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Coding qualitative data

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 ‘Interpreting and
Part III Communicating’ Qualitative
Research

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 Coding Qualitative Data
14
Meghan Cope

Chapter Overview
This chapter defines coding, which is a process of identifying and
organizing themes in qualitative data, reviews different types of codes
and their uses, and discusses several ways to get started with coding in a
qualitative project. Specifically, a distinction is drawn between descriptive
codes, which are category labels, and analytic codes, which are thematic,
theoretical, or in some way emerge from the analysis. Borrowing from
the work of grounded theory’s Anselm Strauss, a basic four-point plan is
reviewed as a strategy to begin coding focused on looking for conditions,
interactions, strategies/tactics, and consequences. The building of a
‘codebook’ is also discussed, stressing the importance of looking critically
at the codes themselves, identifying ways in which they relate, minimizing
overlap between codes, and strengthening the analytical potential of
the coding structure. Finally, several related issues are covered, such
as coding with others, integrating coding and mapping, and viewing the
world from the perspective of coding.

Introduction
Geographers are increasingly engaged not only in doing qualitative research but
also in thinking and writing critically about methodologies, including the ways
that we evaluate, organize, and ‘make sense’ of our data through the coding
process (Cope 2003; Jackson 2001). Coding social data (for example, text, im-
ages, talk, interactions) is sometimes derided as tedious, but if you think of it as
a kind of detective work, it can be intriguing, exciting, and very valuable to the
research process.
The purposes of coding are partly data reduction(to help the researcher
get a handle on large amounts of data by distilling along key themes), partly

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 282 Part III: ‘Interpreting and Communicating’ Qualitative Research

organization (to act as a ‘finding aid’ for researchers sorting through data), and
partly a substantive process of data exploration, analysis, and theory-building.
Further, different researchers use coding for different reasons depending on their
goals and epistemologies; sometimes coding is used in an exploratory, inductive
way such as in grounded theory in which the purpose is to generate theories from
empirical data, while other times coding is used to support a theory or hypothesis
in a more deductive manner. Several approaches are discussed here, with pointers
on how to organize and begin the coding aspect of a research project.

Types of Codes and Coding

One common type of coding is content analysis, which is essentially a quantita-
tive technique and by no means represents the full extent of coding for qualitative
research. Content analysis can be done by ‘hand’ or by computer (see Chapter
15 for a discussion), but either way it is a system of identifying terms, phrases,
or actions that appear in a document, audio recording, or video and then count-
ing how many times they appear and in what context. For example, a researcher
might be interested in how many times the word ‘democracy’ is used in newspaper
articles from a particular country or in how many and what type of places are por-
trayed in a television program. Frequently in content analysis, sampling is used
in similar ways to quantitative analysis of populations; perhaps only front-page
newspaper stories are included in the analysis, or a television program is sampled
for five minutes out of each hour. Similarly, researchers using content analysis
typically subject their coded findings to standard statistical analysis to determine
frequencies, correlations, variations, and so on. There are many good guidebooks
and instructions for conducting content analysis, including some available on the
Internet (see, for example, Krippendorff 2003; Neuendorf 2001).
While content analysis is a frequently used type of coding, the primary focus
of this chapter is on qualitative approaches to coding. However, one of the basic
principles of content analysis has broad implications for all coding activity and is
thus worth exploring further. It is the notion that there are both ‘manifest’ and
‘latent’ messages contained in the material (for example, text, images, video).
Manifest messages are those that are blatant and obvious—they then generate
manifest codes. For example, if I (as a feminist geographer) were performing
content analysis on a set of international newspapers and the term ‘sex worker’
appeared with some level of frequency, I would take that as a code and proceed
to scan subsequent materials for it. However, because places with high levels of
prostitution tend to be places where women have few other economic opportun-
ities or political rights, I might also code instances of the term ‘sex worker’ for the
latent message of ‘the status of women’ as well (see also Chapter 11).

