Coding, Classifying, Categorizing, and Labeling

¶ … coding, classifying, categorizing, and labeling primary patterns as it pertains to qualitative data analysis. Describe how data collection and data analysis can be overlapping activities in qualitative research. (See below)

Data coding: Qualitative research

Data coding might initially seem to be an objective, technical, even obvious process for the qualitative researcher. It involves taking rough field notes and organizing them into meaningful categories. But within the process of data collection some type of analysis and discrimination invariably takes place. For example, when studying the growth and development of students at an elementary school, a researcher might take note of the student's grades, a seemingly objective measurement. But by classifying student's grades into categories of satisfactory and not satisfactory, the 'analysis' begins. If all students who get below a C. are deemed to be 'unsatisfactory, ' there is a different presumption and value judgment on the part of the researcher than the individual who labels all students who move onto the next grade as satisfactory. And noting the data of grades itself as a code underlines the fact that academics will be important in the research, rather than other aspects of student life.

Codes, which are forms of classification, are not intrinsic to the subject, but are based on the value judgment of the researcher as to what is meaningful. Codes can refer to external characteristics, or be based upon abstract "themes, topics, ideas, concepts, terms, phrases, and keywords" (Gibbs 2010). Some codes are based upon preexisting cultural or research-related categories (such as gender or passing or not passing a particular test). The codes may be based purely upon the raw qualitative research data, and generated by the researcher. Events, specific actions, activities of longer duration, strategies, states of beings, and relationships can all be the subject of coding (Gibbs 2010). Many of these categories will be shaped by the initial hypothesis of the study.

Coding is thus a form of analysis and far from pro-forma. An individual might be categorized a 'woman' in one study and a 'runner' in another study, due to the behaviors being analyzed. While both states of being are intrinsic to the person outside of the study, the researcher's coding of the individual subject makes what is observed meaningful for research purposes. However, codes should not be unnecessarily limiting: there is always the danger of assigning a code that is unduly limiting to the subject and filters out potentially relevant information. Ideally, coding should facilitate deeper analysis, as deploying effective coding can bring to light similarities in the researcher's observations between apparently dissimilar categories.

Categories in coding can be hierarchical or contrasting (Gibbs 2010). For example, in the case of classifying friendships, friendships can be classified as either work-related or purely personal. Sub-categories within personal friendships might include people met in the context of a child's school, hobby, old friends, or family members with whom one socializes (Gibbs 2010). Further sub-categorization allows for greater comparison and contrasting of different categories and can make the data sets more meaningful. Not all of these codes will be decided beforehand -- in fact, it can be more enriching for the final analysis to break down the data afterwards, to ensure that the lived experience of the subjects affects the coding process.

Coding is often thought of in terms of word-based strategies of the subjects, and these can yield important assumptions about the ways individuals perceive their places in the world. Frequency of use of particular words, metaphors, analogies, and the use of local or regional phrases endemic to the area can all be flagged through coding and used to draw meaningful connections between apparently dissimilar sates of being (Gibbs 2010). By highlighting key words in transcripts, the researcher can physically have his or her eye drawn to meaningful bits of data. One argument for the use of linguistic coding is that if used properly it can offer more objective evidence, as the frequently-used words, transitions, connectors, idioms, and imagery are 'on the page' of transcripts for the observer.

Coding requires active, discriminatory analysis on the part of the recorder. For example, "if your respondent has been talking about the way her parents continued to give her financial support after she had left them and set up her own home, you can compare this with all the other ways that parents might support their children" (Gibbs 2010). By making this the salient feature of study, the focus is upon the dependent relationship between parent and child, and this is coded as 'dependency' in the research. But a different analytical approach, depending on the subject of the research, might be to code the situation as a symptom of the economic decline, and evidence of how the current generation of young graduates has had more trouble getting jobs than previous recent generations. This codes the behavior as economically- rather than psychologically-based, and again implies an analytical, discriminatory approach in 'labeling' behavior for further analysis.