A: Planning – thinking through ‘who’, ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘how’ and ‘what’. Have you considered:

☑ Creation of a list of ‘texts’ you wish to explore. If the breadth of texts you wish to explore is overly wide, you will need to develop an appropriate sampling strategy

☑ Access – how you will locate and access texts

☑ How you plan to control your biases

☑ How you might develop the skills/resources needed to carry out your textual exploration

☑ Strategies for ensuring credibility

☑ What it is you are looking for or trying to find in your texts

☑ Ethics/ethics approval

☑ Contingencies

B: Gathering. Have you:

☑ Organized – for collected text, you will want to develop and employ an organization and management scheme

☑ Copied – make copies of original text for the purpose of annotation

C: Reviewing. Have you:

☑ Assessed the authenticity and credibility of the ‘text’

☑ Explored the text’s agenda, that is, reviewed the text and considered any inherent biases

D: Interrogating. Have you explored:

☑ Background Information

☑ Questions ‘about’ the text – Who produced it? What did they produce it for? What were the circumstances of production? When, where and why was it produced?

☑ Content within the text

E: Reflecting and refining. Have you:

☑ Improved your processes a s you go.

☑ Reflected on any difficulties associated with gathering the texts, reviewing the sources, and exploring the content

☑ Reviewed your notes

☑ Made modifications

☑ Kept reviewing and refining until you are comfortable with the process and data collected

F: Analyzing data. Have you considered:

☑ Mode of analysis – data collected in textual analysis is best analysed quantitatively (tallying and statistical analysis) or qualitatively (through deeper reflective processes)