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 Cope: Coding Qualitative Data 283

In much of ethnographic work in which researchers use coding qualitatively,

the ideas of manifest and latent codes have parallels in ‘descriptive’ and ‘analytic’
codes. Descriptive codes are similar to manifest codes: they reflect themes or pat-
terns that are obvious on the surface or are stated directly by research subjects.
Descriptive codes can be thought of as category labels because they often answer
‘who, what, where, when, and how’ types of question. Examples of descriptive
codes that might interest geographic researchers include demographic categories
(male, female, young, elderly), site categories (home, school, work, public space),
or even scale identifiers (local, regional, national, global).
One special type of descriptive code is called in vivo codes; they are descriptive
codes that come directly from the statements of subjects or are common phrases
found in the texts being examined (Strauss and Corbin 1990). For example, if
interviews were done with elderly women and they repeatedly mentioned con-
cern with crime in their neighbourhoods, ‘crime’ would become an in vivo de-
scriptive code—the term is used by and describes something important to the
subjects. In vivo codes are a good way to get started in coding, particularly in
projects that are designed to be inductive or exploratory.
Ethnographers also develop analytic codes to code text (or other forms of data)
that reflect a theme the researcher is interested in or one that has already become
important in the project. Analytic codes typically dig deeper into the processes
and context of phrases or actions. For example, it might become apparent that the
elderly women mentioned above were especially afraid of young men and boys
whom they perceived as threatening while walking down the street, and therefore
an analytic code called ‘fear of young males in public space’ could be developed.
This code might then be applied to the rest of the data to identify other instances
of fear, perceptions of young men, and experiences in public spaces.
Often, descriptive codes bring about analytic codes by revealing some important
theme or pattern in the data or by allowing a connection to be made (for example,
crime, fear of youth in public), while other times analytic codes are in place from
the beginning of the coding process because they are embedded in the research
questions. For instance, if we were interested from the start in how elderly women
navigate urban spaces, their personal mobility and impediments to mobility would
be themes reflected in the analytic codes from the project’s very beginning. The
recursive strength of coding lies in its being open to new and unexpected connec-
tions, which can sometimes generate the most important insights.

The Purposes of Coding

There are three main purposes for coding qualitative material: data reduction, or-
ganization and the creation of searching aids, and analysis. As the prolific French

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 284 Part III: ‘Interpreting and Communicating’ Qualitative Research

theorist Henri Lefebvre noted, ‘Reduction is a scientific procedure designed to

deal with the complexity and chaos of brute observations’ (Lefebvre 1991, 105).
Qualitative research usually produces masses of data in forms that are difficult
to interpret or digest all at once, whether the data are in the form of interview
transcripts, hours of video, or pages of observation notes. Therefore, some form
of reduction, or abstracting, is desirable to facilitate familiarity, understanding,
and analysis. Coding helps to reduce data by putting them into smaller ‘packages’.
These packages could be arranged by topic, such as ‘instances in which environ-
mental degradation was mentioned’, or by characteristics of the participants such
as ‘interviews with women working part-time’, or by some other feature of the
research context or subjects such as ‘observations in public spaces’. By reducing
the ‘chaos of brute observations’, data reduction helps us get a handle on what we
have and allows us to start paying special attention to the contents of our data.
The second purpose of coding is to create an organizational structure and find-
ing aid that will help us make the most of qualitative data. Similar to data reduc-
tion, the organizational process mitigates the overwhelming aspects of minutiae
and allows analysis to proceed by arranging the data along lines of similarity or
relationship. An important background step is constructing and maintaining a
complete record of sources, dates (of participant observation, interviews, or focus
groups, for example), subject contact information, and other relevant information.
While this database is not part of the coding process per se, it is an important step
in organizing qualitative material for coding and analysis and also allows the re-
searcher to find specific data more easily. For example, interview transcripts might
be coded not only for their content but also by their circumstances—was the inter-
view conducted in the participant’s home? were others present? did the subject
seem nervous?—which can help organize information. With better computer-as-
sisted qualitative data analysis software (caqdas) available now (see Chapter 15),
organizing and searching within electronic documents is greatly simplified. Addi-
tionally, coding itself is also an important aspect of organizing and searching be-
cause it is essentially a process of categorizing and qualifying data. ‘The organizing
part will entail some system for categorizing the various chunks [words, phrases,
paragraphs], so the researcher can quickly find, pull out, and cluster the segments
relating to a particular research question, hypothesis, construct, or theme’ (Miles
and Huberman 1994, 57). While the development of the coding structure is by no
means a simple process, it is one that—if done well—enables the data to be organ-
ized in such a way that patterns, commonalities, relationships, correspondences,
and even disjunctures are identified and brought out for scrutiny.
The final, and principal, purpose of coding is analysis. While strategies for
analytical coding will be examined in greater detail below, at this point it is suf-
ficient to note that the process of coding is an integral part of analysis. Rather
than imagining that analysis of the data is something that begins after the coding

