Rhetoric 8012

This week's readings are causing me to begin grappling with how to really set up a case study. From the readings I've learned of the many factors that should be decided upon before beginning and different combinations of methods that can make findings more generalizable. Data triangulation makes sense to me in theory. But, how can you plan for enough different types of data collection without making a mountain of data that will take an unrealistic amount of time to sort through? How can this be done in an acceptable way for someone who wants to do a case study for a dissertation so that the person isn't writing his/her case for the next decade?

What still isn't clear to me is the analysis stage where the leap is made from "facts" to "findings". How do my notes from an interview or my observation notes from a classroom be grouped in such a way to discover new theories? How can my interview notes get put into a useful database without being cut up into little chunks that may or may not have meaning? What does a useful database really look like?

General question: How do you handle direct quotes if you only make notes in an interview and don't tape/transcribe? This was a problem I ran into last semester when I conducted a telephone interview that couldn't be recorded. I ended up using artistic license to modify my notes into quotes. I think the quotes were fairly close but this is an issue I have to figure out how to prevent in the future. Anyone have any experience with this?

Okay, I'm not expecting anyone to have "the answers" for all of these questions, but if anyone has any thoughts I would be interested in hearing them. :-)