memo writing qualitative research

The Ultimate Guide to Qualitative Research - Part 2: Handling Qualitative Data

• Handling qualitative data
• Transcripts
• Field notes
• Introduction

What is a research memo?

How do you write a memo for a study, examples of analytic memos.

• Survey data and responses
• Visual and audio data
• Data organization
• Data coding
• Coding frame
• Auto and smart coding
• Organizing codes
• Qualitative data analysis
• Content analysis
• Thematic analysis
• Thematic analysis vs. content analysis
• Narrative research
• Phenomenological research
• Discourse analysis
• Grounded theory
• Deductive reasoning
• Inductive reasoning
• Inductive vs. deductive reasoning
• Qualitative data interpretation
• Qualitative analysis software

Research memos

Depending on who you ask, a memo is or isn't research data . On the one hand, a memo is not data because it's not directly based on what you see or hear. On the other hand, a memo is data because it ultimately informs and shapes the knowledge generated through data analysis .

Either way, memo writing is a crucial element of a rigorous qualitative research study. As the researcher is the most important part of the data collection process , even a memo as short as one page can be helpful in providing a more focused analytical lens for your study.

A research memo, also known as an analytical or reflective memo, is an integral part of the qualitative research process . It is a written record where researchers document their thoughts, interpretations, and reflections about the data collected during the research process. The concept of using short writings to reflect on data collection was widely introduced by grounded theory but has since been incorporated into various qualitative methods due to its effectiveness in fostering a deeper understanding and ensuring rigor in analysis .

Unlike formal research reports that are typically intended for a target audience, memos are internal documents intended for the researchers themselves. They capture the researcher's thought process and help in tracking the progression of ideas, thus serving as a window into the mental workspace of the researcher.

What is the purpose of memoing in qualitative research?

The primary purpose of memoing in qualitative research is to foster reflexivity and analytical thinking during the data collection and analysis processes. This is achieved by encouraging researchers to engage deeply with their study, reflect on their thoughts, and document their interpretations.

In the early stages of the research process, memos help researchers articulate their initial impressions and tentative propositions. As your study progresses, memoing facilitates constant comparison , wherein new data is continuously compared with previous data and existing interpretations. This iterative process helps researchers identify patterns, formulate theoretical concepts, and build a coherent analytical narrative.

Moreover, memos also play a crucial role in ensuring the transparency and trustworthiness of the research. They provide a detailed record of the analytical journey, making it possible for others to trace the development of the researcher's thinking and understand the rationale behind their conclusions. This enhances the credibility and dependability of the research.

What should be included in a research memo?

Although the contents of a research memo can vary depending on the research context and the researcher's preferences, the following elements are typically included:

Date and identifier: Each memo should have a date and an identifier, such as a title or a code, to facilitate easy retrieval, like a subject line helps organize emails. The identifier often refers to the specific data source or theme that the memo pertains to.

Summary of data: The memo should include a brief summary of the relevant data. This provides context for the researcher's reflections and interpretations.

Reflections and interpretations: The main body of the memo consists of the researcher's reflections and interpretations of the data. This might include initial impressions, emerging patterns, tentative propositions, theoretical insights, or questions for further exploration. Researchers are encouraged to write freely and openly without worrying too much about style or coherence at this stage.

Connections to other memos or data: If the reflections in a memo relate to or contradict reflections in another memo or data source, this should be noted. This helps in identifying connections and discrepancies and facilitates the constant comparison process.

Next steps: Lastly, the memo might include a note on the next steps. This could be potential plans for further data collection, areas for deeper analysis, or strategies for validating the interpretations .

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Before delving into the process of writing a memo for a study, it is essential to understand the flexible and iterative nature of memoing. Writing a memo is not a linear process but a reflexive practice that intertwines with the data collection and analysis processes. Thus, the first step in writing a memo is to immerse oneself in the data. This might involve reading and rereading transcripts , observing visual data, or listening to audio recordings .

While immersing yourself in the data, remain open and attentive to anything that strikes your interest or raises questions. These might be patterns, discrepancies, intriguing statements, or points of confusion. Jot down these initial observations as you encounter them. They serve as the starting points for your memos.

