In different stages in your project, the way you approach coding the content of your sources may change. These approaches have different purposes and contribute differently to the process of analyzing your data:
Descriptive coding is the process of identifying information that describes the cases in your project. This process relates both to the coding of information at cases and the creation of attributes to classify them.
NVivo provides a number of ways to expedite descriptive coding
In addition to coding by selecting source content and assigning it to a new or existing case, you can also:
Create cases whilst importing sources
Code an entire document at a case
Create a case from a document
Import the casebook from a spreadsheet
Auto code by heading level when the headings in your sources reliably indicate the content to be coded and cases to be created or coded to
In the Volunteering Sample Project
The documents in the FocusGroup folder are structured with each group participants' name in a heading paragraph style and their comments in normal paragraph style beneath them.
The document Non Volunteers was auto coded by heading level to create the cases, Elaine, Raul, Stephanie and Roberta.
Each of these cases contains all of the responses that these participants gave in this focus group as outlined in the document.
Topic coding is the process of assigning references within your data to the topics, categories or concepts they relate to. It is necessary to see all the information about these topics, categories or concepts in your data to facilitate further analysis.
NVivo provides a number of ways to expedite topic coding
In addition to coding by selecting source content and assigning it to a new or existing node, you can also:
Auto code all sources formatted with a specific heading or paragraph structure:
Auto code by heading level when the headings in your sources reliably indicate the content to be coded.
In the Volunteering Sample Project
The documents in the Interviews folder are structured with each question in a heading paragraph style and the answers in normal paragraph style beneath them.
These documents were auto coded by heading level to create the tree node Topics - Interviews and its children,Q.1. Current use of time, Q.2. Time use ten years on, Q.3. Volunteer work means~, etc . Note: The question mark at the end 'Q.3. Volunteer work means?' has been replaced with a tilde (~), because node names cannot contain question marks.
Each of these child nodes contains all of the answers in each of the documents in the "Interviews" folder given under these topic headings.
Auto code by paragraph when the selected sources have exactly the same paragraph structure. For example, the content in the second paragraph of each of the sources is the answer to the same survey question.
Select whole paragraphs to code at particular nodes using code paragraph ranges
Explore your sources content using text search queries and save results as a node
Analytical coding is the process of interpreting and reflecting on the meaning of the data to arrive at new ideas and categories. This process entails gathering material that should be rethought and reviewed given your growing understanding of the categories in your data.
In addition to coding by selecting source content and assigning it to a new or existing node, you can also:
Open a node and code its content at other nodes or create new ones (also known as "coding on")
Open a source and display coding at particular groups of nodes, using coding stripes or highlight coding, to determine if you should code it further
Create new nodes using In Vivo coding
Explore your nodes content using coding queries and save results as a node
Explore your nodes content using matrix coding queries and save results as a node
Explore your nodes content using compound queries and save results as a node