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 Cope: Coding Qualitative Data 285

is finished, we should recognize that coding is analysis (and is probably never

truly ‘finished’!). Coding is in many ways a recursive juggling act of starting with
initial codes that come from the research questions, background literature, and
categories inherent in the project and progressing through codes that are more
interpretive as patterns, relationships, and differences arise.
Coding also opens the opportunity for reflexivity, a critical self-evaluation of
the research process (see Chapter 2). By recursively reviewing data and the con-
nections between codes, researchers can also come to see elements of their own
research practice, subjects’ representations, and broader strategies of knowledge
construction that had not previously been apparent. While it is sometimes dif-
ficult to be self-critical in the midst of fieldwork or data collection, the process of
coding is inherently more contemplative and analytical and thus offers a suitable
moment for reflection.

How to Get Started with Coding

The above discussion of types of codes addressed two main approaches to cod-
ing, which may be seen as descriptive and analytic codes, although other terms
are also used (for example, initial codes and interpretive codes). The key distinc-
tion is that one type of code is fairly obvious and superficial and is often what the
researcher begins with, such as simple category labels. The other type of code is
interpretive, analytic, and has more connections to the theoretical framework of
the study; it tends to come later in the coding process after some initial patterns
have been identified. When coding was (and sometimes still is) done manually,
researchers developed a codebook—a long list of codes that were categorized and
organized repeatedly. Although current qualitative software packages typically
do not use the term ‘codebook’, it is a useful concept that has relevance whether
the codebook is actually a tangible item in manual coding or merely an abstrac-
tion in electronic coding.
To start a codebook, it is easiest to begin with the most obvious qualities, con-
ditions, actions, and categories seen in your data and use them as initial codes.
These elements will emerge quite rapidly from background literature, your own
proposal or other research-planning documents, and the themes that stick out
for you from gathering qualitative data (for example, memorable statements in
interviews, notable actions seen while doing participant observation, key words
that jump out in first readings of historical documents). For example,1 in my work
on how urban children conceptualize city spaces in Buffalo, New York, one of my
original interests that was heavily present in my grant proposal was how children
in the 8- to 12-year-old age group define ‘neighbourhood’ and ‘community’ (see
Box 14.1). These terms are obvious starting points for my codebook.

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29 November 2003. After-School Program Observation Box 14.1

Notes, Children’s Urban Geographies Research

Text: Field Notes Descriptive and Analytic Codes Notes

from the Quilt Category Codes and Themes
Project

As I was setting up, Jakob Relationship Early release day

Jakob,* Mariana, Mariana between from school—kids
and Ari came over Ari gender and were wild and
and then Izzy and Izzy violent play? bored.
Salomé (a new Salomé
girl I hadn’t met Relations: Izzy
before). We set up and Salomé are
at a round table in friends Tape recording
between the bench would not have
and the ‘café’, near worked here!
the pool table. The
noise level was very
high and I had a
hard time hearing
the children at my
table. Next to us,
three or four young-
er boys (Stefan et Stefan
al.) were playing a
war board game and
making lots of ter- Research setting
rible noises (at one conditions: loud
point I asked them Gave very loose in-
to be quieter). structions to allow
After I explained children freedom
what I wanted (to within the project’s
use the materials to scope.
show your house or
apartment building
and family), I asked
the children what a
‘neighbourhood’ is. ‘Neighbourhood’ Difference be-
There were varying tween ‘neigh-
answers immedi- bourhood’ and
ately, mostly around ‘community’
the idea of ‘a bunch
of houses next to