Crafting your research memo

Having set the groundwork, you can now begin to craft your research memo. Despite the structure outlined earlier, remember that memoing is a flexible process. Feel free to adjust the format to suit your needs and the specificities of your research context. Remember that while memoing is an essential part of the process, it is more intended for your reflection than it is for consumption by your eventual audience.

Nurturing the habit of memoing

The practice of memoing is a habit that develops over time. In the initial stages, you might find it challenging to write memos consistently or know what to write about. However, as you immerse yourself in your data and engage deeply with your memos, you will find that the process becomes more intuitive and enriching.

Regularly set aside time for memoing in your schedule. This could be after each data collection session or at the end of each day. Also, periodically review your memos to trace the evolution of your thoughts, draw connections across memos, and identify areas for further exploration.

It's important to remember that memos are not final documents but tools for thinking and learning. Don't worry about getting everything right in the first go. Embrace the uncertainty, allow your thoughts to evolve, and revise your memos as your understanding deepens.

Let's close this section by providing some memo examples. A sample memo can help guide your thinking on how to pursue these memos, so we will look at three different samples from different fields.

Memo example 1: Anthropological study on local food practices Identifier: Memo_Local_Food_Practices_20230502

Summary of data: Field notes from a visit to the local farmer's market in town A, where I observed and interacted with several vendors and consumers.

Reflections and interpretations: A strong sense of community permeates the local farmer's market. Vendors and consumers engage in lengthy conversations, not only about the products but also about personal life events and local happenings. There's an evident pride in locally grown and sourced products, pointing towards a shared value system centered on sustainability and community support.

Connections to other memos or data: This observation aligns with previous interviews where participants expressed their commitment to supporting local businesses. However, it contrasts with the supermarket observation memo where transactions were impersonal and product-centered. Next steps: Plan follow-up interviews with vendors and regular customers to understand the values and motivations underlying their participation in the farmer's market.

Memo example 2: Educational study on remote learning experiences Identifier: Memo_RemoteLearningExperience_Interview3_20230530

Summary of data: Transcript from an interview with a high school student, Jane, who shifted to remote learning due to pandemic constraints.

Reflections and interpretations: Jane expressed a sense of isolation and disconnection from peers, which negatively impacted her motivation to learn. She mentioned the lack of spontaneous interactions and group activities that usually happened in physical classrooms. Yet, she also appreciated the flexibility and autonomy remote learning provided.

Connections to other memos or data: Jane's experience mirrors sentiments expressed in other interviews regarding social isolation. The appreciation of flexibility was also echoed in the memo about the parents' perspective on remote learning.

Next steps: Investigate ways schools are or could be promoting social interactions in the remote learning context. This will involve reviewing literature and policy documents and considering additional interviews with educators.

Memo example 3: Market research on the smartphone industry Identifier: Memo_SmartphoneIndustry_FocusGroup1_20230602

Summary of data: Transcript from a focus group discussion involving six participants who recently purchased smartphones from various brands.

Reflections and interpretations: Participants' purchasing decisions were influenced by a range of factors including brand reputation, price, features, and word-of-mouth recommendations. Interestingly, participants demonstrated limited awareness of the market share of various brands.

Connections to other memos or data: This observation connects with the Brand Image Analysis memo, which highlighted Brand A's efforts to differentiate itself through superior user experience.

Next steps: Further explore how the perception of the product's share of the market influences purchasing decisions. Also, investigate the correlation between user experience and customer loyalty, especially for brands with smaller market shares.

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Memo Writing

While researchers are gathering, coding, or analyzing data, they will likely come up with ideas or thoughts about their codes or relationships between codes, or they might come up with questions they want to answer in their further investigation. In order to remember these thoughts and questions, researchers write them down. Memos are such analytic or conceptual notes. According to Glaser (1978), memos are “the theorizing write-up of ideas about codes and their relationships as they strike the analyst while coding” (p. 83). Memos can also be defined as “the narrated records of a theorist's analytical conversations with him/herself about the research data” (Lempert, 2007, p. 247). By memo writing , we take a step back and ask, “What ...

