{"id":5494,"date":"2018-11-14T11:05:39","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T16:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/?p=5494"},"modified":"2018-11-14T11:05:39","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T16:05:39","slug":"navigating-my-way-through-the-qualitative-data-coding-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/2018\/11\/14\/navigating-my-way-through-the-qualitative-data-coding-process\/","title":{"rendered":"Navigating my Way through the Qualitative Data Coding Process"},"content":{"rendered":"

             With each stage of the research project on the Croft School, new challenges arise, my most recent one being my first attempt at qualitative data coding. After the first read through of the data, my group and I constructed a list of the codes that we would be using for our data and what part each of us would be coding. In theory, this did not seem all that hard. My task was to read the data of two of the students and code it based on the list of codes that we constructed as a group.<\/p>\n

            I sat down with my list of codes and my data ready to go, but quickly realized that I did not really know what I was doing. Should I find quotes from the data? Should I highlight sections related to my codes? I knew that the main purpose of my task was to pull sections of the data that were relevant to our topic, community service, but I was not exactly sure what this process would look like. I decided to consult the trusty internet and do some reading on the process of qualitative data coding, and I came across a very helpful article titled, \u201cTips and Tools #18: Coding Qualitative Data\u201d which was just what I needed. It outlined the process and helped me better understand what I was doing and what I should be getting out of this process with my data.<\/p>\n

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https:\/\/www.monoimages.com\/images\/writing-paper-business-highlighting<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

           After reading, I decided that my coding method of choice would be to highlight the sections of the data that related to our codes and the topic of the project in general, and to further number them based on the relative code number. As I coded and highlighted, I began to notice some patterns with my codes that were consistent with what I had read in this article on coding. Firstly, I was using some codes far, far more often than others. This showed me that some of the codes we made were more relevant to our research than others, while it also demonstrated that some of the ideas and codes that we had written were more common topics of conversation in the data. According to the article, this was to be expected, as the coding process involves \u201credefining your codes\u201d as you get further in the coding process and determining which were more or less important (\u201cTips and Tools #18: Coding Qualitative Data,\u201d 2018). This also made me realize, and relieved, to see that these more frequent codes had the potential to be some of the major themes in our research. It was only once I started the coding process and started to see these themes that I realized how the process would continue from this point.<\/p>\n

              Secondly, as I coded, I often found that sometimes I had a section of data that I did not feel connected to any of the current codes on the list. With this in mind, I found myself adding more and more codes to our data as I went along, in order to ensure that when I was done, all the important information was highlighted and there was a relevant code for each important topic. I ended my coding with a longer list of codes, but also with a sense that these extra codes had truly allowed me to find all the important details and information in my data. According to the article I read, one can have two types of codes in qualitative data, being pre-set codes and emergent codes (\u201cTips and Tools #18: Coding Qualitative Data,\u201d 2018). Having this information from the article made me realize that what I was finding and experiencing with my data, this being having some codes but needing to add new ones and supplement what we had started with, was a normal part of the qualitative data coding process. So, I was never coding the wrong way! I just had to see that what I was finding was the right way all along.<\/p>\n

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https:\/\/medium.com\/@CodementorIO\/good-developers-vs-bad-developers-fe9d2d6b582b<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

                  Having this article with me as I coded helped me navigate some of the ins and outs of coding that I was not fully aware of and made it much easier to do what I needed to do with my data. Being a student researcher on a well-established project, I have been finding it important to reach out to outside sources to see how other people tackle the tasks involved in the qualitative data process and use what they have to say to ensure that I am on the right track.<\/p>\n

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References:<\/p>\n

Impact: Center for Evaluation and Research. (21 October 2018). \u201cTips and Tools #18: Coding Qualitative Data.\u201d Retrieved from http:\/\/programeval.ucdavis.edu\/documents\/Tips_Tools_18_2012.pdf.<\/p>\n\n

\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

             With each stage of the research project on the Croft School, new challenges arise, my most recent one being my first attempt at qualitative data coding. After the first read through of the data, my group and I constructed a list of the codes that we would be using […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8048,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5494"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8048"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5497,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5494\/revisions\/5497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}