Coding is the process of bringing together passages in your data that seem to exemplify an idea or concept (represented in your project as nodes). As such, coding is a way of abstracting from your source data to build a greater understanding of the forces at play.
In NVivo, coding involves identifying references to different ideas, concepts or categories within your sources and linking them to the nodes which represent them.
Remember that you can code any portion of a sources' content to any number of nodes to demonstrate that it relates to each of their concepts or categories. |
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Coding the content of your sources can contribute to your analysis in the following important ways:
Coding generates ideas
While coding your source material, you may interpret passages and see new meanings in the data.
Coding allows you to gather together and see all the material related to a category or case throughout all of your sources.
Seeing all this material allows you to review coded passages in context and create new, finer categories as you gain new understanding of the meanings in the data.
Coding your sources facilitates the seeking of patterns and theories.
The coded content of your sources can be searched using queries and find functionality to test theories and find new patterns within your data.