Steve “Doc” Baty,  contributor to many of the comments threads on this blog, has written an interesting article on how he went about the process of analysis for a large intranet project that he has been working on. It’s a good read because it makes concrete a lot of the processes that we go through when we are analysing any data and transforming it into information.

He asks an interesting question at the end of his article, is “reflection” part of the process of analysis. From my perspective I’d say that for a lot of the in depth research we do at News Digital Media, involves a fair amount of reflection. Specifically reflexivity, understanding how your perceptions affect what you are seeing and how that subsequently reflects on what your analysis tells you.

Being more reflexive allows you to unearth and be aware of a range of assumptions that you are making when you are analysing. Ultimatley this give you further opportunities to try and examine your data from different perspectives (using a different set of assumptions).