I’ve had to stop writing my thesis for the time being, I’ve come to the end of the first draft of the literature review but I have been told by my supervisor to concentrate on the data analysis otherwise I’m going to run out of time. I was going to start with In Vivo coding but this felt too loose and unstructured. I prefer to use more structured methods. So, I’ve gone back to basics and reviewed some of the literature on qualitative data analysis.

I’ve been reading The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers by Jonny Saldana and Qualitative Data Analysis by Miles and Huberman and have decided to avoid In Vivo coding and start again by creating a conceptual framework based on research questions, hypothesis, problem areas, and / or key variables that the researcher brings to the study

I’m going to create a set of codes based on:

Bogden and Biklen’s (1992) coding accounting scheme.

1. Settings/Context: general information on surroundings that allows you to put the study in a larger context.
2. Definition of the situation: how people understand, define, or perceive the setting or the topics on which the study bears.
3. Perspectives: ways of thinking about their setting shared by informants (“how things are done here”).
4. Ways of thinking about people and objects: understandings of each other, of outsiders, of objects in their world (more detailed than above).
5. Process: regularly occurring kinds of behaviour.
6. Activities: regularly occurring kinds of behaviour.
7. Events: specific activities, especially ones occurring infrequently.
8. Strategies: ways of accomplishing things; people’s tactics, methods, techniques for meeting their needs.
9. Relationships and social structure: unofficially defined patterns such as cliques, coalitions, romances, friendships and betrayals.
10. Methods: problems, joys, dilemmas of the research process – often in relation to comments by observers.