3 - Codes and coding

Summary

Coding is the most difficult operation for inexperienced researchers to understand and to master, as noted earlier. Even when understood theoretically, the actual procedures are still baffling for some people, despite watching an instructor or some other experienced researcher do the coding. What is needed, apparently, are examples of coding steps, and visualizations of actual codes. Finally, considerable practice at coding is requisite. The materials in this chapter are designed to help that learning process.

But first recollect that coding: (1) both follows upon and leads to generative questions; (2) fractures the data, thus freeing the researcher from description and forcing interpretation to higher levels of abstraction; (3) is the pivotal operation for moving toward the discovery of a core category or categories; and so (4) moves toward ultimate integration of the entire analysis; as well as (5) yields the desired conceptual density (i.e., relationships among the codes and the development of each) (Glaser 1978, pp. 55–82).

To supplement that summary statement, readers should examine again the sections on codes and coding in Chapter 1, and this should be done before studying the materials given below. These consist of several illustrations. The first will illustrate getting off the ground with open coding, by presenting what a research seminar of beginning students did with a fragment of interview data. Next, there is an instance of open coding done with a section of a fieldnote, showing how the initial open coding is done step by step by an experienced analyst. This is followed by a discussion of axial coding illustrated by a set of coding notes done by the same analyst on the same fieldnote.