Qualitative Research in Practice : Stories From the Field - Blogs Unpad

Analysing data
sometimes referred to as indexing (Mason, 1996). While coding is a
term used in both quantitative and qualitative research, very
different processes are involved. In quantitative research, coding is
part of data management and involves numerically transforming
the data in preparation for analysis. In qualitative research, coding
is an integral part of the analysis, involving sifting through the
data, making sense of it and categorising it in various ways. The
analytic choices made here about what to code and how will influence
every stage of the research from here on.
Qualitative analysis is generally concerned with identifying
patterns in the data—different ways in which the data relate to each
other. The kinds of patterns identified depend very much on the
focus of the study. Lofland and Lofland (1995), for example, have
identified a number of levels at which analysis can be focused.
These may range from the microscopic to the macroscopic and
may be social practices, episodes, encounters, roles, relationships,
groups, settlements, social worlds, lifestyles or subcultures. Within
each, the specific aspect of focus may be cognitive meanings,
feelings or inequalities, and any given study may be focused at one
or more levels and one or more aspects. They stress that this
approach is meant to provide a mindset for coding that ‘should
provide you a general orientation to the kinds of things for which to
look in coding data, not a preformed schemata of things for which
to code’ (1995, p. 122). Bogdan and Biklen (1992) also present a
useful list of possible kinds of codes to develop and likewise stress
that they are meant to assist in categorising data and not to be
rigidly adhered to. Their list includes setting/context codes, definition
of the situation codes, perspectives held by participants,
participants’ ways of thinking about people and objects, process
codes, activity codes, event codes, strategy codes, relationship and
social structure codes, and methods codes. Again, a study may
focus on just one or a number of these types of codes.
Lists such as these are helpful in so far as they draw attention to
the vast array of possible ways to focus analysis. They open up the
possibilities but also make the need to focus abundantly clear—no
one study can hope to look at everything. The danger is that they
may provide a false sense of security, a belief that a focus for
analysis will emerge at some stage. In practice, decisions about the
levels of analysis and types of codes should flow from the research
purpose and question, and so be made early on—data collection,
too, ought to have been focused in such a way as to obtain the kind
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