S.TRUEMAN PhD THESIS 2016

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2002), ‘[A]nalysis is the search for patterns in data and for ideas that help explain why those patterns are there in the first place (p. 429). The second is more detailed, ‘[D]ata analysis consists of examining, categorizing, tabulating, testing, or otherwise recombining…evidence to address the initial propositions of a study’ (Yin, 2003, p. 109). There are many approaches to analysing qualitative data all of which are dependent on the type of qualitative study being undertaken (e.g., phenomenology, grounded theory, case study, ethnography, narrative). Creswell (2007) points out that the main tenets that apply across all forms of qualitative data analysis are ‘preparing and organising the data for analysis, then reducing the data into themes through a process of coding and condensing the codes, and finally representing the data in figures, tables, or a discussion’ 5.9.1 Data preparation After the face to face interviews had concluded the researcher would connect the digital recorder to his computer and ‘download’ the digital recording to his computer and save as a ‘mpg’ audio file. The ‘mpg’ audio file was emailed to a transcribing company who then typed the interview recording into a document that was then emailed back to the researcher. The researcher then checked the accuracy of the typed document against the saved audio file and made any necessary typed amendments to reflect accuracy (Braun et al., 2013). In this process of checking, the researcher was mindful of and guided by, Poland’s (2002) four common types of transcription errors; sentence structure errors, quotation marks errors, omission errors and mistaken word or phrase errors. While errors were identified and rectified among the 30 transcripts, the thrust of checking was directed at ensuring a thorough written record (transcript) of the recording, as opposed to being ‘overly checked’ for semantic sounds, hesitation, repetition, false-starts, pauses and