Methodology: reconsidered

On further thinking about the direction the methodology appears to be taking, it seemed to me that developing three different methodologies to implement three different phases of research is really a lot to do! For me the most interesting aspect of the research is the results of the sketching, with the interview-based oral/verbal phase in second place because it willl add insight to the sketch result analysis. So I am thinking that looking into differences in sketch process, while interesting in itself, isn't directly related to the focus of the thesis and should therefore not be pursued.

The major challenge at this point is to develop a methodology for sketch result analysis. Related to this I have two ideas.

1. Use a grounded theory or a similar emergent, qualitative method to analyze the visual data represented in the sketches. While this is outside what most commonly comes to mind when one thinks about grounded theory and emergent methods, there does seem to be some precedent with visual ethnography and visual anthropology. If this approach is used, the same methodology can be used in both phases (sketching and oral) of the research.
   
2. I can't believe I didn't think of this possibility earlier as I spent a whole semester working with it. I am refering of course to semilogy. Clearly, a semiological methodology can be used to analyze the meaning of the sketches. I have employed semiological analysis to generic objects as well as to music recordings and am confident that it can be productive here as well. I can then attempt to put the results of the semiological analysis into a framework of "male" and "female" priorities -- which can then be investigated or clarified in the second, oral phase.
   

Up to now we have been thinking of doing a wide ranging cross-sectional study, but it occurs to me that a case study approach can also be used. In particular, this can be useful if semiology is employed as the sketch analysis methodology. In addition, securing the concentrated cooperation of a limited number of sketchers may turn out to be much easier than recruiting an undefined but almost certianly large number (enough to "saturate" the emergent method) of sketchers.