Analysing data by noticing meanings
Chae-Young Kim, Kieron Sheehy, Lucinda Kerawalla · 2017
This chapter explores data that need to be analysed by noticing meanings. It focuses on what &s;codes&s; and &s;coding&s; mean and how to code data. The chapter explains what a &s;theme&s; is and how to identify themes from coded data. It establishes the difference between analysing data by &s;counting up&s; and by &s;noticing meanings&s;. Researchers could count the number of times that a code appears in the data if they think doing this helps them to say something significant about their research topic or question. The researcher marks each of the codes next to, or in the margin of the paper close to, where it is relevant. This is called &s;coding&s;. In coding, using different coloured pens to mark different codes may be helpful. Coding is a first step in examining a mass of data that are not countable in order to draw out their main points.