as a whole all transcripts with their variation of colours totally intact, throughout. It worked on a perceptual and a conceptual level.

What's the line on swearing? I have the words a***hole and b*tch in a quote - I want to use it, do I ** them or just leave them be. I feel a bit rude leaving them!

The mind boggles!! Leave em in! Give the examiners something more interesting to read than endless 'howevers, notwithstanding, nevertheless, moreover' etc.

I've never used notwithstanding! *goes back to edit the entire thesis to add this in*

Leave them in!

Definitely leave them in. I have 'see you next tuesday' in a couple of my quotes, along with various other words.

I'm now quite jealous slowmo! Maybe I could adapt all the quotes to include random swearing? :p

OK, another question....

So far I've been explaining the themes - and then adding in block quotes - between 50-150 words to provide examples of what I'm going on about. On these sections I've just put the quote, followed by (Participant 20).

But now I'm thinking, as well as that, I may want to include 1-3 case studies, well not case studies, but longer quotes, where someone has gone through a whole example, more like 350 words. so....

1) can I do that? or should I be consistent in how I'm showing the info?
2) should I give the person a name? or just stick to 'participant 11' or something - I can't name them all, as I have 40, so thought I might give a fake name to just the 3 longer quoted/case study people?