Interpreting and Presenting Data


Interpreting data (especially in qualitative research) is influenced by the researcher’s positionality within theory, practice, ethics, biases, epistemological and ontological views, and the study itself(research questions, methodology, data gathering, etc). In addition to the researcher’s positionality (just mentioned) influencing interpretation, presenting data is influenced by audience to which the results are presented. For example, if data is presented within a research journal, a researcher will most likely follow the style of presentation upheld by the journal and its editors (e.g. abstract, introduction, literature review, etc) Likewise, presentation of data for a professional conference may take on a different display style, maybe focusing more on audio, visual, or dramatic styles.(Grbich, 2007).

I really enjoyed reading “Writing and Retelling Multiple Ethnographic Tales of a Soup Kitchen for the Homeless” (Miller et al., 1998). Aside from the fact that this article brought to the forefront issues related to homelessness and the social/civic response or non response to this situation, I appreciated the researchers’ transparency and testimony in describing their journey of retelling and writing the story of homelessness as they studied/encountered it. The retelling of the story through realist tale, confessional tale and critical tale created space for deep reflections on research such as ‘The retelling of an ethnography may be as important as the initial writing of it..., [we] learned that research is dynamic rather than static, causing ethnographers to reflect on how they write and present their studies to different audiences..., when we were challenged to interrogate our own text, the critical tale took shape, and the issues of access, equity, positionality, investment, accuracy, and truth surfaced”(p.489).

Grbich, C. (2007). Qualitative data analysis: An introduction. London: SAGE Publications.
Miller, D. L., Creswell, J. W., & Olander, L. S. (1998). Writing and Retelling Multiple Ethnographic Tales of a Soup Kitchen for the Homeless. Qualitative Inquiry, (4), 469-491. doi:10.1177/107780049800400404