For my dissertation, I am researching the lives of converts from the nineteenth century. Some people who converted left behind an enormous source base. Orestes Brownson converted from Congregationalism to Presbyterianism to Universalism to Unitarianism to Transcendentalism to Catholicism, publishing voluminously all along the way. For other converts, I can find the barest of mentions in a newspaper or collection of papers. The dissertation needs to get both at the experience of well-known, articulate converts like Brownson, and lesser- or unknown converts. To retrieve that second kind of experience, I want to try analyzing all the conversions as data.
As I compile my research, I want to use it for two purposes. First, I need regular research notes to use when writing the dissertation. Second, I’d like to use the research as data, which I’ll analyze from some unknown tool (maybe Ruby). I have an idea of some of the questions that I’ll ask: How many people converted from X to Y? How likely were converts who were clergy in one religion likely to become clergy in another? How were conversions distributed over time? over space? But I won’t know which questions can be investigated programmatically or what the data to answer them will look like until I’ve done substantially more research.