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Memoing in qualitative research: Probing data and processes

2008, Journal of Research in Nursing

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This paper develops memo writing techniques within the framework of grounded theory methodology of qualitative research in social sciences. In grounded theory, memoing is one of the most important processes to develop and enrich theory. Memo is the written record of the researcher's thinking. It is an analytical strategy that facilitates the researcher to achieve clear concept and truth from the data. It is considered as the tool of all kinds of notes taken by the researchers in grounded theory during their research. But yet there is a limited use of memo writing in other qualitative researches. Memoing increases investigation, inspection and continuity of data during the research analysis. In this study an attempt has been taken to discuss the aspects of memoing along with its benefits.

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Examining the world through qualitative inquiry

Memo writing as a way of being a researcher

In teaching qualitative data analysis, I’ve found that students are frequently surprised at the value of “memo writing.” This is perhaps because memo writing is frequently seen as an additional step in the process off data analysis that takes time out from the work of analyzing data. Yet, memo writing can serve an important role throughout the life of a qualitative research project – while conducting fieldwork and through data analysis. To quote Richardson and St. Pierre, “Writing is a method of inquiry” (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005), and memo writing can play a part in that.

If one looks at descriptions of memo writing in methodological literature, it is noticeable that memo writing is inextricably linked to writing fieldnotes in doing ethnography. Schatzman and Strauss (1973) talk about three different kinds of “notes” that one might take when observing: observational notes (ON), theoretical notes (TN), and methodological notes (MN). They distinguish these three forms of notes as follows (Schatzman & Strauss, 1973, pp. 100-101):

Observational notes are statements bearing upon events experienced principally through watching and listening. They contain as little interpretation as possible, and are as reliable as the observer can construct them. Each ON represents an event deemed important enough to include in the fund of recorded experience, as a piece of evidence for some proposition yet unborn or as a property of context or situation. An ON is the Who, What, When, Where, and How of human activity. It tells who said or did what, under stated circumstances (p. 100).

Theoretical notes represent self-conscious, controlled attempts to derive meaning from any one or several observation notes. The observer as recorder thinks about what he has experienced, and makes whatever private declaration of meaning he feels will bear conceptual fruit. He interprets, infers, hypothesizes, conjectures; he develops new concepts, links these to older ones, or relates any observation to any other in this presently private effort to create social science (p. 101).

A methodological note is a statement that reflects an operational act completed or planned: an instruction to oneself, a reminder, a critique of one’s own tactics. It notes timing, sequencing, stationing, stage setting, or maneuvering. Methodological notes might be thought of as observational notes on the researcher himself and upon the methodological process itself; as complete a chronicle as the recorder finds necessary or fruitful. Were he to plan on writing for later publication about his research tactics, he would take detailed notes; otherwise his MN consists mainly of reminders and instructions to [the researcher] (p. 101).

Later, these authors assert that “in the process of developing a TN, the recorder finds that he [or she] can elaborate upon the inference, or tie up several inferences in a more abstract statement” (Schatzman & Strauss, 1973, p. 104). Schatzman and Strauss recommend that the researcher go ahead and prepare a “separate analytic memo” in which ideas are clarified further (p. 104). These analytic memos then become the “heart” of the author’s argument and the “core” of publications. What these authors are talking about is how researchers use memo writing as a means to link what has been observed in a setting (the data of fieldnotes) to the interpretations that result from systematic data analysis.

Ethnographers Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw (1995) elaborate on this idea further, noting how memo writing serves a function in doing fieldwork of connecting the data that one is generating through writing fieldnotes of observations and interpreting what is going on, and exploring emergent ideas (p. 103):

In-process memos are products of more sustained analytic writing and require a more extended time-out from actively composing fieldnotes. Often they are written after completing the day’s fieldnotes. Although perhaps touched off by thoughts generated by writing up a day’s fieldnote entries, such memos address incidents across several sets of fieldnotes. In writing in-process memos, the fieldworker clearly envisions outside audiences and frames his thoughts and experiences in ways likely to interest them.

In-process memos can profitably address practical, methodological questions that include: Where should I observe next? What questions should I ask to follow up on this event? These questions help direct the ethnographer’s attention, focusing and guiding future observations and analysis.

