Materials to complete the Quantitative Study
ecl569
coding_textual_data.pptxPSY 850
Paula Thompson, Ed.D.
Coding Textual Data
What to do with Textual Data?
Making Meaning from Text
Text
Visuals
Interpre-tation
Codes (Code Books)
Themes
Examples
Creswell’s 6 Steps of Qualitative Analysis
Organize and prepare the textual data for analysis.
Creswell’s 6 Steps of Qualitative Analysis
Organize and prepare the textual data for analysis.
Read through to get a general sense of the information and its meaning.
Creswell’s 6 Steps of Qualitative Analysis
Organize and prepare the textual data for analysis.
Read through to get a general sense of the information and its meaning.
Begin coding by identifying “chunks” of text and labeling it with a brief code. Repeat. Build Codebook.
Creswell’s 6 Steps of Qualitative Analysis
Organize and prepare the textual data for analysis.
Read through to get a general sense of the information and its meaning.
Begin coding by identifying “chunks” of text and labeling it with a brief code. Repeat. Build Codebook.
Identify categories and themes across the codes.
Creswell’s 6 Steps of Qualitative Analysis
Organize and prepare the textual data for analysis.
Read through to get a general sense of the information and its meaning.
Begin coding by identifying “chunks” of text and labeling it with a brief code. Repeat. Build Codebook.
Identify categories and themes across the codes.
Determine how to best represent the codes and themes in the report (examples, visuals).
Creswell’s 6 Steps of Qualitative Analysis
Organize and prepare the textual data for analysis.
Read through to get a general sense of the information and its meaning.
Begin coding by identifying “chunks” of text and labeling it with a brief code. Repeat. Build Codebook.
Identify categories and themes across the codes.
Determine how to best represent the codes and themes in the report (examples, visuals).
Interpretation: make meaning of the text.
What is a Code?
“A code in qualitative inquiry is most often a word or short phrase that symbolically assigns a summative, salient, essence-capturing and/or evocative attribute for a portion of the language-based or visual data.”
Saldana (2013), p. 3
What is a Code?
Think of codes as a labeling and filing system
Things that Can Be Coded
| What Can Be Coded | Example | Code |
| Events | “It happened at the annual Board meeting” | |
| Activities | “I wrote ideas on the flip chart” | |
| Feelings or states of mind | “We were feeling hopeless about the budget” | |
| Relationships | “She was the Chair of the Board” | |
| Norms and values | “It was a real test of our ethical fortitude” | |
| Conditions or constraints | “We were told to reduce the workforce” | |
| Theories/models | “The whole culture of our organization changed that day” | |
| Behaviors, acts | “I cried about it” |
When to Code Text?
When the text relates to one or more of your research questions
When a certain word, phrase, or idea is repeated in several places or by several participants
When the text reminds you of a theory or concept from the literature
When you simply have a gut feeling that the text is meaningful
When in doubt, code it
Subjectivity in Qualitative Research
Because you are the researcher, you subjectively select of text to code
Part of your role is to highlight phenomena you consider important
You also attempt to be consistent and unbiased
Consistent: like text from different interviews should be coded the same way.
Unbiased: data that does not support your opinion/preference should be coded anyway
Stay true to the participants’ words, stories, meanings
Chain of evidence: your findings link back to the original text
Inductively Creating Codes
Read the data
Highlight the chunk of data that you want to code
Think of a word or short phrase that captures the essence of the meaningful text. That becomes the code.
Codes represent the text, and also summarize, distill, and condense it
Keep code names simple, but distinct (ex. hopeful versus optimistic)
Deductively Creating Codes
Use a theory or model to create codes before you start coding.
Codebook structure comes from pre-existing theory or model
Read with the intention of identifying presence of those codes in the data
Optional: inductively create new codes alongside the deductive coding
Can have the advantage of a more efficient coding process
Cycles of Coding / Recoding
Lumping and splitting – does this need to be its own code or can it be combined with a similar one?
“high school dropout” versus “didn’t finish high school”
Trimming – getting rid of codes that only show up once or twice and don’t seem to add value to emerging themes
Saturation – when continued reading of the text does not generate new insights or codes
Creating hierarchies – to cluster codes into categories
Coding Hierarchies
From this:
Successful Career
Career Trajectory
Married
Children
Stay at home mom
Returned to work
Family before career
Equality
Mom belongs at home
Satisfied
Combine career and family
To This...
Coding Hierarchies
Career
Successful career
Career trajectory
Family
Married
Equality
Children
Stay at home mom
Mom belongs at home
Combine work and family
Returned to work
Satisfied
References
Bernard, H. R., & Ryan, G. W. (2009). Analyzing qualitative data: Systematic approaches. SAGE publications.
Creswell, J.W. (2003). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage Publications.
Richards, L & Morse, J. (2012) 3rd ed. README FIRST for a User’s Guide to Qualitative Methods. Sage Publications.
Saldana, J. (2013). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Sage Publications.
