Speaker 1: In this writing tip video, I want to tell you a neat sort of tip for writing qualitative findings paragraphs. Now this is good for qualitative researchers of course, but also those of you who might be moving into mixed methods research, this might be a good one for you to think about as well. Your findings section of course is where you present the data and tell readers what it all means. So it's important that you sort of develop the style for these findings paragraphs because there's a certain expectation that people have for what a findings section will do. So here's kind of the formula that you can think of for a good paragraph within the findings. So the first sentence of the paragraph is critical. It transitions from the previous paragraph and states the thesis. Now you'll notice that in this paragraph that I have written here, that not only am I describing what goes on in a findings paragraph, but I'm also modeling it. So the paragraph itself is a representative of the formula. Now the next sentence is after that thesis statement at the beginning, might support the thesis a bit, maybe kind of explain it a little bit, and present some context or some literature that back up that thesis statement. Then here's a really important sentence that comes right before quotation, and that's the setup sentence. A setup for a quotation states the participant and the context for the quotation. So it gives the question that you asked the participant, kind of gives the topic of what they might have been talking about and so on. So again, in that setup sentence, right before you introduce the quotation itself, you talk about who said it and what they were talking about at the time. And then a block quotation should be used for passages of 40 or more words. You indent it half an inch, choose judiciously, excuse me, pick the one or two most vivid quotations, and don't be afraid of small quotes throughout rather than just one big quote. So in other words, it doesn't necessarily have to be a block quotation in there, but the examples that I'll show you in just a minute actually do use block quotations. Now after the block quotation, you're continuing the paragraph. So a block quotation or any of the sort of meat of the raw data that's being presented in the findings should be stuck in the middle of the paragraph. You don't ever want to just end right there with that block quotation. So there should always be at least one sentence following a quotation. Avoid ending a paragraph on a quote. Use these comment sentences to stress important parts of the quote, tie it back to the theme you're building, and or to move forward to the next paragraph. So there's a lot of things that can go on in this last section of the paragraph. It's going to, in some ways, refer to or explain the quotation. Last thing you want to do is leave it up to your reader to interpret what's going on. For you, it might make a lot of sense why that particular quotation has been put in there. But for a reader, the overwhelming sense is, okay, well, here's the quotation. What am I supposed to make of this? So use this last part of the paragraph to explain what they just heard, how it's relevant to not only the theme that you're building in the findings part, but also to the larger questions that you might be talking about in your research. You can also, of course, use it to transition on to the next part so that you sort of can foreground or signpost things that are about to come up that are related to the quotation that people just read. So in terms of the formula, I want to break it down to something that's pretty simple, and it's a kind of pattern that you can see within these paragraphs, and it goes by my acronym of SQC. And that is Setup, Quote, and Comment. The first part of the paragraph where you have the thesis and you introduce the speaker in context is the setup. Right in the middle of the paragraph, the quotation or other raw data. So by saying quote, we don't necessarily mean an interview. It could be talking about a segment of image data. It could be talking about passage from field notes. Whatever the quote happens to be, you then stick it in the middle of the sentence. And then the last part of the paragraph is going to be the comment part. So you are commenting on what was just in the quote, either by explaining it or giving some extra information about the thesis or themes, and then maybe going on to what's coming up in the next paragraph. So I want to give you two examples that use this SQC pattern. The first one is a paragraph from me, and then I'll show you another one from another writer in just a second. So in the setup for this particular paragraph, I'll say that you can see down at the bottom of the screen that this comes from an article of mine called Oatmeal Facials and Sock Wrestling, where I'm talking about using extracurricular programs, and in this particular case, outdoor education programs to help try to fix boys' education, as it were. So that's kind of the overall theme of what I'm doing in there. For the setup part, I'll go ahead and read this to you. I say, I do not want to give the impression that all interactions were traditional, stereotypical, or sexist. Traditional interaction is complex, and moments of tension frequently interrupt simple interpretations of interaction. Conservative elements can readily exist alongside progressive impulses. Indeed, the coordinator's behavior tended toward positive, equitable versions of masculinity. Take for example this Field Notes passage describing the initial directions before the day's activities. So I'm out at a research site, and the Field Note passage that I'm about to give comes from right before they go out and do a ropes course, where they're climbing through trees on ropes as a skill-building activity, a social bonding activity, those kinds of things. You can see in this setup passage that I'm setting up a lot of different things. First of all, I'm responding to things that have happened earlier by saying, I don't want to give the impression that all the interactions were traditional, and so on. That's clearly talking about something that's already happened. But then I move on to the thesis, so social interaction is complex, conservative elements can readily exist alongside progressive impulses. That's my thesis for this paragraph, and then I'm going to go ahead and show how that actually goes on, these progressive impulses that are going on in the midst of conservative impulses. Now notice the sentence that comes right before the