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 Cope: Coding Qualitative Data 287

each other’. Izzy said,

‘it’s when you have
one house and then
another one and you Play
all get together to
play.’ Mariana said, ‘I Mariana seems proud
don’t live in a neigh- of her West Side iden-
bourhood, I’m part of ‘Community’ tification.
the West Side Com-
munity’(!) I couldn’t
hear very well, so I
got out my notebook
and went around the
group to write down
answers. Ari’s answer
was very long and Tactic: Children’s Ari (age 5) seems to
complicated with attention identification crave attention.
something to do with with a
your ‘home friend’. commu-
I’d like to revisit the nity or neigh-
question of what is bourhood
a neighbourhood
in video interviews. Technology Future work—video
Then I got out my interviews
digital camera and
took pictures of the
group (all five gave All the children love
full permission for Nate technology and the
this). Nate came up gizmos we bring in
and wanted to ‘see’ get a lot of attention.
the camera, which I
didn’t want to let him
do because he is so Interactions: Our relation-
volatile and unpre- Nate’s ships with
dictable. Reluctantly, I bullying specific
let him take a picture children
of me with the chil-
dren working on the
quilt and retrieved
the camera from Review and code
him immediately. photos.
[Ironically, the photo
Nate took is one of
my favourites of this
project!]

* All children’s names have been changed

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 288 Part III: ‘Interpreting and Communicating’ Qualitative Research

However, codes can also be too general and become cumbersome. Because much
of my children’s urban geography research is centred around issues of neighbour-
hood and community, I found that I needed to break each of them into more
specific codes, such as codes for the particular neighbourhoods the children refer
to, the use of both ‘neighbourhood’ and ‘community’ to mean ‘local’ (such as in
reports from the city newspaper), and the way that school curriculum materials
define ‘community’. This is a frequent characteristic of coding: an initial category
becomes overly broad and must be refined and partitioned into multiple codes.
Bear in mind that the opposite also occurs—some codes die a natural death
through lack of use. For instance, in my project I had expected the children, who
are for the most part in low-income families, to talk about a lack of money or not
being able to afford something they wanted. However, after two years in the pro-
ject, I have found little evidence of children discussing their own poverty (though
that absence is itself an interesting research question). While I will probably keep
a ‘low-income’ code for other purposes, its prevalence is much less than I antici-
pated in the materials generated by the children. As Miles and Huberman said,
‘some codes do not work; others decay. No field material fits them, or the way they
slice up the phenomenon is not the way the phenomenon appears empirically.
This issue calls for doing away with the code or changing its level’ (1994, 61).
So the first step is to make a list of what you think are the most important
themes upfront, with the understanding that some of them will be split into finer
specifics while others will remain largely unused. But how do you know what
is important? Anselm Strauss, one of the founders of grounded theory, had a
helpful system for beginning this awesome task (best represented in Strauss and
Corbin 1990). He suggested paying attention to four types of themes:
•• conditions
•• interactions among actors
•• strategies and tactics
•• consequences

’Conditions’ might include geographical context (both social and physical),

the circumstances of individual participants, or specific life situations that are
mentioned or observed (for example, losing a job, becoming a parent, a child
changing schools). By thinking along the lines of ‘conditions’ and coding only
for them, the coding process is easily started, and you may learn a lot about your
data in a short time.
The same is true for limiting your scope to ‘interactions among actors’—if you
focus on relationships, encounters, conflicts, accords, and other types of inter-
actions, a series of powerful codes will emerge that will be helpful throughout the
research. For example, in her research on adolescent girls in the southern United
States, Mary Thomas (2004) found that young (14-year-old) African-American

