Coding brings together the material you have interpreted as relevant to a topic or category. Now, you can think about the category as you read and rethink that material. Are there two different sorts of material coded here? Can you see ways to develop your understanding of the passages coded here?
The first coding is often a first step to much more productive reflection and analysis. As you reflect, you may want to refine your coding, and as you discover more meanings in the coded data, you may want to move on to create and code at more subtle categories and subcategories.
When you open a node, you can see all passages within your sources which have been coded at it. This allows you to:
Read and review everything coded at this node
View coding stripes to show the coding at other nodes for any passage
Return to the source of any of the coding references to explore that context, and perhaps do more coding or annotating of that source
Coding is rarely a one-stage process. As you review the coded data at a node, you will often see ways to improve your coding. You can code a node's content in the same ways as coding a source's content. As you review a node's content, you may want to:
Expand a particular coding reference to include relevant context so this will be more easily recognized later
Remove some of its coded content by 'uncoding' it
Develop ideas by coding content to other nodes. This process is termed 'coding-on' as it takes the coded data onwards to expand existing nodes or code at new, refined categories.
Create or shift nodes and rethink them as you respond to what you are seeing in the recontextualized, coded text. Data gathered at a node offers a new understanding of the category and this often leads to development of new dimensions.
It is critically important that your nodes are being coded to reliably. If you work in teams, it is important to ensure that all team members have the same understanding of the topics or categories that your nodes represent and importantly that this understanding does not change over time.
Usually the requirement is not that team members code identically (as coding reflects their different interpretations) but that they reliably identify and deal with inconsistencies in the interpretation of nodes and the style of coding.
To compare coding, import two copies of the same document into your project to be independently coded by two team members. Run the Coding Comparison Query and assess the percentage agreement and disagreement.
Pay attention to the differences in the nodes used, the passages coded and the spread of coding selected.