quotation. Take for example, this Field Notes passage, and talking about specifically who's involved in this particular incident, and it gives the context for what's about to come up. They are describing the initial directions before the day's activity starts, so I'm setting up what the reader is about to hear from. So here's the quotation from the Field Notes. Mr. Trowbridge is giving encouragements and tips for the successful, both in a physical and emotional sense, completion of the course. He talks about Elvis legs, the shaking legs that some students might get when they're scared on the course, evocative of the dance style of the legendary singing icon. This appears to be an important component of the emotional setup of this day. It seems key that they acknowledge the fear that comes along with the experience, in a way naturalizing it, so that those who experience it don't have to feel bad or embarrassed. That it is coming from a male teacher might also be significant, particularly for the boys. It may give them a model of, or permission for, honesty and emotion. So that's my Field Notes passage that kind of describes the directions that the teachers were giving. Now I then provide some comment on that particular quotation. So here's how I contextualize it for the rest of the argument. Mr. Trowbridge modeled this supportive behavior throughout the day, guiding students around obstacles with a calm demeanor, encouraging them by giving them options rather than the solution to particular obstacles. While others have rightly noted the negative impact that some male coaches and teachers may have on students, Mr. Trowbridge was a representative of a positive, supportive masculinity in most instances. So here you can see that I'm kind of expanding on and explaining what's important about that quotation, and in some ways linking it back to the thesis for the paragraph that came a little bit earlier. So that's one paragraph all together, even though there's those breaks in between, that's one single paragraph, and it follows that SQC model. I'll show you another one. This comes from an article by Wrench and Garrett. In an article called PE, It's Just Me, Physically Active in Healthy Teacher Bodies. Here's the setup for the paragraph. As a consequence of participants' immersion in the field of PE and sport, they typically drew on technologies of self associated with exercise and training in attaining healthy bodies. As is clear in the following excerpt from Kelly, discourses of biomedicine and healthism determined her bodywork and self-monitoring of this. So you can see the very first sentence is setting up what the thesis is, that the teachers drew on technologies of self in association with exercise and training to talk about how they got healthy bodies. So there's a theme that they're pulling out here, this notion of technologies of self. And then there's the sentence that sets up the quote. And you can see that it gives the person who is talking, Kelly, and gives the context for what she's talking about. So within the larger transcript, it doesn't just sort of pull something out of context, it gives you the context, or what the question was that was asked. Now here's the quote. I got a bit depressed last year because I couldn't find any sport, any teams to play for. I joined a gym and have lost 10 kilos and improved my cardio, I've decreased my resting heart rate from 80 to 53. My fitness and the food that I eat are just so much better now. So that's the raw data that came from an interview from Kelly. Now the comment part is where things become really important that we get this quotation fleshed out for us. Kelly's narrative excerpt illuminates the conflation of technologies of power knowledge, objectify her body, and technologies of self that guide her conduct and acquisition of certain attitudes. So you can see it basically gives you a summary of what's going on there in accordance with the theme of the paragraph. And of course there's some citations in here that's connecting to the larger kind of theoretical framework that they've set up using Foucault's notions of technologies of self. The embodied relationship Kelly has to food and exercise is underpinned by power relations and practices of bodily objectification and regulation. Kelly interacts with emergent fitness and health knowledge forms that privilege measurement and quantifiable skills to normalize practices around weight maintenance, food intake, and fitness attainment as an individualized responsibility. In attaching herself to these practices and committing to self-surveillance, she internalizes the judgmental gaze as a governmental technology. So you can see that they're basically explaining what's going on in the quotation and how it fits into this larger notion that they have about these technologies that have to do with measuring oneself and really internalizing self within this particular sort of teacher dynamic. And again you can see that this conforms very well with this SQC model. This is not just something that's connected just to me or to this one other person. You can see oftentimes in almost any article that there's this kind of same thing going on that there's the setup, the quotation, and the comment. That's not everybody's writing style, but it's a really effective way to go about writing these findings. And most people, I would say, probably use this particular pattern. So if you'd like to practice this, you might go and look in your own data and try to find an important passage in the data. Something that for some reason seems theoretically rich. So it can be just something that catches your attention or something that really feels like it draws on the kinds of things that you're talking about from your theoretical framework. And then write a paragraph that conforms to this SQC pattern. Or what in Golden, Biddle, and Locke's book they call a kind of sound data theory coupling. And that's kind of what we're going for with this setup, quotation, comment sort of pattern is we're trying to get these quotations to kind of couple together with the theory that you're trying to put forward in both the setup and then the comment. So if you practice this, it might be a good way for you to start seeing how these things relate. And as you go through and write your reports of your qualitative data, hopefully you'll remember this kind of SQC pattern as a way to structure your paragraphs as you go through and write them. So thanks for listening. I hope you have a lot of success with this SQC pattern and hope to see you soon.