Stuck in cross-case analysis

I've got to rewrite chapters 2 and 6 - well edit them. They are the literature review and the cross-case analysis.

The literature review edit is fairly straight forward and supervisor has helped by reading it thoroughly and giving me over sixty comments in writing. Is that critical or helpful? I think it's helpful supervision because I know the problem and what I have to do to solve it.

The cross-case analysis on the other hand has been difficult for months, and despite listening to my supervisors for an hour and listening again on the recording, I don't know how to tackle it. Until I have the cross-case analysis in my head, I cannot write it down, so in the meantime supervisors can't comment constructively - just say that they don't understand the abstractness of my writing in chapter 6, and beat me up.

Supervisor #2 suggested I was filtering out stuff and to brainstorm, but brainstorming is a group technique, not a really a one-PhD woman job. However he did also suggest I use a technique called EIAG which stands for

• Experience
• Identify
• Analyse
• Generalise

The idea is that I know/see/feel and find the experiences from my research and then identify them. The next two steps seem easy enough but I'm still stuck on the experience bit. For instance, at supervision, I pointed out the cycles and feedbacks on the engagement model that I've developed, but I haven't actually written these loops down anywhere and explained them, because I filter them out and yet they are important - because lose the loops and you lose engagement and also lose the evidence that engagement is continual. It was filtering out this idea from writing yet bringing it up in talking that made my supervisor think of EIAG.

Now what do I do? Stuck again in cross-case analysis

I'll go and edit the literature review.