{"id":5521,"date":"2018-11-26T18:41:02","date_gmt":"2018-11-26T23:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/?p=5521"},"modified":"2018-11-26T18:41:02","modified_gmt":"2018-11-26T23:41:02","slug":"decoding-through-data-coding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/2018\/11\/26\/decoding-through-data-coding\/","title":{"rendered":"Decoding through Data Coding"},"content":{"rendered":"

For me, the coding process was initially difficult because I was extremely hesitant to assign codes to segments of texts for fear of inaccurately grouping the data. There\u2019s a power to dissecting other\u2019s words and mining them for useful information. Especially as I started to code along with the rest of my group, I was worried that the codes that I was creating wouldn\u2019t fit the data right, and I wasn\u2019t sure how specific or general the initial round of coding was supposed to be in practice. At first the requirement of creating 30-40 codes seemed like more than enough, but once I really conceptualized the amount of data that those 30-40 codes needed to cover, my opinion definitely changed.<\/p>\n

When I started to think of coding data as a type of close reading (a process that I am more familiar with and sometimes even enjoy) instead of a new and complex system of qualitative analysis (which it also is, of course), I was able to get a better sense of what I was doing and then actually code the data I needed to code.<\/p>\n

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And as I have coded more and more, I have found that coding really helps to visualize the interconnectedness of the data from different students, teachers, and alumni. Through a unified color coding system, trends jump off the page without one needing to draw the connection based only on what they remember having read before.<\/p>\n

Coding also can reveal the underlying meaning of the data. For example, my research group is focusing on students\u2019 imagined futures and post-graduation outcomes within the Westernized school model of Olive Grove Academy. So by coding teachers\u2019 perception of student futures and students\u2019\/alumni\u2019s perception of their own futures, the contrasts between the three viewpoints and the motivations behind them come to light. I can look at what a teacher\u2019s goals were for shaping global citizens or community engagement and then look at how those goals translate into the life paths students want to take or are taking after graduating from the school.<\/p>\n

Over the time I\u2019ve been coding, our class has started to read Pierre Bourdieu’s\u00a0State Nobility<\/em>. As a result, I\u2019ve found that the insights I\u2019m able to take away from the data have deepened\u2014or at least become heavily influenced by this influx of th<\/a>eory. When the term \u201cesprit de corps<\/em>\u201d came up in one of the interviews I was reading, I coincidentally recalled reading that same phrase not even a hour earlier in State Nobility<\/em> in a section about preparatory schools\u2019 cultivation of an exclusive common culture that serves to shape and maintain elite culture. This very happenstance connection helped me to think deeply about the meaning of the data, and it \u00a0also helped me to\u00a0 understand Bourdieu\u2019s theories better because I could apply them to a context with which I am more familiar than the French system on which Bourdieu grounds his theories.<\/p>\n\n

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

For me, the coding process was initially difficult because I was extremely hesitant to assign codes to segments of texts for fear of inaccurately grouping the data. There\u2019s a power to dissecting other\u2019s words and mining them for useful information. Especially as I started to code along with the rest of my group, I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8026,"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\/5521"}],"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\/8026"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5521"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5523,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5521\/revisions\/5523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}