Dear seniors in this forum,
I asked this questions previously but unfortuanetly nobody could answer me. I hope I can get an answer now. I'm doing a research about instructional supervision (a case study of a school). I have data from a questionnaire, interviews, documents review and observations. The observations I did were open i,e I didn't use any checklists or the like, they were anecdotal. Can you please suggest for me how I can present this data knowing that I'm preserting my data under research questions.
I appreciate your opinions and suggestions.
Thanks,

Hi Canonly,
I had a similar problem once. Have you coded the observation data in any way? By that I mean to code it to look for commonalities or themes between the observations. I found Glaser & Strauss' constant comparative method useful for analysing this sort of qualitative data. Once I identified themes or rules that appeared in the data then I was able to describe them in the write up with specific examples from the actual observation notes.

Good luck with this! Know that you aren't alone in the struggle. :-) I am currently working on a case study of a school and have found Robert Yin's book on case study methodology helpful in reconciling everything.

Thank you JustNic for your reply. I was about to lose hope of finding someone in this forum to share experiences with me. actually by mentioning those names of books or authors you're indirectly guiding me. I feel frustrated as I'm doing this research yet I'm not pretty sure whetehr what I'm doing is right. I have a supevisor but not helpful at all. she asked me to put data uder research questions. I have questionnaires for both teachers and supervisors with very little variations in items of these questionnaires, I have interviews done with both, I have field observaions (non participant) which I took as writing what I'm observing like anecdotal report, and I have docuemnt review. NOW the problem is really I'm facing trouble of how to present this data under each researh question. Even the items in the questionnaires that elicits data about each research question are many so when I present the mean of each item do I just present it as in the table or I have to write about each item without discussion since I have to leave the discussion till the last chapter I guess. or I don't say anything about each item and I just keep the numbers as presented in the table and put that these are results from quesionnaires. Can you please provide me with any thesis that I can download in order just to see how the researcher presented the data taken from documents, interviews, observations and questionanaires if any?

I really appreciate help from any other researhcers in this forum.
Thanks again,

Hi Canonly,
I took a bit of a break for the new year and just now saw your reply to my response. You mention means so I'm wondering if your survey items were closed-ended with a Likert type scale e.g. agree-disagree-neutral? If so, then you would present the statistical analysis in table format and then discuss your interpretation of that statistical finding i.e. what was significant, explaining outliers, etc. I would suppose that would go in your findings chapter.

As for your interviews and observations, they would be presented differently because they are a different sort of data. I guess how you would present them would depend how you approached each type of data collection. A friend of mine did her thesis with open-ended interviews and observations but from the framework of phenomenology so that shaped how she reported that data. With case study, it's a bit trickier because it is, by nature, a mixed-methods approach and that is almost a framework unto itself. Many sups won't let students do case studies as they don't see it as valid or worthy for a thesis. Mine let me do it because the experimental school I'm studying is very cutting edge and the focus of my study there is rather unique.

As for your research questions, I would explain why you chose them, supporting it from the research literature and pointing out what the literature doesn't cover as justification for including the question in your study. Then you might explain why you chose each data collection method to address the specific research question. I'm doing mine with the idea that the interviews are to collect data to answer my questions and the quantitative statistical data is for triangulation to provide reliability and validity to the findings from the interviews and observations.

Again, I wish you luck with this. I found it helpful to do a search for theses that also used a case study approach just to see how they presented their data and reconciled all the different data collection methods. PM if you'd like and perhaps with a better understanding of your work I might be able to point you to a thesis that is appropriate.

Best of luck :-)

Thank you a lot JustNic. I really appreciate your answer. Actually this school is conducting a process of instructional supervision which can be described as a systematic one with teachers. This process is written in the school system (i,e procedure of the process is documented step by step with accompanying forms for each step). My aim or my research questions are: to describe how this process is being conducted, to get teachers and supervisors views about this process, to investigate how this process is contributing to the professaional development of teachers and my last question will be to suggest how this process can be modified to meet teachers and supervisors needs more. I'm doing this since I work in this school. Well, now you knew my research questions, so I found that I can get data for some of them from all instruments used while for others I can get data from 1 or 2 instruments only. for example, for describing the process, I think the best way is to do interviews, document review (as I told you this process is documented in the school system, part of the school policy and manual), and observations and I can include some items in my questionnaires. My questionnaires are closed ended (4 type likert scale: strongly agree, agree, somewhat agree, disagree). Now can you please help me a little more by discussing how I can present the data. My supervisor wants me to present data under each research question. I appreciate your answer and thanks in advance.

Hi Canonly, are you 'weighting' your data-or is all your data of equal relevance? You've already said some of it doesn't apply to one or two research questions, so provided there is some form of reference or brief explanation of this-it would be fine to include some data only under relevant questions. Logically, when you think about it how could every instrument or tool apply equally to every question? So therefore, being discerning about how and where you present it, shows good judgement and a sound understanding of the tools you have used and why you used them.

