ANALYSIS SUPPORT - CODING AND REPORTING

Table of Contents
1. QUALITATIVE CODING PROCESSES .............................................................................. 3
Making the change from quantitative to qualitative thinking ...................................................... 3
What is coding? .......................................................................................................................... 3
How to begin coding? ................................................................................................................. 3
A Kingston Example: Martin's interview with Lorraine ................................................................ 4
Summarising coded information ................................................................................................. 5
2. IDENTIFYING THEMES AND MODELS ........................................................................... 7
Moving from coding to thematic analysis .................................................................................... 7
Levels of Coding .......................................................................................................................... 7
Comparing and re-thinking ......................................................................................................... 7
More Kingston Data: Martin's interview with Julie ...................................................................... 7
Coding Summary ......................................................................................................................... 8
Making Connections ................................................................................................................... 8
Preliminary Model ...................................................................................................................... 9
3. REPORTING .............................................................................................................. 10
Research Writing ...................................................................................................................... 10
Situating the current study in the context of previous research ................................................ 10
Reference to the data as evidence ............................................................................................ 11
Sarah's Data .............................................................................................................................. 11
Martin's Data ............................................................................................................................ 12

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1. QUALITATIVE CODING PROCESSES

Making the change from quantitative to qualitative thinking

The previous modules have focused on statistical techniques, which are a feature of
quantitative studies. While both quantitative and qualitative methodologies seek to
find meaning in data, the processes involved differ in every way, from the underlying
epistemological assumptions to the mechanics of doing the analysis.

Unlike the instructions for performing a t-test, there are no universally agreed
"instructions" for coding text data such as a transcribed interview. With good
research questions and knowing which variable is which in a data matrix, it is
possible to generate useful descriptive statistics without a thorough knowledge of the
individual data points. By contrast a thorough understanding of the text is essential
before any coding can begin in qualitative analysis. In practical terms this means you
must read the text, often multiple times,

What is coding?

Of course there is no easy answer to this question either! In the interpretative realm
researchers have differing views, even on the definition of coding. Reading through
Martin's interviews you will form opinions about what the residents are saying. These
opinions may be influenced by what you already know about Kingston, by Sarah's
quantitative data and by your own experiences and background.

After reading all the interviews will you have a good idea about what is similar and
what is different between the responses to questions?

How will you summarise the information and extract meaning from it in a way that is
rigorous?

This is where coding comes in. By assigning codes to different sections of text it is
possible to break down the interview into smaller units. By looking for the same small
units of meaning, or codes, in another interview it is possible to look for what is
common between interviews in a more systematic way. This is an incredibly
simplistic view of coding and analysis, but it is a place to start.

How to begin coding?

The aim of this module is to show you something practical to get started. It will be of
very limited use without concurrent background reading on qualitative analysis.
Three key texts are:

Denzin, N. & Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds.) (1998). Collecting and interpreting qualitative

materials. Sage.

Miles, M. B. & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded

sourcebook (2nd ed.). Sage.

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Strauss, A. & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory and
procedures and techniques. Sage.

A Kingston Example: Martin's interview with Lorraine

The following example is drawn from one of the additional interviews conducted by
Martin in the year following the school closure. Click below if you would like to read
through the whole interview before viewing more of this module (this would be
essential if you were conducting a real life qualitative analysis).

Profile for Lorraine

Lorraine is a long-time resident of Kingston. She and her partner are from local
farming families and completed Year 10 at Kingston District High School. They are
now running the Kingston postal agency. Lorraine has two children – one in Year 5
at Kingston and one in Year 9 who now travels by bus to Beeganup.

One of the key concepts from Martin's study was the impact of the school closure
on community attitudes. This concept can be used as a starting code in the
process of analysing Lorraine's interview. Again, consult one of the key texts for a
developed discussion of defining codes. You can use the Review or Highlight options
on Word to help you code.
As the perspective of the researcher is impossible to remove from the process
of qualitative analysis, I will give my personal first impression of Lorraine's
intervew. That impression is that she is more positive than some of the people
interviewed before the closure and that community is becoming reconciled to
the changes.

