Interpretive data analysis tips

John Schulz gives some insightful guidance on analysing interviews. But I feel his ideas can as equally apply to interpretive data more generally including texts, observations, recordings. Analysis can be approached in two basic ways, in a top-down deductive approach and a bottom up inductive approach. In fact many researchers alternate between the two approaches, particularly because analysis rarely occurs wholly in one more or the other. If we're honest about it we often combine the two approaches, where prior theories inform how we gather and treat the data, and where the data pushes back against preconception and instead offers up other interpretations.