From an expert to a beginner: A reversed experience in becoming a novice qualitative researcher

This case study takes a narrative form to illustrate the involvement of an experienced English Language lecturer as a novice qualitative researcher. It is meant to highlight the issues mostly occurred at the organization stage of data analyses. This sharing serves as the main purpose of this study. Several mistakes occurred despite of the researcher’s attempts to learn qualitative procedures and to adopt them into her on-going qualitative inquiry investigation. To identify and explore these mistakes, respondent’s personal experience as a novice researcher was reflexively analysed potential themes. Some written literature justifications accompanied the related issue to support the narrative explanations. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that (1) losing track and (2) lack of clarity are the contributing factors to the issues faced by the researcher. These factors disrupt researcher’s efforts to arrange the data as she struggled to decide on how to run the analyses. The recommendations to minimize the mistakes in organizing the results of qualitative analyses are included as a guide for future novice researchers.