Today I typed the final page of audio transcription and loaded the last few emails into NVivo. With these acts I have officially collected all the data for the Deep in the Burbs Research Project.
Let us take a moment to reflect. ahhhh.
The team met for the first time on February 24th, 2014. We had eleven two-hour sessions between that date and Monday, November 17th. That’s twenty-two hours of audio recording. Yes, I listened to them all and typed 470 pages of transcription. Wait. Can I say that number again. 470!?! Are you kidding me!?! Combine that with the hundreds of emails and discussion forum posts, and that makes for a whole lot of data.
Who’s idea was this? Oh, yeah. It was mine. silly me.
Now it is done and I can truly begin to dwell deeply in the data. Please pray that the Spirit will reveal that golden thread that weaves its way through all of it. I just need one thing that is both interesting enough to me to write a dissertation-length paper, and accessible enough that it might actually help a missional leader somewhere.
Here we go!
