{"id":12202,"date":"2019-07-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-09T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/localhost:10083\/uncategorized\/coding-interviews-learn-coding-basics-en\/"},"modified":"2023-06-08T10:29:46","modified_gmt":"2023-06-08T08:29:46","slug":"coding-interviews-basics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-staging.amberscript.com\/en\/blog\/coding-interviews-basics\/","title":{"rendered":"Coding Interviews: Learn Coding Basics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Are you a student who\u2019s doing a qualitative research? Already recorded and transcribed interviews for your thesis or project? Scared of coding interviews?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luckily, it is much easier than it sounds. If you associate the word \u201ccoding\u201d with HTML5 or similar tools \u2013 breathe out. Coding qualitative data is much more straightforward and in 10 minutes you\u2019ll know your way around it, both theoretically and practically.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Start the countdown and let\u2019s get started with coding interviews<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s begin by understanding what we mean by coding interviews<\/strong> in qualitative research, what\u2019s the use of it and what types of coding are out there. Let\u2019s start from coding basics: a code can be any label (number, figure, symbol, word, phrase), that you assign to a part of your text, that represents a certain theme. Generally, a code should be precise and summarize the main idea behind a certain theme. Let\u2019s review a simple example, imagine we study an article about different views on American culture. Although this passage is quite broad and can be coded in many different ways, we opted for \u201cAmerican culture as \u201cthe American dream\u201c for the sake of keeping it simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Example: American culture is largely built on the notion of \u201cAmerican dream\u201d. This concept entails a social ideal, in which everyone is able to achieve success through hard work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coding your data helps you to identify the main points of interest in your research documents. Additionally, coding interviews makes it easier to organize large chunks of information and share it with other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What types of coding exist?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There are 2 approaches to coding qualitative data: inductive<\/strong> and deductive<\/strong>. You\u2019re probably familiar with these terms, but let\u2019s do a quick recap. If you have a set of ideas and assumptions that guide your research \u2013 you can develop preliminary coding categories and search for them in your interview data. This way, you\u2019re testing theory and thus using a deductive<\/em> coding approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, if you start your coding process from scratch and aim to identify themes to create a theory \u2013 you\u2019re using inductive<\/em> coding. No matter which approach you\u2019re using, the coding procedure remains largely the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to apply Qualitative Coding using software?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Before we proceed, there is an important point to be made. You don\u2019t have to use the software to perform qualitative coding. All the steps mentioned below can be done the old-fashioned way of using pen and paper. The software provides additional convenience and potentially saves time, but it\u2019s not essential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time to show you the step-by-step instructions on how coding interviews. In our example, we\u2019re using a software package called QDA Miner Lite<\/a> (can be downloaded for free).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, these steps look very similar in other tools as well. If you want to look at other tools for analyzing qualitative data, check out this post on qualitative data coding tools<\/a> for a nice overview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First of all, open the QDA Miner<\/strong>, create a new project and select the file (s) you\u2019re going to work with.<\/p>\n\n\n

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In our case, we are going to use a template of a job interview transcript, that we\u2019ll use for coding. In this example, we\u2019ve chosen a broad coding category called \u201cCandidate Bio\u201d. It is further split into more precise codes, such as \u201cPersonal Motivation\u201d, \u201cQualification\u201d and \u201cPerseverance\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Depending on the research method; you either search for text, that corresponds to your codes or you develop codes based on the patterns and correlations you found in the text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n