Team meetings as memos

There is a special kind of memo writing which can occur when two or more researchers are discussing either data or just ideas that pertain to joint research. In effect their exchange can result in coding (new categories discovered, relationships among categories discussed). Or, a number of generative questions are raised, hypotheses are suggested, comparisons are made and perhaps explored. This kind of discussion can even occur between a solo researcher and an understanding colleague, but usually it has more focus and thrust if it occurs repeatedly between or among research teammates. Thereafter, one of the participants often will write a memo based on notes or memories of the session. Sometimes the tape recorder yields a transcript, a kind of theoretical memo, albeit it tends to be a less concentrated form of memo than if the reporter had deleted excess phrasing, asides, and other ir relevancies.

The memo reproduced below has two parts, both taken from a transcript of a team meeting concerning the impact of medical technology on hospital work. Part 1 consists of approximately the first hour of the meeting, during which the principal investigator presented a summary memo. This dealt with main themes and categories touched on or developed in previous memos pertaining to safety, risk, and error – memos written during many months of data collection. This kind of summary presentation is a useful device for forcing an interim sorting of memos and achieving analytic order from that sorting.