This section provides an abbreviated set of steps and directions for coding, analysis, and writing up qualitative data, taking an inductive approach.

Step 1: Open coding

At this first level of coding, the researcher is looking for distinct concepts and categories in the data, which will form the basic units of the analysis. In other words, the researcher is breaking down the data into first level concepts, or master headings, and second-level categories, or subheadings.

Researchers often use highlighters to distinguish concepts and categories. For example, if interviewees consistently talk about teaching methods, each time an interviewee mentions teaching methods, or something related to a teaching method, the researcher uses the same colour highlight. Teaching methods would become a concept, and other things related (types, etc.) would become categories – all highlighted in the same colour. It is valuable to use different coloured highlights to distinguish each broad concept and category. As such, at the end of this stage the transcripts contain many different colours of highlighted text. The next step is to transfer these into a brief outline, with concepts being main headings and categories being subheadings.

Step 2: Axial (focused) coding

In open coding, the researcher is focused primarily on the text from the interviews to define concepts and categories. In axial coding, the researcher is using the concepts and categories developed in the open coding process, while re-reading the text from the interviews. This step is undertaken to confirm that the concepts and categories accurately represent interview responses.

In axial coding, the researcher explores how the concepts and categories are related. To examine the latter, you might ask: What conditions caused or influenced concepts and categories? What is/was the social/political context? or What are the associated effects or consequences? For example, let us suppose that one of the concepts is Adaptive Teaching, and two of the categories are tutoring and group projects. The researcher would then ask: What conditions caused or influenced tutoring and group projects to occur? From the interview transcripts, it is apparent that participants linked this condition (being able to offer tutoring and group projects) as being enabled by a supportive principle. Consequently, an axial code might be a phrase like our principal encourages different teaching methods. This discusses the context of the concept and/or categories and suggests that the researcher may need a new category labelled “supportive environment.” Axial coding is merely a more directed approach at looking at the data, to help make sure that you have identified all important aspects.

Step 3: Build a data table

Table 10.3 illustrates how to transfer the final concepts and categories into a data table This is a very effective way to organize results and/or discussion in a research paper.  While this appears to be a quick process, it is not and it requires a lot of time to do it well.

Step 4: Analysis & write-up

Not only is Table 10.3 an effective way to organize the analysis, it is also a good approach for assisting with the data analysis write up. The first step in the analysis process is to discuss the various categories and describe the associated concepts. As part of this process, the researcher will describe the themes created in the axial coding process, the second step.

There are a variety of ways to present the data in the write-up, including: 1) telling a story, 2) using a metaphor, 3) comparing and contrasting, 4) examining relations among concepts/variables, and 5) counting. Please note, that counting should not be a stand-alone qualitative data analysis process to use when writing up the results, for reasons that it simply cannot possibly convey the richness of the data that has been collected. One can certainly use counting for stating the number of participants, or how many participants spoke about a specific theme or category; however, the analysis must present a much deeper level of analysis by drawing in the words of the participants, including the use of direct quotes from the participants´ interviews to demonstrate the validity of the various themes.

Text Attributions

• This chapter is an adaption of “Qualitative Coding & Analysis” by Patrick Biddix. © Creative Commons Attributions-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Licence.