You have to write about your interviews and observations in the empirical part of your research. It is also good to have the interviews and observations as a text in appendices.

In the empirical part use citations you find interesting and support what you write

Your thesis/dissertation advisor is the final authority on whether to include the raw interview text or not as an appendix  It wold not surprise me if your advisor were to say to include them.

Hello, I think it would depend on your methodological and phislosophical approach, but in my experience in qualitative research, I would recommend  to include at least some excerpts in the Apendices. 

As you can tell from some the previous replies, the issue of "including" the observations and interviews is somewhat unclear. Yes, you should use them in reporting your results, but actually including the raw data in your submission would be quite unusual. At most, you would want to put them in an appendix.

I agree with the above that it is up to you but it will be quite unusual to include the entire interview data and observations in your writing. You are supposed to analyse these data and interpret them rather than describing them in your case study. Direct quotes are definitely a good choice. I didn't include all the raw data in my thesis. Hope this helps.

Entire interview data and observations might be very extensive and including them in the text might negatively affect the flow of the text. Including them in appendix is more suitable option, maybe including only some representative excerpts. If you use quotation in your text, which is common in qualitative reports, think about including relevant raw data in appendix.

A major task of any research publication is to convince the reader that your conclusions follow from your data, which is why presenting your data in some form is essential. Unfortuantely, qualitative research has not yet developed any standards for this, as our mixed advice indicates :). Standards would need to be specific for different qualitative methods and types of publications, of course.

Full raw data would always need to go in an appendix. In many cases it is impractical to include interviews and documents used even as an appendix - nobody can handle an appendix of several thousand pages. In my opinion, the minimum is to provide extensive quotes in the text - not as illustrations of arguments but as demonstration of the way in which you draw specific conclusions from specific segments of text. In a thesis, I would like to have interviews included in the appendix because this enables a more thorough check of the data analysis. Again, this depends on the number of interviews (a selection might be in order). And it depends on the possibility to protect the privacy of your interviewees!

I agree with our collegues. Direct quotas are very useful to illustrate and support your analysis and I think they enrich your work. Nevertheless you should use them carefully in a way they support your work but do not substitute it. What I have seen in several empirical work is to add a supplementary CD with all the transcriptions, just in case you consider that it is important to show all the empirical data.

Your interviews you highlight in your findings within the document you let the voice of your client do the talking to the reader a copy of the questionnaire should go in the back as an appendix. You examine your answers for common threads or themes and how you are looking to connect these to your research topic. Then you tie in your findings and the interviews to your literary review and discuss them finally giving your own views or thoughts on what you have found out. Qualitative research is an extremely rich source of materials and lets you find out how others think objectively about the topic you are examining as part of your thesis.

My preference has been to evidence my statemtents in my analysis with numerous direct quotes, and have the narrrative of the analysis emerge from the overall 'story' revealed by the interview narratives taken in their entirety. In most cases I do not feel the need to include all of my raw data. In practice, (up to this point) submitting interview data and observation notes is not generally expected on theses/dissertations/case studies. However, I would hope that inclusion would only strengthen your submission if you choose to do this.

Yes, the wealth of data may be too much but if you do want to include them you can do so by adding them to the appendices.  In that way you can aid people by letting them see all the data. 

if you are seeking to make a publishable paper for a journal inclusion of all data might be too much, the researcher has to select tracts that would best represent the various ideas from informants.

I agree with the colleagues. I should like to write that I expect the part of the research dealing with the data to be the most creative. Try to Think about codes you can use to organise and present the data in the empirical part. I like then to use quotations I find important and interesting.

If this part of the thesis is good then it is easy to write the analysis and the conclusion.

I think as much as possible you better enrich your work using those information sources in the main section. Then if you have extra information, which you believe value adding, left you can incorporate in the appendix section.

·       Your request is limiting in the sense that i cannot gather which kind of research report you are writing but these atre my general observations; Use thematic analyses to create themescontained in the data.E.g.

·         Become familiar with the data

·         Generating and organising initial codes

·         Reviewing themes

·         Defining and naming themes

·         Producing the report

Then it will depend on the number of rspondents/ cases/files etc you interviewed/analysed. Data can be presented both narratively and quantitatively.

in narative data you may initially describe an observation or number of observations and then conclude with a finding on each theme.

In cases of interviews use strong arguments/answers and also dissenting opinions to formulate your arguments Use direct qoutations here and there. For example:

Interviewee #3 stated that. "...the quality of education is enhanced by..." This was confirmed by respondents 11, 14 and 7 others.

This point has been confirmed by 75% of the interviews with 15 percent not venturing an opinion while 10% believed it is rather due to a stimulating curricullum.

On another level you may state that:

Analysis of data on educators’ years of experience and learner stimulation

respondent      statement    generally agrees    generally disagrees

1                        said that......                  x

2.                      is of the opinion....         x

3  etc to #10     explained that .......                              x

·    At the end you can summarise  what percentage generally agrees   and who not.

 Summarise each theme with  observation that confirm your conclusion/findings

In qualitative research it is all about truthfulness and trustworthiness of data, For this reason one develops themes. Some respondents mentioned the same things during the interviews. From these you will develop themes This means that you read your interview transcripts and listen tot hem over and over until the themes emerge. You then support the themes with two or three verbatim quotations from respondents.

Theme 1

The research has determined that stalkers' communications sent to victims by a range of social media are primarily sexual in nature....

This was confirmed by respondent 3 who said, "........ and respondent 7 confirmed this by stating "....

I'm currently working on my PhD and I have so much QUAL data from transcripts and interviews as well as free text options from a massive questionnaire. I'm thinking of having another document as a separate file/booklet with all the appendices in it.

One almost never includes the "raw data" in any thesis, either qualitative or quantitative. Instead, you need to create an effective Results section that includes well-chosen quotations from that data.

A typical approach for a thesis or dissertation is to include sample raw data. For instance, in the graduate school in which I work, it is required for students to include at least a page of transcript from interviews when conducted. In addition, the interviews are often conducted in one of three languages and the thesis is written in English, so the appendices with raw data providing potential evidence both about the interview itself and also about the translation of the researcher. As the faculty, we want then to “see” or “hear” the voice of the participants in the chapter and further evidence of conducting the interviews in an expanded transcription in appendices.

I just finished my dissertation and my professor request part of analysis to be included.

But, do i have to include the interview questions and the raw data or part of analysis when I want to publish part of the dissertation.

Only refer to them

Dear Laurie,

You are not required to submit the interview/observation transcripts. While writing your findings and discussions, you include relevant portions of the interview and observations which would suffice. Raw data, in the form of transcripts are for data analysis and not for inclusion in report/thesis.

Hi Laurie, you would only need to refer to them in your result analysis, based on the themes generated.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes!

I use the same method as Cornelis writes.

Use important parts of the interviews to support the themes.

I really like qualitative studies. I think you have to be creative and consider the importance of explaining everything you do and write and reflect again on that.

Yes, I include parts of the interviews for example as citations. They can strengthen your argumentations in the analysis.

Good luck, but think about that it is always a challenge to present a qualitative study- But I like it!

Thanks folks I was wondering whether or not to include them in the appendix. However, seems like the general approach is to provide exerts in the findings.

I donot put the interviws in the appendix. I have seen some people do it. To present the methodology chapter in a qualitative research is really a challenge.