Data Analysis


Coding the data

The process we used to start the analysis was coding the data for themes or topics. Fay Holt Begg, (2002) a practitioner-researcher in Alberta, describes her process in her study of a teaching method: "To analyze my volumes of notes I first read through them to find similarities, so findings could be sorted in categories. Then, thanking the technology gods for my computer, I grouped paragraphs on the same topic together." (p. 5)

The practitioner researchers coded their autobiographies in December 2002 in preparation for the January 2003 meeting where we planned to collaboratively develop common themes. The coding was tricky for us initially because we had no experience with this research analysis strategy. Coding is not a simple activity and, for our group, the difficulty was compounded when we worked with our own autobiographies, for it was a challenge to see how our thoughts and experiences can be grouped into larger themes. Too much gets in the way. Here is a piece from a teleconference that illustrates the nature of the difficulty we initially had with the process:

Leora: I don't understand what the end product is... . Do you want single words?

Marina: Single words are helpful. For example, Diana had connectedness and disconnectedness - I would say that the paragraph is about connectedness, even if it is in the negative form. Jan also organized them, (gives examples of Jan's words). Some of those could be combined into one category, e.g. "smoking" could go under "health."

Leora: So I originally attempted to organize. Then I didn't organize, I just made lists of words.

Marina: That is not uncommon. I find that I can re-read data and it will say different things every time I do it.

Leora: Let's say my four pieces have similar codes, e.g. I mention team over and over. And I know that is true for others too. So even if I only mentioned it once, it is still an important theme.

Marina: It may seem disorganized right now, and you are wondering how you will make sense of it. I see a lot of feeling words, so eventually we may end up with a code "emotion." We might say that all of you acknowledge "emotion" as important, although it doesn't come up in teachers college.

Leora: But there are bizarre things, like our adventurous spirit, that you couldn't make a case for.

Marina: You just gave it a name, and you might sense that this is important.

Leora: So we tell people they need to travel the world before they want to teach ABE?

Marina: No, it's about what is your story and how did you came to be. The jump from how you came to be to what you need to do is a long one. We are not there yet. In qualitative data, we do not claim to represent anything. We are saying that this group of teachers did this. There is no pressure to generalize, to talk to everybody and about everybody (Teleconference minutes, December 4, 2002).