More Saldaña

Saldaña, Jonny (2009). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. London: Sage. (chs. 1 and 2)

I liked Saldaña's description of the "reverberative nature of coding"...the idea that "the qualitative analytic process is cyclical rather than linear." (45) I liked that Saldaña embraces almost a play with coding but at the same time eschews "employing too many methods for one study (such as ten First Cycle coding methods) or integrating incompatible methods." (47)

Is this why I am having trouble with coding? Saldaña mentions that "some research genres, such as discourse analysis, may not employ coding at all but rely instead on detailed transcription notation and extensive analytic memos about the data", yet I think that even DA and CA folk would admit to coding, would they not? Perhaps for different reasons and as a means to zero in on things, perhaps?

And I CAN "develop new or hybrid coding methods or adapt existing schemes, customized to suit the unique needs and disciplinary concerns of [my] study. (60) But perhaps when I get my "sea legs".

Perhaps now just a few shout-outs for what I liked/thought made sense. We could work on any of these I liked...not so much the ones toward the end of First Cycle:

 

FIRST CYCLE CODING METHODS

• Grammatical Methods
  
  • Attribute Coding (as a management technique as Saldaña suggests)
• Elemental Methods (many seem to come fron GT)
  
  • Structural Coding (because if you have a structure to apply, this would make a versatile template, no?)
  • Descriptive Coding (easy to conflate these two...I may use them too interchangeably, but I think the essence behind them is a good template for any similar approach)
  • In Vivo Coding...was shocked last semester to see that this sprung from GT, because I felt it liberating to use in ethnography.
• Affective Methods (for the most part I am uncomfortable with these because I think they are too tricky to use...ethically is not the word I want, but effectively as a good researcher, but I find that...)
  
  • Versus Coding (may be useful for DP because you can identify discourse that form mutually exclusive divisions, the necessary binaries for the type of deconstruction DP is good at.)
• Literary and Language Methods (not feeling anything here)
  
• Exploratory Methods (I thought maybe Holistic Coding, but the others seem so quantitative to me, I decided to stick to the elementals...
• Procedural Methods (Procedural coding methods are prescriptive. 'nuff said.)

 

SECOND CYCLE CODING METHODS

"advanced ways of reorganizing and reanalyzing data coded through First Cycle methods"

• Pattern Coding ("They are a sort of meta-code." Could be used to discuss what discourse is doing. Could be helpful!)

 

Helpful nuggets of wisdom from Saldaña:

The "top ten" list: would thiese be what I ultimately "go Jeffersonian" on?

"If you find yourself unable to start at the beginning, then begin with the conclusion"

"You can't see the frame when you're in the picture."