27/11/00 - 15:53:33 
[Colouring Conventions - Red and bold for work to do; Blue italicised when done (to get visual sense of achievment); Green, bold and italicised for ideas which could be developed]


Contents
Aims
Initial THoughts
Topics
Documentary Sources
Steps Needed
Daily Record

Aims 
- To demonstrate a working project in NVivo to members of the College in a brief period of time - 45 minutes (including questions).
- To create a project to use in training new research students to replace the Howard Stern Project.

Initial thoughts
Why this topic?
Brief eruption in the media.  Self-contained, but with room for expansion into the broader issues if desired at a later point.

Lambeth Conference - gathering of most Bishops in the Anglican Communion every 10 years.  African Churches are fastest growing - are held to be fairly evangelical (crude shorthand for tied to scriptural teaching and authority in a none too sophisticated way - test this out).
Conservatives come from both Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical wings.
Liberals tend to come from a broad church tradition - though need to explore whether these ideas are hermetically insulated from each other.
What are the characteristics which permit the use of such labels - are they owned in a ‘proud’ way - ie as a form of identity politics?  Probably disavowed if this is the case.

Topics
- tolerance/intolerance
- religious literalism/metaphor - relation to other cultural rhetorics?
- religious liberalism/conservatism
- first world/third world
- dialogue/preaching - modes of address
- moral categorisation
Are such binary oppositions really evidenced in the sources?
What categories seem to be operating in the statements as opposed ot the reporting of them.  How selective are these reports - pull together different reportings of the same event, speech etc

Documentary Sources
Online versions of UK national newspapers, the BBC News website and activist webpages.
Files:
- Text files - articles - already in an Access database - output with headings.  
- Downloaded web pages
- Photographs
- Sound and video files, if available.  Sound files on BBC website can only be played by connecting to the website (they are streamed).

Steps needed
Start writing ideas, plans etc in journal - remember this is for you and can show how your project developed; how your thinking and analyses became increasingly focussed.

Create some models:
- to see what you think might be happening - and check it later to see what is evidenced.
- to see who’s who - demonstrates the use of images in a model too.

Are those (mainly binary) categories going to be useful in creating nodes?  Create some to see how they would work out.

Create some CASE NODES for the people concerned - each person as a case.

Create node attributes for people -  position; organisation; gender; nationality.

Test out: 
Bishop Jack Spong, Newark.
Bishop Peter Adebiyi
Archbishop George Carey, Canterbury

Test a link to an audio file or a realaudio ram file?  Neither will run - though Windows Media Player will now run!  Aaaghhhh.

Test an image databite too. 
- *.bmp will open up on OA machines using MS Paint. Can have many together, but need a link for each one.
- *.jpeg and *.gif files won’t work at the moment.  This is probably due to the file associations and the restrictions on running programmes in OA rooms.  It is not a problem with NVivo.

Test a link to a web page which you’ve downloaded
Issues: may have internal links which have been created as absolute links (ie use whole webpage address) and not written as relative links.  This means that they will not work in offline mode.  Two solutions:
- edit the links on the webpage to make them relative - retains the effect of being online and doesn’t change the content at all.
- ensure that there’s the ability to go online.


Need to create RTF files from these.  Find 6-10 which will be good enough for illustrative purposes.

Work Record

Keep a record of the time you start and finish each day - to do this automatically select:
 Edit | Insert Date & Time
Write down what you do that day - both in practical terms and in analytical/conceptual terms.
This can be useful:
- so that you can see what you’ve done each day - a sense that you have been working, when you feel you’re not making progress - evidence for your supervisor too
- in case you have a break and need to get up to speed again quickly
- and a record of how your thinking has developed during the course of your project.  This can be very useful when you are having to demonstrate how you arrived at your current position.  The discipline of creating this meta-narrative can inculcate or reinforce a useful habit of critical reflection.

 27/11/00 - 15:53:33 
Write out aims and initial thoughts for the project.  Going to be using this document in the training to demonstrate how you can use NVivo to manage your project and not just to do your analysis.  This approach treats your thoughts as useful data too (remember Pat Bazeley at the QSR Conference at the Institute of Education in Sept 2000).
 27/11/00 - 18:32:51

 28/11/00 - 10:59:52 
What do I need to do for the demo?
Import some RTFs [Done]
Leave some RTFs to show how easy it is to import [Left BBCs]
Code up half a dozen documents so that some questions can be explored.

Start with Telegraph - see what codes emerge.

Do some descriptive coding first to identify:
- who the main players are
- what sort of issues crop up
- in what formulations

Then print out a coding report to think about coding more finely to tease out more sophisticated meanings.

Do a search to find a sub-set to work on. - eg attribute = africa.  Is there a uniformtiy of opinion.  Are there any deviant cases?  Explore why.

What other issues are on people’s minds?  Are these of real concern or are they being used as a smokescreen for homophobia?  Is there a difference of tactic between the Western and non-Western traditionlists?


So how did the demo go?

Concept of racism in press needs to be exploded.

Forgot 
- to show how to import.
Susan Hazan - is there a Mac version?
Mme - bit fast and complicated - would like a course.  How to link to pictures?  Didn’t think my descriptions were racist (phew!)

 01/12/00 - 18:56:09 

Need to review all this for the classes next week.
 Created a node report [] so that I can rework the categories - so many were In Vivo ones that it feels as though I’m getting duplication and  would value moving some of them into a hierarchical /logical relationship - ie TREE nodes.

Want to create a document which tracks variant names  []- or potential variant names.  Better than using annotations since can code these too and they can become part of your report on a person.

 04/12/2000 - 15:10
Over lunch read Helen Marshall’s essay on coding practices - alchemy and good housekeeping.  INteresting synthesis of approaches.
This journal needs tidying up because it’s sprawling a bit.  Separate the general thoughts from the day to day changes etc - separate memos might be better?
Much work on trying to ensure that the OA set up works properly.  It doesn’t as far as NVivo is concerned.  Frustrating.  Feeling poorly so might need to check things over when return to looking at it.
04/12/2000 - 16:59:08