Data Analysis in Qualitative Research, Chapter 5: Open Coding

Text Exploration

In this chapter, the authors introduce the idea of coding, describing both the intent of the process as well as ways of considering what and how to code.

When coding qualitative research data, “we do not aim to reduce qualitative elements to a numerical frequency, but to a set of data elements that can be compared to each other to explore their analytical properties.” This is a way to encourage thoughtful, deep, slow reading of an interview transcript or field notes, in order to spend time thinking about what the observations mean. Coding then puts data into a conceptual “umbrella” in order to develop a “kind,” and to understand what the kind is about.

Codes “travel across the transcripts” in order to connect things that seem unrelated. There are a number of types of coding processes, and the authors focus first on open coding, which makes things that are everyday into things that are unfamiliar—open coding “pauses” social life. The goal of all of coding is ultimately to arrive at a theory, which tells how the action that was observed shows up as a pattern in the world. Coding generally matches the interrogation form of who, what, when, where, how, and with what consequences.

Coding reduces the richness of observations, and the authors note that it may feel like objectifying social life; but “reducing, purifying, and objectifying” the gathered data is “the craft of social science.” It allows for argumentation and theorizing, and is a process of transformation.