Hi everyone,

I am due to present my preliminary findings at an important conference soon and I am struggling to know what to say! I have completed my interviews but not fully analysed them or figured out any specifics like 'this many people thought this' or 'men thought this whilst women thought this' type of thing so do I just talk about general themes I have come across and will be exploring more in the write up? Does anyone have any experience of presenting findings before analysis? What kind of things did you talk about?

Thanks for reading! :)

Sarah

I pull out a few quotes - gets people to wake up a bit in my experience! Maybe one for each theme?

Hi sarah, I have presented preliminary findings at a conference although they were quantitative, but I did have to write an abstract to present a qualitative study once before I had done the analysis! I think it's absolutely fine to say that it's a work in progress and to just present any emerging themes and give an idea of how common the themes are if possible at this stage. I would definitely include quotes- I think doing that helps to keep the audience awake! You can also go on to say what you will do next and how you expect things to turn out. I wouldn't worry too much- plenty of people present work in progress and that won't make it any less interesting or valuable for the audience. Good luck with it, KB