I am writing this post two years after I finished my dissertation. Life got busy! However, because I continue to share my journey with candidates, my memories are fresh… and let’s be honest, once you finish a dissertation for a PhD, it will be difficult to forget the experience!
After passing my oral presentation I submitted the application for IRB approval. Once I received it, I engaged in data collection. Though the term “data collection” is straightforward, I had to consider the following to complete this step:
a. Sending my invitation letter to potential participants (attached in Chapter 3).
b. Contacting any colleague to help with forwarding my invitation (which proved the most successful).
c. Sending Consent Forms to potential participants who replied.
d. Scheduling interviews (using the interview guide attached in Chapter 3).
e. Conducting the interviews.
Time management was crucial; I transcribed each interview immediately after completing it. I continued networking and reaching out to find participants who met the criteria. I enjoyed each interview and took notes on the side. I practiced not oversharing my personal experiences with the topic and instead focused on asking follow-up questions to encourage participants to share as much as they wanted.
This final step allowed me to finish my Data Collection. However, chapter 4 also included the results for which I needed to:
f. Transcribe the interviews
g. Organize my coding method for Data Analysis (this is the process I wrote in Chapter 3)
e. Read the transcripts and fill out my spreadsheet for coding purposes
f. Analyze and write results on my chapter 4.
Initially, everything seemed pretty straightforward to me. However, my first attempt at writing the results was not successful. I wrote a narrative with the results and thought that was sufficient. This is where my chair suggested I attend the Sunday Clinics, and my life changed. It did! Dr. Keen and colleagues who had just graduated or were about to graduate were very insightful. The feedback I received allowed me to revise my results section in a week and rewrite it from a different perspective.
As you may know, a narrative alone is not an analysis. I had to connect my findings, identify commonalities and differences, compare and contrast, and tie them to my research questions. After all, the purpose of the study is to answer the research questions, which, in my case, were addressed by participants through the interview protocol I designed. The alignment needed for my proposal came to mind, helping me see the big picture throughout this process.
Please consider that the process listed here followed the requirements on my qualitative study checklist.
The Process... 