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 Cope: Coding Qualitative Data 289

girls’ interactions with peers were strongly implicated in the type and level of
their sexual activity. Thus, Thomas might have coded her interview transcripts
regarding peer factors by whether, how, and where girls engaged in sexual activity,
as well as whom they were influenced by or interacted with.
‘Strategies and tactics’2 is a little more complicated than Strauss’s first two types
of themes because it requires a deeper understanding of the things (events, actions,
statements) you observe and how they relate to broader phenomena and it suggests
a certain level of purposeful intent among the research subjects that may demand
additional inquiry on your part. For example, feminist geographers are often in-
terested in women’s survival or ‘livelihood’ strategies in different areas of the world
(see, for example, the special issue of Gender, Place and Culture, 2004, vol. 11, no.
2). Noting that women in certain economic contexts tend to use particular types
of financial survival tactics (for example, growing food products for sale in a local
market) can begin to illuminate broader economic, social, and political processes
that shape women’s options and actions, which is a valuable insight for geographic
research. Other types of strategies or tactics might involve career decisions, polit-
ical activism, housing choices, family negotiations, or even subversion.
Coding for strategies and tactics can be straightforward (and descriptive) in
instances when respondents say something like ‘I moved in with my mother so
that she could care for my baby while I finished job training’ or ‘I got involved
with a local group of residents to raise awareness of environmental contamina-
tion in our neighbourhood because I was concerned about property values.’ Note
the words ‘so’ and ‘because’ in these statements, which are good tip-offs that a
strategy or tactic is embedded in the text.
Other times, coding for strategies and tactics may be more subtle—and more
analytical—as when respondents do not explicitly state their reasons for certain
actions but a connection emerges through observation, review of interview text,
or other data. For instance, many geographers (for example, Blumen 2002; Cress-
well 1999; Flint 2001; Nagar 2000; Secor 2004) have paid attention to ways that
people engage in resistance against diverse forms of oppression, which may be seen
as strategies for empowerment, rights, or merely survival. Orna Blumen (2002,
133) took ‘dissatisfaction articulated in subtle terms’ by ultra-orthodox Jewish
women as small but significant indicators of the women’s resistance to their fam-
ilies’ economic circumstances and, more broadly, to the status and roles of women
in that community. For the women in Blumen’s study, then, referring to fatigue,
hoping their husbands would soon find paying work, and ‘minor, personal, non-
conformist remarks suggestive of ambivalence’ (2002, 140) could all be coded as
tactics of resistance, in part because Blumen—through careful qualitative work—
had sufficiently analyzed the broader context of the women’s lives and goals.
Similar to the above, ‘consequences’ is a slightly more complicated code. On
the surface, there are descriptive indicators for consequences, including terms

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 290 Part III: ‘Interpreting and Communicating’ Qualitative Research

such as ‘then’, ‘because’, ‘as a result of’, and ‘due to’ that may be used in sub-
jects’ statements and can be good clues to consequences and as a first-run could
certainly be used in this way. Again, however, there are also more analytically
sophisticated ways of discovering and coding consequences that are dependent
on the unique empirical settings and events of each study. Some consequences
will be matters of time passing and actions taking place that result in a particular
outcome—the passage of a law, a change in rules or practices, and so on. How-
ever, other consequences are more subtle and personal, or they are not the result
of changes over time and therefore may be trickier to identify and code as such.
For example, when Anna Secor (2004) hears from young Kurdish women living
in Istanbul that they feel uncomfortable in some areas of the city, she might code
her focus group transcripts for the consequences of feeling out of place due to the
women’s identity as an oppressed minority in Turkey. Coding for ‘consequences’
of this kind requires sensitivity to both the subjects and their community context
but is potentially a rich source of analysis and insight if done with care.
As an example of what a sample of coded material looks like with both descrip-
tive and analytic codes, Box 14.1 demonstrates a small selection of field notes
from my project on children’s urban geographies along with codes, themes, and
notes. Even this fairly short piece of text reveals several relationships (friends,
bullies), tactics (ways of getting attention), and conditions (chaos, noise level)
that stimulated further examination in other project analysis. Additionally, sev-
eral analytic themes or questions are seen emerging here: the possible relation-
ship between gender and violent play, some children’s pride in perceived com-
munity membership (despite living in a blighted physical environment), and the
importance of play in defining what a neighbourhood is among the children.
Subsequent to the quilt project represented here and in combination with other
Children’s Urban Geographies Project data, I generated a theory of how children
define and ascribe meaning to the idea of ‘neighbourhood’ (Cope 2008); theory-
building, after all, is an important goal of most qualitative research.

