The structures of coding schemes, grouping texts to codes and basic queries are key to moving forward with analysis and develop your interpretations. Codes are your ideas about the data – they can be generated inductively or deductively, and may be refined, changed, grouped, re-grouped or deleted at any time to help you analyse and explain what you see in the data. It is not only necessary to code themes in your data, but also code snippets of text that will help you sort through your ideas and write your paper.
Example of codes you might want to create:
1. Scope
Define the scope of your research first. This will allow you to target exactly what you need to research. Accordingly, code text you can use in the Introduction/Background sections of your paper. Consider text that will help your argue for the scope of your research, what will and will not be covered (and why).
2. Previous research
Previous research is typically the text corpus you have imported into NVivo. If you have a hypothesis or argument, you can code text that can be used as evidence to support or reject the hypothesis or argument. You can code the date the included papers in your text corpus were published to support chronology to support the progression of a theme or identify trends and gaps in research.
3. Relevant Themes
There are different approaches to identifying themes in your data. An inductive approach (PC, MAC) means you subjectively interpret your data and identify themes as you read. Whereas in a deductive approach (PC, MAC) you use a set of preconceived themes and identify them in your data. Typically these themes are taken from a theory or method where you have a strong idea that you would expect to see these themes in the data. Theories could include coding concepts according to specific philosophies and schools of thought, whereas methodologies could be identifying the operalization of concept definitions and standards in the texts.
There’s also the distinction between a semantic and a latent approach. A semantic approach involves analyzing the explicit content of the data. A latent approach involves reading into the subtext and assumptions underlying the data.
4. Discussion section
You can code results and conclusions presented in papers in your text corpus. You can use these coded text snippets in your own discussion section to compare and argue for your findings and conclusions.
5. Conclusion/Recommendations
When writing the conclusion, you of course answer your research questions. To inform recommendations for next steps based on your findings, you can code gaps in research discussed in your text corpus and any questions for further research that you may have noted in your own files during your analyses or find in the included texts.
Videos and tutorials that can help you with your coding
Links to an external site.Note: The book by Lewins and Silver discusses coding, coding schemes and coded retrieval as key tools of qualitative analysis. In chapter 7, terminology, philosophies and methodologies which underpin the coding processes are exemplified. The book however refers to NVivo 10 which functions very differently from the current version of NVivo. For example in Nvivo 10 codes are called "Nodes". However, the methodological considerations are still very relevant.
Caulfield, J. (2023, June 22). How to Do Thematic Analysis | Step-by-Step Guide & Examples. Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/thematic-analysis/ https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/thematic-analysis/