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Read through the whole section and then look at just the highlighted text. Does it
capture the essence of what is said? You can see immediately from this very simple
example the kind of difficulties involved in coding qualitative information. Decisions
must be made at every step. What should be coded and what should be left out?
How much text should be included in the coded section? These decisions have a big
impact on the meaning of the information when it is extracted from its context.

Although this interview is organised around specific questions and the first question
explicitly asked for information about community attitudes, further coding can be
carried out on the rest of the interview where answers reveal information about the
community.

Summarising coded information

The next step in processing coded text is to copy and paste the coded text into a
summary. Always preserve the original text as you may wish to code the same text
in multiple ways.

In this small example the coded text will be copied into a table. For larger amounts of
data you might have a whole computer file devoted to one code. Note that the
extracted text can be traced to its origin from the summary. This can be done in
different ways, such as using page or line numbers. In this example, the question
number is sufficient to trace the coded text.

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Reading through these coded text sections I am no longer sure that Lorraine's
interview is positive or reveals acceptance by the community. Taken together the
text sections show that there is still considerable ambivalence in the community and
that perhaps there have been permanent negative effects. On the other hand, we are
now only looking at the distilled information about community attitudes and not at
the other concepts where positive comments may have been made. Qualitative
analysis is a complex process which takes time and reflection. Ideally I would record
my reflections about these initial analyses as part of processing of memoing (for
more discussion about memoing see Strauss and Corbin (1990)).

Hopefully you can glimpse from this small example that the meaning of the text can
be looked at in many ways. The process of coding helps in reviewing and clarifying
but sometimes in muddying the waters! Consequently, qualitative analysis must be
an iterative process where alternatives are continuously considered. We have looked
at a single interview in this example. After coding more interviews it may be come
necessary to change the starting code or to break it down into smaller units, e.g.
fromcommunity attitudes to community attitude-ambivalence and community
attitude-permanent change. We will pick up this idea of developing themes in the
next module.

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2. IDENTIFYING THEMES AND MODELS

Moving from coding to thematic analysis

After even a short time coding interview data, you will probably have a whole series
of questions about coding. A key question is: What level of coding is most
appropriate? Codes can vary from the descriptive to the abstract. A first pass
through the data will often result in codes which are broad and not a big jump from
the data. In the last module the code, community attitudes, acted like a box into
which we could drop anything from Lorraine's interview which was associated with
community attitudes. The code helps to break the interview data into smaller units by
separating issues about community from, for example, issues about travel. However
this level of coding is not sufficient to make higher level conclusions about the data.
Levels of Coding
When you consult the literature on qualitative analysis you find there are many
different schemes to describe levels of coding. In the grounded theory terminology
the starting place is open coding with "substantive" codes arising from the data. This
is followed by axial coding where "theoretical" codes are derived from the
substantive codes. Although in the pure grounded theory tradition substantive codes
arise from the data, in reality it is almost impossible not to bring some preconceived
ideas to the data. However, perhaps what we can take from grounded theory is an
openness to the possibility of alternatives.
For this small practical example, it is enough to know that coding moves from
descriptive to conceptual.
Comparing and re-thinking
As codes can be thought of as a temporary box to put text sections into, it is
expected that changes will be made as understanding of the data grows with further
exploration. Particularly as additional interviews are analysed you would expect to
make adjustments to the initial codes. The process involves considering the
information encapsulated by the code and deciding whether the code is really a good
container and whether information from the next interviews can usefully be put in the
same container. In time it may be necessary to look at the first interview again.
Following this cyclical process you hope that eventually no further changes to the
first level of coding will be needed.
More Kingston Data: Martin's interview with Julie
The following example is another of the additional interviews conducted by Martin in
the year following the school closure. Click below to read through the whole interview
before viewing more of this module.
Read Martin's interview with Julie
Julie has a different perspective to Lorraine. However coding of the interview reveals
that there are similarities in the experiences of the two women. Specific comments
about community spirit were obvious from the initial readings of the interviews.
However, the women interviewed also discuss a series of changes bought about by
the closure of the school. There appears to be a difference between what people feel
and what they are having to do.