Early grounded theorists such as Anselm Strauss and Barney Glaser (1967) used multiple sources of data, including observations and interviews. Increasingly, researchers have used interviews as primary sources, with less emphasis on observations. Yet, the practice of memo writing has continued to be described as a crucial step in the development of analyses. For example, Charmaz (2000, p. 518) writes that memo writing helps researchers to:

• grapple with ideas about the data
• to set an analytic course
• to refine categories
• to define the relationships among various categories, and
• to gain a sense of confidence and competence in their ability to analyze data.

Charmaz (1983, 2014) and Lempert have outlined the steps involved in analytic memo writing in some detail and provided examples.

I am not certain why some of my students have been initially reluctant to engage in memo-writing. Possibly this could be related to the mechanical devices that we rely on to record interviews – having spent many hours transcribing data, perhaps the utility of writing about that data is not immediately recognized. When revisiting some of the older literature on writing fieldnotes, however, I have been struck by how the strategy of “analytic memo writing” is integral to the work of doing participant observation. For those researchers working with others sorts of data – whether documents, artifacts, visual data, transcripts of of naturally occurring data or interviews, it seems that there is great value in analytic memo writing too.

Try it and see!

Happy Researching… Kathy Roulston

Charmaz, K. (1983). The grounded theory method: An explication and interpretation. In R. M. Emerson (Ed.), Contemporary field research (pp. 109-126). Boston: Little Brown.

Charmaz, K. (2000). Grounded theory: Objectivist and constructivist methods. In N. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 509-535). Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: Sage.

Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L. (1995). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes . Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research . New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

Richardson, L., & St. Pierre, E. A. (2005). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 959-978). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Schatzman, L., & Strauss, A. (1973). Field research: Strategise for a natural sociology . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

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Kathy Roulston is a professor in the Qualitative Research program in the Department of Lifelong Education, Administration and Policy at the University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA. She teaches qualitative research methods, and has written on qualitative interviewing. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9429-2694 Kathryn J. Roulston on ResearchGate My books include: Interviewing: A guide to theory and practice, see: https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/interviewing/book272521 Interactional studies of qualitative interviews. See: https://benjamins.com/catalog/z.220 View all posts by qualpage

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Memoing in qualitative research: probing data and processes

Birks, Melanie , Chapman, Ysanne , and Francis, Karen (2008) Memoing in qualitative research: probing data and processes. Journal of Research in Nursing, 13 (1). pp. 68-75.

This paper explores memoing in the context of qualitative research methodologies. The functions of memos in the research process are discussed and a number of techniques for employing memo writing to enhance the research experience and outcomes are examined. Memoing is often discussed in the literature as a technique employed in grounded theory research, yet there is limited exploration of the value of memo writing in qualitative methodologies generally. Memoing serves to assist the researcher in making conceptual leaps from raw data to those abstractions that explain research phenomena in the context in which it is examined. Memos can be effectively employed by both the novice and experienced researcher as a procedural and analytical strategy throughout the research process. Data exploration is enhanced, continuity of conception and contemplation is enabled and communication is facilitated through the use of memoing. While guidelines exist to aid in the production and use of memos, memoing remains a flexible strategy wherein the process of construction and nature of content is determined by the preferences and abilities of the researcher and the aims and focus of the specific research study.

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What is memo writing in qualitative research?

Best practices for memo writing in your qualitative research, introduction to memo writing, why you should engage in memo writing, enhancing rigor and transparency, facilitating analysis and interpretation, promoting reflexivity and critical engagement, enabling collaboration and knowledge sharing, best practices of memo writing.

• Start early and write often : Initiate memo writing early in the research process and maintain a regular practice of writing throughout the study. Capture initial impressions, observations, and questions as they arise, ensuring that no insights are lost or overlooked.
• Be reflective and reflexive : Engage in reflective writing, interrogating your assumptions, biases, and analytical choices. Adopt a reflexive stance towards the data, acknowledging your positionality and its influence on the research process.
• Be descriptive and analytical : Write descriptively, capturing detailed observations, quotes, and contextual information. Blend descriptive accounts with analytical reflections, unpacking the underlying meanings and implications of the data.
• Engage in dialogue and collaboration : Encourage dialogue and collaboration through shared memo writing sessions or peer feedback processes. Solicit input from fellow researchers through Peer Debriefing , inviting diverse perspectives and interpretations.

Conclusion on memo writing as a practice in qualitative research