Settling Back down

Last weekend should have been my parents golden wedding celebration (my Mum got the whole do cancelled as she cracked her pelvis the morning before) so it is time I settled down to sorting out my thesis post exams.  There are bits that annoy me about the report such as me admitting that on one reference I could not find the original and thinking therefore there were lots. There are exactly two pieces I could not trace and the second is not actually referenced in my thesis. I have now found that reference and found that the reference to it was wrong. The other remains a mystery and if a historian wants an intriguing puzzle I am willing to set out what the problem is. There are other things I will struggle with such as doing a literature review without a topic. My thesis draws on a wide range of literature and doing a review over the thesis would be as long as the thesis.

Anyway today was the day to settle down and get something done. Actually some weeks back I made up a table of the interviews I did and I will send that to my supervisor. I have also found a paper by Voas and will trace others. However, today I sat down and began to go through the audio recordings. I am actually transcribing them. This was something I was thinking I was going to have to twist and only transcribe in parts. Then a couple of weeks back I went to a session by QSR and they talked of three levels of transcribing:

1.  The highly detailed favoured by conversational analyst, which often uses the Jefferson Transcription System. This is what I started out using.
2. The medium one tries to capture words but turns it into good enough English. I tried this and most of the interviews I had transcribed in this was done using a system suggested by Catherine Kohler Riessman book Narrative Analysis 
3. They third is the notes one and just tries to capture the gist of what was being said in the interview.

It is the third form that I am now using. I am leaving out most of what I said and just trying to capture the essence of what was said back to me, although that often means working in the interviewees own words. It will give me enough to code to for the analysis and I will be able to select bits that I want to include into the thesis and then transcribe them up to the second level. My analysis does not justify taking them up to the first level. The difference is remarkable I have transcribed two interviews this weekend and I would have got a third done but for software.

I am transcribing in QSR NVivo and need to because that gives me the ability to select the precise bits I need to code and the ability to link these to the tape recording to later produce the precise transcripts of the relevant pieces. However, the software has crashed most times I have tried to close an recording with a transcript I have been working on. I have checked the software is up to date. I have removed the first recording this happened with and brought it in again. I have waited up to an hour for the software to do its bit. It will fortunately save the transcript just as long as I do not close it! The result is yesterday I transcribed about half an hour of interview three or more times and I have had losses today as well. Now as I finish a section of the transcription I save the project. 

Anyway I hope to get this sorted this week and I have ordered a foot pedal so I do not need to use my hands to control the audio player on the computer. I have also found another book that needs to go into the thesis as it deals with an area close allied to my thesis although not overlapping. I think it was published after I reviewed congregational studies in the Reformed churches and found two studies. This makes a third.

Week 36: Not a word writ formally down

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	57,557
Words typed this week:	0
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	0
Days I managed to write this week:	2

Not much progress this week, actually there is two days, but there has been some serious analysis needing doing before I can write and I am afraid I have not been getting around to that, until today. The problem being that it is boring tedious routine stuff that always takes longer than you expect. Well it is more than that I had spent quite a bit of time thinking what I needed to do and drafting some of the words.

The thing is I have got onto the hymns, now in Reformed worship singing has been the most active (not necessarily most engaged) part of worship for the congregation, the rest of the time they are basically sitting quiet except for the Lord's prayer. Now I know you can be engaged quite potently with worship even when silent but your tend to be in what appears to be a passive role. The only time you actually seem to externally participate in worship as member of the congregation is when you sing hymns. Responses within the English Reformed tradition went out in seventeenth century and only started returning at the end of twentieth. They are still innovative and new as far as we are concerned just as much as guitars are.

As to taking communion regularly, well the normal view of congregations is proper preparation means in frequent communion, or really monthly is as frequently as most tolerate. John Calvin suggested that the least frequent acceptable was monthly until proper preparation could be made for the whole community to take it weekly. Unfortunately, as have all frequent communion Reformers since, he was overruled by the people (or more accurately the Burgher in his case) and had to do with quarterly, the frequency of Zwingli in Berne.

As to open prayer and such, that was discarded quite early with the view that the Holy Spirit really inspired the minister who had the time to spend on prayer and bible study that the normal church member did not. Not sure I agree with that one but that still seemed to be the view that developed.

