How Things Work - Doha Academy of Tertiary Studies

chaPteR 8
analysis and Synthesis
How Things Work
Research involves both analysis (the taking things apart) and synthesis
(the putting things together). We gather data. We increase our
experience. We look closely at the patches of collected data, the parts of
our experience; that is, we analyze. And we put the parts together, often
in different ways than before. We synthesize. 1
Much qualitative research is based on the collection and interpretation
of episodes. Episodes are held as personal knowledge more than as
aggregated knowledge (Section 1.3). An episode has activities, sequence,
place, people, and context. Some of the more useful- appearing episodes,
the ones we think of as “patches,” need to be studied, analyzed, their
parts seen and seen again. We observe them, and we record other people’s
observations. We interpret them and seek other interpretations. We
put things together and take them apart. As qualitative researchers, we
1 In philosophy, a synthesis is the process of reconciling thesis and antithesis. Sometimes
it is a useful idea for synthesis of qualitative research data if the data sort into
two piles, those for and those against the research question or an assertion being
considered. Assertions are important in qualitative research, but there are seldom
just two sides to consider. The stories to be told, the understandings to be gained,
have multiple dimensions. But the idea of presenting different views and showing
favor for one more than the others is one of the good approaches. Mostly we will use
the term synthesis just to mean putting the main separate patches together.
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