Describing the approach of hypothesis Guided to coding data
The coding is grounded in a set of views to prove a hypothesis eg. A researcher may have the view that conventional models of what a graduate is supposed to get out of his or her studies and the question of whether university-level learning is about knowledge or skills. The code list is grounded in this set of views.
The hypothesis approach imports theory from outside to devise the categories which will test the position of the respondents to take on specific issues. The choice will depend on what is needed in the analysis.
Constructing a code list more closely resembles art than science – it is a matter of interpreting what is there, systematically but not rigorously – and a great deal of personal judgement and preference is brought to bear on it.
This is another area where validity would be best served if we used more than one judge to devise the code list and assign the items to it, so that it does not reflect only the personal preferences of one researcher.
Irrespective of the mode of coding adopted, you may be able to use a machine to help you ‘qualitative analysis’ computer software works by assigning numeric codes to themes or topics, at the instruction of the researcher, and some packages (for example, NVivo) will allow you to copy off the indexing system as a file of number which may be merged with your file of precoded variables.
This does not in any way lessen the element of personal judgement involved – it is still the researcher, not the machine, who makes the choices – but where large data files are involved it can substantially decrease the amount of time and effort involved in making full use of the ‘office-coded’ variables and allow you to a more through job of the classification.