So you have the hymns and the hymns are chosen in the first place by those leading worship. However I suspect that for a person to be comfy in a congregation they need to be singing words that fit with who they understand themselves to be. Obviously not every song, but the majority of songs and therefore the underlying tenor of the songs is going to be in tune with this.

Mind you as this takes such detailed analysis I am going to try writing about the sacraments next week and hopefully finish this analysis at the weekend.

Week 23: Working on appendices

Maximum number of words:	80,000
Words typed so far:	36,185
Words typed this week:	2047
Words lost this week:	0
Total increase:	0*
Days I managed to write this week:	4

* due to the fact that they all are going in the appendices.

I have been dealing with a couple of case studies for my appendices. I write case studies as I am working through my thesis so as to gain an over view of the stream of events. In my first data chapter I initially included the details of the case study. At my supervisors suggestion I have taken it out and reformatted it as a case study, with the background and timeline. I have done this as well for the case study for my second data chapter. The thing was that that was a lot more in depth than the first one and it has taken me a lot of time this weekend to actually assimilate the diverse sources that I had relevant information in for the case study. I have been using NVivo a lot to find specific notes or incidences. It is even finding things that I did not know I had. I am cross with myself for not writing some notes because I have had to remember what happened on some pretty big occasions. However the core is there and I am pretty sure I have represented people fairly.

It is done so next week I am back to writing the thesis proper, as well as sorting out the submission for my next supervision. It it funny as although I am being pretty systematic I am nearly always working on two chapters at a time. I think I am happier working on the write description, write analysis, write theory rather than working in the other direction. At present there feels a smoothness in the process this way that I did not feel when I was writing it the other way around. 

Week 15: Writing going more fluently, just wish I was as good at cutting words

Maximum number of words: 80,000
Words typed so far:30,445
Words typed this week: 3103
Words lost this week: 581
Total increase: 2422
Days I managed to write this week: 4

It looks a good week and it was writing wise. I am realising the section I am at present writing of my location chapter will take about 4,000 words. I wrote 4,000 this week, there are six and a half thousand in the previous and another section to go for this data chapter. If you look carefully at the triskele you will see the start of filling in the next sub-branch on this branch. I only put one or two pieces on but you can see them.

What is being hidden in these numbers although there is that I actually still need to loose a lot of words. I have now started to find them and know what I am looking for. I had accidentally got into the habit of reminding people rather regularly that it was me that was writing. Now the thesis is written in the first person, that is fairly normal for this sort of thesis but there is no need to have a reminder that it is me every couple of lines and often these reminders are quite verbose. They need cutting and I am going to have to get rid of them! That will mean hunting during the week as the proof reader who offered to do this for me has not got back. Also I note he does not know what to look for now but I do so maybe I should just get on and do it.. The reason it is so little is I had a minor migraine yesterday which meant both the writing and the editing has had to be fitted into today.

The other good news is my NVivo files are ready and being used in anger. So the only thing I have done so far is look for something specific in my diary. I have a lot more work to do on interviews, videos and pictures. I also have two analysis books, these are books where I make notes on the congregations that appear in my thesis. The need to anonymise and present in narrative form means that I have to alter considerably the details and I am not going to remember them all in precisely unless I have notes in a journal about who is who. Even so I seem to have far too many people.

Week 14: Location is becoming to come together

Maximum number of words: 80,000
Words typed so far:27,923
Words typed this week: 2326
Words lost this week: 786
Total increase: 1540
Days I managed to write this week: 4

Sorry if those numbers aren't quite right. I have just found out that I have been counting the words wrong. The 80,000 is excluding all footnotes and I have been including footnotes Duh! There thus has been corrections to my numbers.

The chapter on location and the way congregations interact with that as part of their identity is coming along slowly. There definitely is an interaction between the congregations own understanding of who it is, and the location but it is not deterministic. I am also getting a feel for what I need to write. It is intriguing trying to present two anonymised congregations in something like their complexity. I am having to keep a notebook of whose who and what characteristics I have given them. I will get what I have written off to one of my proofreaders today.

Yes this is Saturday mid day. I have not finished for the weekend, what I am going to do is put my data into NVivo and try and start sorting through it. Or at least put some of the data in, there are about four box files of other stuff, plus I am waiting for a notebook to be returned. So still plenty to be done. I guess the first thing is to try and code things for each of the three big themes.