Custodians of an ecology of data: Foundational theory and practice for data analysis in a complex world

Currently, limited guidance is offered to qualitative researchers regarding ways to undertake data analysis that focus on the complex transactions of person and place. We propose that honouring mutuality of person and place requires analysis textured as ‘custodianship’ of the diverse expression of values in research data that constitutes an ‘ecology’. The process of analysis as custodians is the enacted responsibility to learn with data: digging deep within the ecology to reveal flows of diverse values motivating human behaviour. In this article, this inherently more relational approach to data analysis is theorised as an eco-behavioural stance, inspired by the social-ecological model and ecological psychology. Directing increasing sensitivity to the role of the qualitative researcher that considers the multiple emergent processes operating simultaneously across various levels of analysis, we contend, will bring a resultantly richer feast of findings.