Sarah, if coding wrecks your head, don't!
Or at least never code till it wrecks your head. Stop and write a brilliant
methodological article about the challenges of qualitative coding and the
ways qualitative software has skewed the method to coding! Or sit under an
oak tree and think, rather than code.
You've met the wellknown but little discussed problem I named coding
fetishism in a pair of papers published in QHR. You message gets at its
heart. How about proposing a session on coding at the University of London
IOE conference on NUD*IST/NVivo in September?
I think coding fetishism is possibly the worst and also the most avoidable
of the dysfunctional unintended consequences of qualitative computing!
Trouble is, that when you are starting out, everything seems important, and
indeed may be, and if you are anxious not to miss anything, you can get into
a mindset of "if it moves, code it!" As you eloquently say, it's not a
problem of software (indeed I found it worse working manually since the
tasks were so grotty, and by the time you'd identified, copied and filed a
page five times you couldn't remember why you thought it was an interesting
interview in the first place.) But it's a problem of all software that
codes easily, since the easier it is to code, the more seductive is the
mindset ("not sure what it's about but if I code it at least I won't lose
it.") Computers code real easy, and any good software of course will
exploit this.
We were very mindful of this problem in the five years developing NVivo, and
our goal was to provide a lot of other ways of linking data and ideas, ways
the researcher could reach for in a process of thinking aloud (linking,
editing, annotating, modeling). That does not mean you need to switch to
NVivo; rather, use the N4 toolkit to create the N4 ways out of coding.
Before NVivo, N4 had the basic critical tools for this - the mobility of
nodes, the live node browser and the ability to memo. Here are my
self-imposed rules:
1) Never think in terms of the final allocation of text to a
"right" code. Make coding thinking-aloud, a way of expressing what you
think is going on here. It's tentative, exploratory, as long as it needs to
be. So work with your nodes a lot, redefining, rethinking, memoing, moving
around and merging.
2) Never think of coding as one stage - it takes you to a node
browser that allows you to look at all the material coded at a node and
*re*view it, rethink, recode. This means early on especially you can do
broad brush coding, gathering material in broad headings, then going to the
node to code on more finely into subtler dimensions of the concept.
3) Never allow myself to do uninterrupted coding for more than an
hour. Because no qualtiative thinking can be expressed solely in coding for
that long.
4) Use free nodes freely - a friend of mine invented the lovely
term *nodeworthy*. If it's nodeworthy, (that means sounds like it might
need to be a category in my thinking) don't wreck you head worrying where it
goes, just make it a free node. Drop out of coding later to play with the
free nodes and locate them in groups or merge them (or delete if it wasn't
really nodeworthy! How do you know? Strauss used to say, "If it matters,
it'll come up again.")
5) If it's a thought, not an allocation to a known topic, don't
code but annotate or memo.
Hope all this helps. Been there, done that. If you're going to the London
conference, and proposing a session on coding, please can I give a paper in
it?
cheers
Lyn
PS oops, be4 anyone asks for refs over the list, here they are!
Richards, Lyn, "Closeness to Data: The Changing Goals of Qualitative
Data handling", Qualitative Health Research, vol 8, no 3, pp. 319-328, 1998.
Richards, Lyn, "Data Alive! The thinking behind NVivo Qualitative
Health Research, Vol. 9, No. 3, 1999)
Lyn Richards,
Research Professor of Qualitative Methodology, University of Western
Sydney,
Director, Research Services, Qualitative Solutions and Research.
(email) [log in to unmask]
(Ph) +61 3 9459 1699 (Fax) +61 3 9459 0435
(snail) Box 171, La Trobe University PO, Vic 3083, Australia.
http://www.qsr.com.au
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sarah Delaney [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2000 4:25 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]; Elliot Richmond
> Subject: Re: Fw: two days of coding and my head is gone already.
>
> Aye Elliot but I am a poor veteran of both methods and they both WRECK MY
> HEAD!!
> By that I don't mean worries about not getting it right, nor using
> software - just the whole process...especially on a monday. When I used
> paper and scissors i was constantly chasing scraps of paper - now I am a
> zombie in front of a confuser. On a Monday. Merely a declaration of
> frustration
>
> Thank you for your advice - I am now calmer.
>
> Sarah
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Elliot Richmond <[log in to unmask]>
> To: Sarah Delaney <[log in to unmask]>; [log in to unmask]
> <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 14 February 2000 16:51
> Subject: Re: Fw: two days of coding and my head is gone already.
>
>
> >At 4:24 PM 2/14/2000, Sarah Delaney wrote:
> >>This is not a criticism of any software package at all:
> >>
> >>I am just in need of sharing my experience of coding ...
> >>I had forgotten just how much it wrecks my head.
> >>
> >>Does it wreck anyone else's head at all??
> >
> >I do not believe this is a software issue at all. Whether coding is done
> by
> >hand with paper, scissors, and highlighters or is done using a software
> >package is purely a matter of personal choice and convenience. I prefer
> to
> >print out the document (with line numbers), code it by hand (while laying
> >in the hammock in the back yard under the big oak tree), then go back and
> >enter the code into the software later.
> >
> >Remember, you can always go back and revise codes, definitions, trees,
> >memos, whatever. It does not have to be right, perfect, or fit the "big"
> >picture the first time through. Or vnen the second, third, fourth, or
> fifth
> >time through.
> >
> >Elliot Richmond
> >PhD candidate in science education
> >University of Texas at Austin
> >[log in to unmask]
> >http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4758/
> >
> >
> >
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