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The initial code could perhaps be better described as feelings about community.
The changes described by the mothers indicate a changing focus.
To determine whether the changing focus is just in terms of activities or whether it
truly describes a change in broader focus; further analysis of the other interviews is
required. The final quote in the Coding Summary below suggests this issue is worth
pursuing.
Coding Summary

Making Connections

In seeking to make sense of the data and find underlying themes we need to look for
connections between the first level codes. The model below is one way of displaying
such relationships. Note there are two additional codes not shown in the coding
summary above.

This analysis suggests that although the mothers express negative feelings about
the situation, and specifically about the community, they also describe a growing
change of focus to the new school and their children's needs in the new

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environment. Could this indicate acceptance of the situation? This would need to be
tested against the other interviews and indeed you would not normally begin to look
for these connections or produce such a model until the open coding process was
exhausted.

Preliminary Model

This conceptual level of understanding codes (sometimes called theoretical or

categorical) requires inductive reasoning. In grounded theory there is a third level of
conceptual understanding where the level two categories culminate in a "core"
category. In the theory this is supposed to describe a basic social phenomenon or
process. However, it is difficult to demonstrate this in a short example like this one.

Below are several sources on grounded theory. The originators of grounded theory,
Glaser and Strauss, eventually disagreed about it and the two more recent
references represent two views on the topic. The older reference presents the
original ideas. There has literally been 30 years of discussion about the method, so
you can make up your own mind.

Glaser, B. (1992). Basics of grounded theory analysis. Sociology Press.

Glaser, B. & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for
qualitative research. Aldine.

Strauss, A. & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory and
procedures and techniques. Sage.

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3. REPORTING

Research Writing
At this stage in the course, you may have discovered that research writing requires
some new skills. Whilst writing, you have probably started to ask yourself questions
like this:

• Do I have a stance on this question and does my writing reflect that stance?
• Where is the evidence for the assertion I am making?
• Have I chosen the most convincing evidence to make this point?

There is an obvious tension in research writing. On one hand we are expected to

provide evidence for assertions and on the other to consider that meaning is socially
constructed. This is not as contradictory as it sounds. During the course you have
hopefully gained some new insights into the nature of research itself. Research is an
activity carried out by people and choices are made at every step. Context and
interpretation shape every phase of research, include reporting. This is particularly
the case with qualitative methodologies, but also with quantitative methodologies; as
you have doubtless discovered by now. Evidence-based writing is required for both
qualitative and quantitative research reporting. Providing the pieces of evidence to
support your view allows another reader to make an informed assessment of your
work.
There are two parts to evidence-based research writing.

1. Reference to previous research

2. Reference to the data as evidence

Situating the current study in the context of previous research

Given the diversity of opinion about methods, you may feel that it is pointless to cite
other references. Surely your viewpoint is as valid as any of the other
commentators? It can feel constraining to have to provide that extra evidence.
However, this is part of the rigour of the process. In referring to previous studies you
are situating your own work within a wider context of scholarship. This systematic
way of writing is one of the things which separates research writing from other forms
of writing; such as journalism. Although the voice of the researcher needs to be
heard, it is not always the primary concern. That is; the opinion of the researcher is
of limited use in isolation from the data and the body of research which precedes the
current study.

Note that in this course it is not expected that you refer to previous research
on rural education, but only to literature on methodology where appropriate.
However, in a real life research project, reference to related studies in the
specific area would be essential.

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Reference to the data as evidence

After spending time engrossed in data analysis, conclusions can begin to feel self-
evident. Remember that the reader of your report will not have this familiarity and it is
up to you to lead the reader through the analysis and conclusions with well chosen
evidence. Your opinion alone, even an informed one or an elegantly written one, is
not enough. Often it is possible to incorporate key pieces of evidence in the text.
Other times it will be necessary to refer to a summary table or diagram. It is always
important to provide the location of any supplementary material, preferably in a way
which is easy for the reader to move between it and the text.
Below are some examples of statements synthesizing evidence from both Sarah and
Martin's research.
Sarah's Data

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Martin's Data

In the final assignment you will be using a suite of analytical skills developed during
this course. While you will gain marks for the appropriate use of those skills, a large
part of the task is effectively integrating the different components of analysis you
have mastered. To do this you will need to synthesise the evidence and write a
concise, convincing summary.

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