Women's Decision-Making And Factors Affecting Their Choice Of ...

analysis, asking additional questions, and seeking more data. The process goes on
repeatedly until the end of the investigation (Morse 1999a).
Data analysis is an emergent product of a process of gradual induction.
Guided by the data being gathered and the topics, questions, and evaluative
criteria that provide focus, analysis is the field-worker's derivative ordering
(Lofland and Lofland 1995). A number of different strategies exist for the
analysis of data, but the process is open-ended in character, and is very much a
creative act (Lofland and Lofland 1995). The researcher, therefore, must devise
an approach that is flexible and adaptive to the question under study. An
important point to note in qualitative data analysis is that the aim is to elicit the
richness and vividness of descriptions of phenomena as provided by participants.
A popular approach to analysis is through coding the data (Charmaz 1983;
Cuba 1988; Strauss and Corbin 1990). A code is a tag or label for assigning
meaning to information compiled during a study (Charmaz 1983; Miles and
Huberman 1994). Such organisation of patterns of data has also been referred to
as thematic analysis (Aronson 1994; Leininger 1985; Taylor and Bogdan 1984).
Lofland and Lofland (1995) suggest asking questions about discrete items in the
incoming flow of data, the answers to which will be codes for the data. Such
questions could be: of what category is the item before me an instance? What can
we think of this as being about? What is this? What does it represent? (Strauss
and Corbin 1990) What is this an example of? (Cuba 1988).
Coding is done in stages (Lofland and Lofland 1995; Strauss 1987; Strauss
and Corbin 1990), the initial stage is about discovering what the data has to offer
(Charmaz 1983). Lofland and Lofland (1995:192) call this "the emergent
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