So I've been doing a kind of 'post doc' if you will post PhD. It's not a post doc 100%, I'm a research officer on a large project that I'm basically managing myself involving a range of data sets, including qualitative interviews.

My frustration, is that for a few months now, I have been repeatedly saying I am struggling with analysis because I don't know what the CIs really 'want' and the analysis I am doing they don't like. They don't want thematic, they want discursive (that's fine!), they want case summaries before coding, also fine. When I first presented case summaries, they told me they were too detailed and I was taking too long, so told me to just summarise the interview, point to line numbers so they can compare, and then write some thoughts/questions at the end, which I've done, not amounting to more than 3 pages per interview.

But now, that's not enough, and they want the case summaries to be data analysis, linking to other case summaries, and presented thematically but still analysed discursively, or 'layered' as they call it. They want analysis within the case summaries, which I was doing before, which they told me not to do.

I asked for some examples I could look to, as I do well learning from examples, but they got annoyed and couldn't offer me any.

But the worst is I feel like they are wanting me to interpret the data the way they are interpreting it (despite them having only read 1-3 interviews of a 30 set), and get annoyed when I don't pick up something one of them has picked up as interesting, and yet simultaneously, tell me to analyse how I see it, that it's all subjective and that together we'll be able to pick up all sorts of different things.

I'm starting to lose my mind over the inconsistency, and am definitely beginning to feel incredibly inadequate with my analysis skills.

Anyways, thanks for reading, just feeling really down and frustrated at the moment.

That sounds like a difficult and stressful situation, especially with the changing guidelines about what they actually want you to do. As someone currently doing qualitative analysis, I would absolutely hate to have someone looking over my shoulder and saying, 'why haven't you spotted this?' - as you say, different analysts will come up with slightly different results. I'm sure it's not to do with your skills, it sounds like a lack of clarity on their part, as well as an inability to let you do the job!

What does the study protocol/ analysis plan say you should do?

I can't offer specific advice, only encouragement... you're obviously very capable - I think anyone (who cared about what they are doing) would feel like they were going insane with changing guidelines and the sense of them wanting you to interpret it the way they interpret it.

Thank you guys, support and encouragement always helps get you out of a crappy corner.

In regards the question about plan/protocol, there isn't a strict one, and it keeps changing constantly. It's a bit 'loosey-goosey' as this is a combined cultural studies/humanities and qualitative sociology project.

I think my biggest frustration is when I do projects on my own or with just one other team member, the plan for analysis is set, done, I know what I'm doing, it's very clear, and I have a lot of control. In this case, I'm working with 3 other team members, so while I'm running the project, the analysis is up to the four of us and it just gets a bit messy with three big thinkers, and myself whose more of a 'doer'.

Anyways I had a private chat with two of the team members who were quite encouraging and told me to keep doing what I was doing so that's alright I suppose, just doing my head in a bit!

I miss PhD days when the analysis was my own!!