Douglas Ezzy wrote:
>
>
> I think I know what Lyn means, and I've usefuly used the technique myself,
> but it worries me. Using autocoding in this way encourages the researcher
> to think in chunks of decontextualised text. I find it hard enough to
> remember an interview as a whole as it is. But autocoding can be used to
> get things going so that it reduces the need to read through interviews as
> a whole. This makes it less likely that chunks will be seen in the context
> of what was said in the page before or after, or at the beginning or
> ending. It moves the focus away from the complexities and nuances of
> intepretative process toward a more superficial analysis that takes for
> granted an understanding of the general outline of people's stories etc.
> This is doubly a problem if the analysis is done by someone who did not do
> the interviews. As Birrell pointed out, autocoding works well to search for
> specific phrases, and as Lyn rightly points out, autocoding is very useful
> for fixed questions. However, it is no substitute for beginning the
> analysis by reading the transcripts again and again when the analytic
> approach is interpretative, and focused on meaning. But who has the time
> to do that?
>
Perhaps it is too superficial to say, but this process of coding has
always been iterative for me. That means I go through the text again
and again until my eyes cross. Sometimes the pass through is coarse and
superficial; sometimes I spend hours with a phrase.
Autocoding is just one of the tools to tease out meaning. Like
archeology - sometimes the camel-hair brush, sometimes the backhoe.
Autocoding is a bit of a backhoe. It only gets used on some of the
iterations.
I must say, though, that even though autcoding is a backhoe, I think it
has always turned up a surpirise or two. Doug points out the danger of
decontextualized text, and it's true. But for me there is the other
danger, of lost or buried text -- the phrase I don't notice because it
is not where I expect it. The totally unimaginative autocoding device
finds those unexpectedly-contexted phrases as well as the ones I would
have predicted. Like the second-century Roman coins found in South
India: by being discovered in a surprising context they establish an
unexpected connection.
Birrell Walsh
MicroTimes
who should be coding, not pontificating.
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