PRACTICAL RESEARCH 1 categories, and labeling those categories with a term,

QUARTER 4 LECTURE often a term used by the actual participant.

Begin the coding process by first reviewing your

LESSON 4: QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS: PATTERNS AND
learning outcomes as a reminder of what you are
THEMES
assessing. Your coding scheme will be based on your
INTRODUCTION learning outcomes.

As a researcher selects strategies of inquiry, it is Coding involves assigning a word, phrase,

important to realize these will have a dramatic influence number or symbol to each coding category.
on procedures of analysis and interpretation. Data
Codes can be pre-set or emergent. You should
collection in the field can take a long time; however, the
have both.
researcher can continually reflect, analyze and then
adjust the research during this time. Pieces of data Pre-set: A list of codes created in advance by
ought to be carefully labeled and organized in such a the researcher based on the research question, learning
way that eases ongoing analysis. This process of analysis outcomes, or conceptual framework.
involves making sense out of data recorded in text,
image, audio and/or video formats. Emergent: Ideas, concepts, actions and
meanings that come up from reading and analyzing the
It may be helpful to think of the following steps data that are not in the pre-set codes.
(Creswell 2009):
CREATING CATEGORIES
1. Organize and prepare the data for analysis.
 Coding will serve as a system to help you to
2. Read through all the data. Gain a general sense organize your data. Once you have gone
of the information and reflect on the overall through all documents and coded them, they
meaning. can now be gathered into families of codes or
categories. Materials are sorted by these
3. Conduct analysis based on the specific
categories, identifying similar phrases, patterns
theoretical approach and method (examples:
and relationships.
narrative, content, grounded theory, discourse,
conversational and others). This often involves  As you code and categorize the data, look for
coding or organizing related segments of data the interrelationships among categories. Sorted
into categories. materials are examined to isolate meaningful
patterns. Identified patterns are used to create
4. Generate a description of the setting or people
themes.
and identify themes from the coding. Search
for theme connections. DATA EXTRACTION
5. Represent the data within a research report. Data extraction is:
6. Interpret the larger meaning of the data. 1) An attempt to reduce a complex, messy,
context-laden and quantification-resistant
CODING AND CATEGORIZING
reality to a matrix of categories and numbers;
Understanding the definition of coding is
2) Time consuming;
essential in proceeding with its processes. Coding can
be defined as the actual process of making sure data is 3) Often difficult.
organized into chunks or segments and later making
meaning out of it. PURPOSE OF DATA EXTRACTION

Creswell, J.W. (2009) also explains that coding The purpose of data extraction in a qualitative
and categorizing involves taking text data or pictures research which is to describe the study in general:
gathered during data collection, segmenting it into
1. to extract the findings from each study in a consistent APPROACHES IN ANALYZING DATA
manner;
In an inductive approach, a researcher begins
2. to enable later synthesis; and by collecting data that is relevant to his or her topic of
interest. Once a substantial amount of data have been
3. to extract information to enable quality appraisal so
collected, the researcher will then take a breather from
that the findings can be interpreted.
data collection, stepping back to get a bird‘s eye view of
WHAT TO EXTRACT? a data. At this stage, the researcher looks for patterns in
the data, working to develop a theory that could explain
1) Articles are in different formats and use those patterns.
different styles of reporting;
In a deductive approach it takes the steps
2) Need to highlight main data elements of described for inductive research and reverse their
interest; order. They start with a social theory that they find
3) Need to provide standardization; compelling and then test its implications with data. That
is, they move from a more general level to a more
4) Need to aid pattern recognition and analysis. specific one. This approach to research is the one that
APPROACHES IN DATA EXTRACTION people typically associate with scientific investigation.
The researcher studies what others have done, reads
The process of reducing your acquired data can existing theories of whatever phenomenon he or she is
be extracted in two possible ways using an approach by studying, and then tests hypotheses that emerge from
analyzing qualitative data. those theories.
1) One approach is to examine your findings with a THINGS TO REMEMBER
pre-defined framework, which reflects your aims,
objectives and interests. This approach is relatively easy  In qualitative research there is no fixed rule on
and is closely aligned in research which has pre- how many codes a researcher should aim for,
determined interests. This approach allows you to focus but if you have more than 100-120 codes, it is
on particular answers and abandon the rest. recommended that you begin to merge some of
the codes. All materials must have been coded
2) The second approach takes a more exploratory to start the abstraction of the themes from the
perspective, encouraging you to consider and code all codes.
your data, allowing for new impressions to shape your
interpretation in different and unexpected directions. EXAMPLE OF CODE AND THEMES
We refer to this approach as thematic network analysis. For example, the codes torn uniform and no
More often than not, qualitative analysis draws school books are seen in the interview transcripts with
on a mix of both approaches. Whichever approach working street children. They can be clustered together
guides you, the first thing you need to do is to as ―The Working Street Children’ Insufficiency of
familiarize yourself with your data. This involves reading
and re-reading your material (data) in its entirety.

Make notes of thoughts that spring to mind and

write summaries of each transcript or piece of data that
you will analyze. As your aim is to condense all of this
information to key themes and topics that can shed School Materials.
light on your research question, you need to start  Not all codes are of interest and relevance to
coding the material. the research question. Coding is not just about
A code is a word or a short phrase that one‘s interest and relevance to the research
descriptively captures the essence of elements of your questions but on choosing to cluster codes into
material (e.g. a quotation) and is the first step in your basic themes that will enlighten you in finding
data reduction and interpretation. meaning to the questions.
 Everything is in a process. For example, you can
identify 20 basic themes. You have to repeat
this process thinking of the basic themes.
Examination of these basic themes and
clustering all of them into hierarchical order and
interpretative organizing themes.
 Assuming this process limits the twenty (20)
basic themes to only four (4) organizing themes,
two (2) will describe the struggles faced by
working street children and another two will
detail their coping strategies.
 The given figure below describes how you can
show the description codes to concentrating on
a less distinct, interpretative and networked
themes that can be used to begin answering
parts of the research question.

 It is very important to understand that

developing organizing themes from codes will
be an important process in analyzing a
qualitative data. The process of cutting out
codes and moving them around on is often
called the “table method”.

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