Developing the Coding Structure

Using the four types of themes reviewed here will take you a long way towards
constructing a codebook, and you may find other types of themes that are help-
ful to you, such as ‘meanings’, ‘processes’, or ‘definitions’. Using the combina-
tion of descriptive and analytic codes, you may well have more than 100 codes
by this point, which is unwieldy at best and counterproductive at worst. Lists of
codes that have not been categorized, grouped, and connected will be hard to
remember, have too much overlap and/or leave too many gaps, and will not en-
able productive analysis. Therefore, the next step is to develop a coding structure

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 Cope: Coding Qualitative Data 291

whereby codes themselves are grouped together according to their similarities,

substantive relationships, and conceptual links. This process requires some
amount of work but is well worth the effort, both for ease of coding your mate-
rial and for discerning significant results from your findings.
Developing the coding structure can proceed in various ways, and there are many
resources available that demonstrate different approaches (see Denzin and Lincoln
2000; Miles and Huberman 1994), but the main purpose is to organize the codes—
and therefore the data and the analysis process. Some codes will automatically clus-
ter; for example, codes relating to the setting of interviews (for example, home, office,
public space, clinic), characteristics of subjects (for example, age, gender), or other
categories (for example, occupations, leisure activities, life events). Other codes seem
to fit together because of their common issues; for example, you might have a group
of codes related to people’s goals or intentions or a group of codes related to people’s
experiences of oppression. Finally, codes based on the substantive content of text or
actions—and most likely related to the analytic themes you are developing—will
create another cluster of codes: for example, perceptions, meanings, places, identi-
ties, memories, difference, representations, and associations.
Once the codebook is relatively comfortable (I hesitate to say ‘complete’) and
the coding structure is devised, you will want to go through much of your data
again to capture connections that may have been missed the first (or second
or third) time around. Remember that coding is an iterative process that feeds
back on itself—only you can decide when it is time to move on. As Miles and
Huberman (1994) point out, it is sometimes simpler when time or money pres-
sures put a finality on projects that otherwise could always benefit from ‘one
more case study’ or endless additional tweaking of the coding structure!

Coding with Others

Depending on the size and resources of the research project, there may be a case
for using multiple coders for the data, which complicates the process considerably.
There is an inherent tension in using multiple coders on a project: is the goal to
make everyone code as consistently as possible, or is the goal to allow each coder
to interpret data in her or his way within the bounds of the coding structure in
order to capture many diverse meanings? The answer will depend on the project
and the epistemological leanings of the lead researcher, but in fact both of these
goals are important. In the first instance, reliability of the data is undoubtedly en-
hanced when several coders independently code a piece of data the same way—a
common interpretation of data means that there is agreement on its meaning. For
the sake of time and data reduction, having multiple coders can certainly be help-
ful, but only if they are truly consistent in their coding, which is rare but could be

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 292 Part III: ‘Interpreting and Communicating’ Qualitative Research

accomplished by achieving conformity on the meanings of codes and providing

thorough definitions for each code. On the other hand, text and video—as social
data sources—are inherently subject to multiple interpretations and understand-
ings, all of which may be correct or ‘true’. While there may be some interpretations
that are farfetched or extreme, in general we as social researchers will be interested
in capturing diverse understandings, and having multiple coders can be a great
benefit for the project to make deeper and broader connections from the data.