Secondly, have you actually analysed (even briefly in your head) this data. In other words, I know you are reporting it at present, but does it make any sense to you yet beyond being all the data. Or are you still at the stage where you are swimming in data? Yvonne Bui's 'How to write a Master's thesis' has a great chapter 8- how to write and present results. It is excellent to read, though as I warned before, be prepared once you have done this precisely to text book excellence, for your supervisor to get you to write and rewrite-that is if you have a supervisor like mine. But the Bui chapter 8 really helped me present data initially.

The Yin book mentioned previously is excellent. What I did to help when reporting data, was I went into my university's library of theses, downloaded quite a few, and read their 'results' chapters to see how other people did this. This helped with seeing how it could be done, especially as I knew these had been written by people like myself, with similar circumstances, who had successfully passed and published their thesis at my university. What I did find was I had to read bits of quite a few theses, as they all end up similar but unique-and work out what was the best method based on a collection of ideas from others, the two text books, Yin's and Bui's plus heaps of chapters from other textbooks, all downloaded from online library resources, Jstor or other places. Then the sup came along and blasted it all into a new shape anyway...but that was after I had done a huge amount of groundwork.

I know I've answered before along with others, so I am not counting myself as a senior here, just someone who has been through the process to some extent and is getting ready to go the next step with a doctorate, but I get the feeling you really want a precise answer. Perhaps someone can give you that but I really believe that to some extent, you've got to take the advice and then strike out for yourself not worrying too much about if it is perfect.If you can get hold of Bui's book, check out page 183 and afterwards. She goes into quite a bit of detail about the research questions here.

Thank you Pjlu for your answer. Everytime I discuss my concerns on this forum, things become clearer in my mind. Having the advice from someone like you or JustNic is really valuable because at least you passed through the situation I'm in now and experienced it. Well, I liked the idea of downloading theses to see how others report the data in chapter 4 yet this option is not available in my university (we are not allowed to download theses) and for very critical circumnstances it's very hard to go to my univeristy now and sit to read what others wrote in chapter 4 and how they reported their findings. I don't know (I appologize for being too demanding), if you can just send me some theses downloaded by you. If this is possible please tell me to send you my email address. I thank you again and be assured that discussing the issue with me opened new ideas and at least I'm happy now that the way I'm thinking and working is to some extent correct. I know that I might have to change, modify, or delete maybe some of things that I wrote, yet this process will let me gain more experience. Actually, I'm writing from an unstabled country in the middle east and all these things are putting more pressure on me and that's why I'm being too demanding maybe from some seniors in this wonderful forum. All thanks for your ideas and advice.

I think that you should look at how other people have reported/presented their findings.
You could either look at papers (even better if they are papers from your own field), or books, or thesis.
You could find almost all(?) of the UK thesis at ethos.bl.uk
It is a very helpful site with digitised theses.
Best of luck

Hi Canonly. I'm really glad Emmaki put the UK thesis link up for you. I can't send on the theses I used from my former university's library for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, as I've finished the Masters course, I no longer have access to my old university's library (online version) and it is really far away, a plane and a train ride away, in terms of going there during the day. The uni I plan to attend for doctorate (if this ever happens-cross fingers), is local but I can only use it during the day until I am formally a student there.

I browsed around dozen or more theses from the old university's library of educational theses and printed up bits of the one's that seemed to be using similar tools to see how they reported. But after having finished this thesis Mid September, after the big post thesis paper clean up, I shredded the other people's work (that I had on hard copy) and deleted any online versions-because I was really grateful to use them as a guide and as a fellow postgrad from that uni (we were encouraged too by our own advisors), but felt I didn't really have the right to keep them longer than I needed to and likewise, don't really have the right to send their work on to you, even if I could. It is sort of like messing with other people's work-if they were being formally cited, it might be different.

Does that make sense...but using the UK link yourself, sounds like it is absolutely okay- because it has been put there for that purpose and all the work published on it has been published for that purpose. Hope there are some really helpful theses there for you...good luck. Must be difficult working in the circumstances you have reported-hope it goes well and you really 'nail' that methods chapter. :-)

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Hi

I found looking at other theses invaluable - particularly at the moment as I am struggling with writing style for an ethnographic approach - which is all really about presenting observations. Like others I downloaded theses from the free British Library service (ethos/bl/uk). I wasn't necessarily looking for people with the same subject area but more looking for people who might have used a similar underpinning dataset/method.

Not sure if this helps.

Cate

Thank you Pjlu,Emmaki,JustNic,and Cate for your concerns, ideas, guidance and time for responding to my queries. I really appreciate it. I will try to read more of the books you suggested and if I still have questions, I will refer back to you if you don't mind.
Regards,