It is important to account for each significant stage, step and shift in your project and where your ideas came from, as these form the basis of your continued analysis and the conclusions you draw.
Keeping a project journal requires a systematic record of the processes that are significant for your research at the stages that are significant for your project. A document in your project could be dedicated to this process. To keep your journal useful, carefully plan which processes will be logged, and at which stages. (For example, when you finish a stage of observation and commence interviewing, log your reports on nodes and models to ensure that you can clearly tell later what themes were derived from observation.)
Your project journal could include:
Reports created at various stages in your project to show the progression of ideas, concepts and the state of your data.
Static models of key concepts and categories at various stages in your project. These will remain as a record after project items or your interpretations are altered.
Details of the results of the queries you have run at various stages of your project and their contribution to your analysis
Details of projects which have been merged to comprise the current project
In the Volunteering Sample Project
The Project Journal document (in the Project Notes folder) contains an account of the project from its inception, descriptions of the data gathered and the growing understanding of the themes at play.
