Having acquainted ourselves in the previous four chapters with different strategies for collecting information about society, we must now discuss what to do with this information. It is important to reiterate from Chapter 1 that in naturalistic inquiry the analysis of information is typically not postponed until the end of a research project. Analysis forms an integral part of the arc of naturalistic inquiry: it is continuous work-in-progress. One observation leads to another one and then to further ones after that. Their succession helps to increase focus. ‘What should I explore next?’ Similarly, one informant may suggest another one. After casual but extensive conversations within a particular circle of people, the naturalistic inquirer may become aware that she should also explore a different circle. ‘But what is the perspective of their opponents?’ Also, if she happens to study the world of medical doctors, she may realize that some people (like the surgeon mentioned in Chapter 5) choose to become a doctor for romantic reasons and that it therefore may be worthwhile to explore idealized stereotypes of doctors in literature and film. ‘What is the cultural stereotype of a doctor in our society?’ And so on. Hence the term: ‘theoretical sampling’. Each time, the researcher bases a decision about how to further proceed on an analysis – sometimes cursory, sometimes highly systematic and reflexive – of her material up to that moment. After more observations, interviews, and studying of images, she may also go back to her earlier materials and look at them in the light of insights derived from materials gathered later. Thus, she shuttles back and forth within her own materials and she moves up and down ‘iteratively’ between those materials and the ideas she is developing. In the long run, she may decide that she neither finds new materials nor can think of additional ways to interpret them. She then is approaching empirical saturation and theoretical closure.

Naturalistic inquirers vary in how they go about in this respect. Some of them proceed as above