In semi-structured interviews, participants talk about various topics, stories, and reflections that are pertinent to the researchable questions that a researcher has. Such interviews yield a substantial amount of loosely structured material, much of which pertains in some way or another to the researchable questions. In this chapter, we take up analyses that address questions such as: What sense do people make in regard to the phenomenon that you are studying? What are the experiences that shape those meanings? These questions flow directly from the general theoretical framework of this book. The analyses we describe are based in a view of people as actively engaged in making meaning of the events in their lives and as located in social contexts that set the frames for personal meaning-making.

The analyses that you will learn in this chapter enable you to examine the patterns of shared meanings and variations that typify the group of people whom you interviewed. You could say that these analyses concern the “what” (or rather the “whats”) of people's talk. In other words, what reflections, points of view, experiences, and emotions do people typically bring forward to give meaning to their experiences? Larry Davidson, for example, whose work you read about in Chapter 2, studied the ways that people with severe mental illnesses understood their experiences of frequent re-hospitalization. Sometimes meanings are explicit and directly stated. In such cases, they are fairly easy to identify. But people also make meaning in less explicit ways. You may therefore have to attend to oblique references, to participants’ use of “loaded” words or phrases, and perhaps to asides or tangential remarks made during the interview. You may also need to consider what goes unspoken – that is, what is simply not part of the local talk about an issue.

This chapter explains analytical procedures for getting at people's meanings. The procedures involve interpretation: that is, they go beyond a mechanical search for specific words or phrases. They require you to exercise your judgment about the meaning of what participants say. They also require you to draw on your expertise regarding the cultural background of your participants.