I have tried a few different approaches to teach coding to students who are new to qualitative research. I focus on coding, even though I am aware of myriad are other ways to analyze qualitative data that do not involve any coding. This is because for many students in my discipline (Public Health), their greatest need is to conduct basic analysis of descriptive data, to condense and get an understanding of the content of the data. Coding, at least as I try to teach it, requires a more systematic and thoughtful approach than some of the shortcuts (including what I have called "getting a thematic impression of your data") used by people with minimal training and sometimes minimal appreciation for qualitative inquiry. So coding - done in a two/three cycles - has proven to be a pretty useful approach for my students. But teaching it can be challenging. I was fortunate to be able to attend a workshop last month with Johnny Saldaña, who has made great contributions to coding instruction, in part through his Coding Manual.
Last year, I settled into teaching initial/first cycle coding in two phases: first, identifying meaning units, per Chenail, second, assigning codes. This seemed to work pretty well and I carried this forward into some online coursework. But grading the online assignments - completed in several instances by students who had no prior qualitative training - made me begin to question this strategy. In some instances, students had no problem identifying meaning units, and had no problem assigning codes, but had some problem assigning codes to the identified meaning units. I also found a tendency to identify key or summarizing words rather than meaning units. I am going to have a couple more opportunities to teach/demonstrate basic coding this semester, and at this point I am inclined to do things a little differently. One thing I took away from Saldaña's workshop was the notion of using small sticky notes (or maybe these were sticky "tabs") to make placement and write the code label. This is a particular help for someone like me who tends toward overly long code labels. I am considering whether to focus first on codes, and introduce meaning units later. I think meaning units provide a useful way to consider qualitative data, and it can be helpful to focus on these when you encounter challenges in coding, but maybe it was too challenging for students to see the relationship between meaning units - a new concept - and codes - a less new concept. The graphic is a screenshot from a codebook I developed for a course I took, with an assignment to complete coding for a descriptive qualtative project. The data were from the Doc South collection of interviews after Hurricane Floyd.
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AuthorI am Sheryl L. Chatfield, Ph.D, C.T.R.S. I am a member of the faculty in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. I also Co-coordinate the Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research and I am a member of the Design Innovation Team at Kent State. Archives
February 2024
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