Here are notes from [COUNT] interviews about [TOPIC]: [NOTES] Synthesise: 1. The patterns that appear across multiple participants. For each, say how many mentioned it — a theme from one person is an anecdote. 2. Where participants directly contradict each other, and what would explain the split 3. The thing several people worked around rather than complained about — those are the real problems 4. What surprised you against what a reasonable person would have predicted 5. The strongest verbatim quote for each pattern 6. What these interviews cannot tell us, given who was in the sample Do not rank by how memorable a quote was. One vivid story is not a finding.
Builds the strongest honest version of the argument you disagree with.
Questions about what people did, not what they say they would do.
Summarises a body of reading without smoothing over where sources conflict.