Coding and Mapping

New work is emerging that pushes the boundaries of coding and leads to cre-
ative analyses and representations of qualitative geographic data. With the
rise of participatory research in geography (Kesby, Kindon, and Pain 2005; see
also Chapter 13 in this volume), qualitative geographical information systems
(gis) (Kwan and Knigge 2006; Cope and Elwood 2009), participatory map-
ping, mixed methods, and other integrative practices, we need to stay attuned
to how coding can keep up with new research processes and technologies. One
example of this is Jin-Kyu Jung’s (2009) experiments with using codes as a
bridge between qualitative analysis using caqdas (computer-assisted qualita-
tive data analysis) and spatial data analysis using gis. In his work, the code
literally serves as a software-level link between databases, allowing analysis
programs to ‘speak’ to each other in a platform he calls caq-gis (computer-
aided qualitative geographical information systems). At a conceptual level in
Jung’s work, the code also serves as an analytical connection between social
contextual data and spatially referenced data, allowing researchers to develop
new understandings of social–spatial relations. These and other innovations
will continue to challenge and enrich geographic inquiry.

Being in the World, Coding the World

By way of conclusion, let me point out that coding is not a mysterious process
that must be learned from scratch but rather is one that we are all already ac-
tively practising in our everyday lives. The recognition that we are all constantly
interpreting and ‘coding’ the world around us may be a helpful realization for
getting started in a research project and can also assist us in critiquing our own
practices of data reduction, organization, and analysis. As Silverman (1991, 293)
points out, there are many ways of ‘seeing’ and interpreting the world, and—as
social beings—we never really shut those lenses off, so why not embrace diverse
interpretations and turn our gaze to the process of interpretation?

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 Cope: Coding Qualitative Data 293

How we code or transcribe our data is a crucial matter for qualitative

researchers. Often, however, such researchers simply replicate the
positivist model routinely used in quantitative research. According to
this model, coders of data are usually trained in procedures with the
aim of ensuring a uniform approach. . . . However, ethnomethodology
reminds us that ‘coding’ is not the [sole] preserve of research scientists.
In some sense, researchers, like all of us, ‘code’ what they hear and see
in the world around them [all the time]. . . . The ethnomethodological
response is to make this everyday ‘coding’ (or ‘interpretive practice’) the
object of inquiry. [Silverman 1991, 293]

Being in the world requires us to categorize, sort, prioritize, and interpret social
data in all of our interactions. Coding qualitative data is merely a formalization
of this process in order to apply it to research and to provide some structure as a
way of conveying our interpretations to others.

Key terms
abstracting descriptive code
analytic code grounded theory
caq-gis (computer-aided initial codes
qualitative geographical
information systems) interpretive codes

codebook in vivo code

coding latent message

coding structure manifest message

content analysis theme

data reduction

Review Questions
1. What is the difference between descriptive and analytic codes, how do
they relate to one another, and what are their respective uses in coding
qualitative data?
2. Why does the author state that coding is analysis?
3. What are some potential benefits and potential problems with having
multiple people coding in a project?
4. In what ways do we ‘code’ events, processes, and other phenomena in
everyday life? How might thinking about these ways help us to become better
qualitative researchers?

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 294 Part III: ‘Interpreting and Communicating’ Qualitative Research

Useful Resources
For an excellent step-by-step guide to coding from a grounded theory perspective, see
Strauss and Corbin 1990 and the chapter by Kathy Charmaz (2000) in the venerable
volume edited by Denzin and Lincoln, Handbook of Qualitative Research (which itself
is worth a look, although it may require a trip to the library because of its high cost).
Alternatively, Miles and Huberman (1994) offer a thorough discussion of several different
approaches to coding, although their own coding examples are somewhat arcane and
confusing. Finally, there are several examples of coding and ‘making sense’ of data by
geographers, including collections by Clifford and Valentine (2003); Flowerdew and
Martin (2005); Limb and Dwyer (2001); and Moss (2002).

Notes

1. While it is always difficult to convey examples of coding without recounting the en-
tire scope of the research, it is hoped that these examples from a real research project are
sufficiently illustrative to demonstrate different coding approaches.
2. Despite the similar pairing of these two words, I am not referring here to Michel de
Certeau’s (1984) notion of ‘strategy’ (a technique of spatial organization employed by
‘the powerful’) and ‘tactic’ (an everyday means of ‘making do’, typically used by those
with few options), although there are certainly potential connections. Rather, I am
using the terms in their most literal sense as they are employed in Strauss and Corbin
(1990) to convey ideas about how people conceptualize what they want and what they
do to try to arrive at those goals.

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