summary).
Conceptually Clustered Matrices
After narrative summaries were created for each topic in the seventy-one interviews, I created conceptually clustered matrices in order to detect themes across and within narrative summaries. Miles and Huberman suggest this matrix technique as a way to consolidate and present the data.14 The conceptually clustered matrix has a simple respondent by topic (or variable) format. All the topics in a matrix are conceptually related to each other. For example, I created a matrix for the general conceptual category “relationships with peers”; within this matrix the topics were relationship with best or close friend(s), and with boyfriend or girlfriend. Beneath each topic, I placed the three narrative summaries for that particular topic (representing each year of the interview) to the right of each adolescent’s pseudonym. For example, next to Marie’s name and under the topic “relationship with best friend,” one would find three entries summarizing her relationship with her best friend for each year she was interviewed (see Appendix B for an example). I created separate matrices for each of the five general conceptual categories: (1) self-perspectives; (2) relationships with family members; (3) relationships with peers; (4) perspectives on school; and (5) views on the larger society.
From these matrices, I detected themes across narrative summaries. Themes were repeated phrases, terms, or concepts that I heard within and across narrative summaries. For instance, when the adolescents spoke each year about their fears of betrayal by close friends, I considered betrayal a theme within the topic “relationships with close or best friends.” When the girls spoke about being outspoken in their relationships in and out of school, I considered this a theme across the topics of relationships with friends, family members, and school. In addition, I also went back to my notes taken during the initial two readings of each interview (the first two readings in the analysis based on “The Listening Guide”). I used these notes along with the conceptually clustered matrices to determine the central themes in the data. Those themes that were evident in half or more of the interviews in any one year were considered common themes. I then searched for evidence of each common theme in the original interview transcript of each participant.
“The Listening Guide” Revisited
Reading for specific themes is an approach based loosely on “The Listening Guide”’s third and fourth readings. In the original version of the Guide, the third and fourth readings consist of reading for voices of justice and care. However, my analysis was data rather than theory driven and, therefore, I did not read for such voices. Instead, I read for the common themes detected in the conceptually clustered matrices and the first two readings of the interview texts. I read the interviews searching for the location of where and how frequently each common theme emerged in the adolescents’ interviews. The conceptually clustered matrices offer only a rough outline of this information. Unlike the two previous methods, “The Listening Guide” focuses on both the narratives’ content or what was said, and on the form or how it was said. Reading becomes a process whereby the reader listens not only for evidence of a theme, but also for points where the theme is revised, drops away, or is conspicuously absent. The reader highlights each theme with a colored pen, creating a trail of evidence indicating where and how frequently a particular theme emerges in the text. I, as the reader, look for the nuances in the theme and the places where the theme is not as clear as it is in the other parts of the text. As I discussed in the previous chapter, I attempted to remain aware of the interplay between who I am, what my expectations are, and what I see and hear in the adolescents’ interviews. In each reading of an interview, I sought to “hold and represent the sense of tension that people often convey … in order to capture the situational, the personal, and the cultural dimensions of psychic life.”15 I attempted to track the common themes that weave throughout each person’s narratives. The themes I followed were clear at some moments and difficult to detect at others. I aimed to incorporate these tensions into my analysis of the interviews.
My three methods of data analysis—the revised version of “The Listening Guide,” narrative summaries, and the conceptually clustered matrices—helped me to hear the veritable pitch of a given theme as it rises and falls throughout the narratives I follow. They encouraged me to be sensitive to difference, variation, and contradiction while at the same time enabling me to perceive patterns and continuities. Most important, they allowed me to begin to understand and make sense of the masses of data we collected over three years.
These methods, furthermore, helped me meet a central goal of my research; namely, to describe and interpret what the adolescents said and how they said it. Given the lack of knowledge and the stubbornly maintained prejudices about this particular group of adolescents, I wanted to simply listen closely to their stories. I wanted to resist the immediate temptation to explain why they told such stories (although I do provide explanations at times). Explanation, though necessary, involves distancing oneself from the actual words of the participants, and I wanted to stick close to their words. In future studies, I can begin to explain more thoroughly, and these explanations will, by that time, be firmly grounded in the teens’ perceptions.
Part I
INDIVIDUAL LIVES
In this book, I present two case studies of adolescents who were interviewed over the three years of the project. Malcolm and Eva inspired and provoked me. As I listened to their stories, I was compelled to focus on them for my case studies. Malcolm, first interviewed by Mike in the spring of his freshman year, is presented in the first part of the book, and Eva, first interviewed by Helena in the spring of her sophomore year, is presented in the latter part of the book.
In these case studies, I describe what Malcolm and Eva said about themselves, their futures, their relationships to their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, lovers, and role models, their school, and the larger society. In some respects, Malcolm and Eva are similar: both are black and live in the same neighborhood; both go to the same school; both live with their mothers; and both struggled academically at the beginning of high school only to finish on the honor roll. However, they are also different: Malcolm is African American and Eva, though raised in the United States, was born in the West Indies; Malcolm is relatively isolated from his peers while Eva is extremely popular; Malcolm is not involved in any extracurricular activities while Eva takes part in many. Their perspectives on their worlds, furthermore, differ as dramatically as the quality of their relationships.
In presenting these two case studies, I want to remind the reader of the complexity of each individual life. While the focus of this book is on the patterns detected across adolescent lives, it is important to remember that each adolescent had a different story to tell, and a different way of telling his or her story. I also want the reader to hear how the specific patterns I focus on in chapters 4 through 9 are a part of larger stories—the two case studies provide a context for the patterns. And finally, I want the reader to hear the wide-ranging and deeply moving stories that two adolescents told us when we asked them about their lives. Michelle Fine and Lois Weis emphasize the importance of representing the “mundane” or the “rituals of daily living.” They note that as socially responsible researchers we should “recognize how carefully we need not to construct life narratives spiked only with the hot spots … like surfing our data for sex and violence.”1 I present the details of two individual lives, in part, to avoid representing only the patterns, or the “hot spots,” in the data. In these case studies, I want to present the regularity and texture of everyday living.
Throughout the case studies, I frequently provide a verbatim account of Malcolm’s or Eva’s responses to our particular questions. Although I offer interpretations of their responses, my primary aim here is to have the reader hear
