9 - Integrative mechanisms: diagrams, memo sequences, writing

Summary

This chapter will address other means for integrating the entire final analysis: namely, integrative diagrams, memo sequences, and writing itself. First, however, three preliminary points need to be made. To begin with, the operational diagrams, and perhaps other operational graphic devices, help directly to integrate clusters of analyses, but only indirectly the final analysis. These diagrams, however, may contribute to filling out the more general integrative diagrams drawn from time to time.

The sorting of memos likewise will usually contribute directly to the integration of analytic clusters but, especially near the close of the research project, may also contribute quite directly to the total analysis. Memo sorting does this latter by clarifying the current integrative diagram, whether early or late in the project, and by clarifying for the researcher what the total analysis is and ought to be.

It can do the latter even with the use of integrative diagrams. As for coding: This makes a contribution to integrating both analytic clusters and the total analysis. Coding results are incorporated into the memos, and besides there is a recoding of old data along with coding of new data from time to time, as those procedures are deemed necessary because holes in the current analysis become apparent. In addition, the coding contributes to conceptual density, which in it itself is a part of the final total integration. It is true that integration can be made without much conceptual density (the multiple linkage of many categories, all linked with a core category or categories), but then recollect that this would leave the analysis very thin. (See Chapter 1.)