Does anyone know of interesting ways of presenting findings chapters, as I am really struggling with mine. It is a qualitative thesis, in a social science based subject, and the findings come from observations and interviews. So far the only thing I can think of is describing the context and then reporting findings under the different themes - but it all seems very "he said this", "she said that", is there any other way of doing it. I have tried looked at different theses. Any ideas would be appreciated.

That sounds a little like my thesis, except that mine was history, 18th century, and rather than interviews I was relying on snippets found in old documents. I had a little quantitative analysis, but the bulk of my research and thesis was qualitative, involving hunting for needles in haystacks!

The bulk of my thesis was 5 main chapters, each exploring a different thematic subset of my research topic. Initially when I wrote each chapter it was like lots of interesting snippets, one after the other. But my supervisor encouraged me to try to impose a higher-level structure, a story/narrative running through, so I'd say what I'd found/concluded, and then give examples, rather than let the examples (sort of) speak for themselves.

I needed a final conclusions chapter as well to discuss the overall results, including the case for change over time that I studied, and what the nature of that change was. But each earlier thematic chapter worked very well.

Does this help at all? Could you try summarising what you have found for each chapter at a higher-level, and then write it that way, with the "he said" and "she said" playing a supporting role, rather than the other way around?

Sunflower, you wrote the post I was considering writing!! It's good to know I am not the only one struggling with this. I am just starting to write my findings and have looked at the blank screen for a while, hoping for inspiration. I even cut a bit from my methodology chapter and inserted it in my findings as I thought it would give me a head start. For about two minutes I felt great having suddenly 'written' 2000 words of my findings. However, sense prevailed and I put them back where they belong, in the methodology chapter.

Thanks for those ideas Bilbo, they're really useful.

I am using Grounded Theory as a method of collection and analysis. Anybody any GT tips on how to present in an interesting way??