Skype with Adesola

We discussed what are view of data is. Adesola talked about data being anything that happens within a given time, its what you do with that data that makes it informative. Both Pip and myself expressed our fears that the data we gather from others (through focus groups or observations) might not be what we anticipate or would like to hear. Adesola suggested that this is not necessarily a bad situation to be in, she said that sometimes when you analyse your discussions you find important data that is useful to your research when you would not have necessary thought the line of discussion was valid.
Adesola also talked to us about themes of our research. Where are we up to today? What themes are emerging? These themes that keep occurring during our research will help us to organise our data. Once we have identified our themes we can look back over our data and once it is organised and this will help us to analyse the data we collect. The analysis of the data is the important part, you need to look at all things and find what story it tells you. The inquiry is how you interoperate the data you find.

I find it hard to work for something without knowing where it is heading or what the outcome will be, but this is what we need to do for our inquiry to work. Adesola told us we need to have the courage to be in the position that we may not know what's going on, that that if we try to control it the whole way through you wont find out anything. We want to find out something that's new. We don't know what the end product will be and an negative result or in our eyes an unsuccessful inquiry is not a failed inquiry. It is the process that is important not the result. We need to learn how to conduct an inquiry and all that goes with it so we can take that knowledge into our professional work in the future.