Coding of Qualitative Data, Essay Example

Qualitative methods could be used to gain a greater understanding of how personality traits rank compared to others. In an instance in which classmates would introduce themselves in a forum post, coding could be used to compare the students with one another. Potential categories that could be explored include their level of friendliness and want to communicate with their other classmates, the extent to which they are experienced in their particular field, their enthusiasm for online learning, and tendency to elaborate upon ideas or remain curt. To do so, each of these categories could be assigned a ranking of one to five, and key words that would reflect the status of each ranking would be determined. The researcher would then read through the students’ posts to identify each of these or similar key words, and assign each student a category based on the chosen qualitative trait.

In her article “Qualitative data analysis: the framework approach”, Joanna Smith states that “methods, such as content and thematic analysis, that describe and interpret participants’ views” can be utilized when interpreting qualitative information (Smith, 2011). Therefore, coding and identifying specific language would be useful for this particular purpose. This analysis will focus on the ability to identify a students’ motivation and tendency towards academic excellence on the basis of coherence of their response, in addition to its length, and advanced choice of vocabulary. Each of these characteristics will be given a score of 5, for a total score of 1 to 15. A score of 15 will indicate that the student will be more likely to achieve academic excellence in the course, while a score of 1 means that the opposite of this is likely to occur.

To identify the coherence of student responses, it is essential to identify the effort that each student put into their response by determining how much research they did before answering their question. If students utilize a lot of information that help their classmates understand who they are, they will receive a grade of 5. If there is a lack of understanding, the student would receive a grade of 1. The length of the response will be scored according to how many paragraphs it has. A response with three or more full paragraphs will receive a rank of 5, one with only three paragraphs will receive a 4, a response will two full paragraphs will receive a 3, two short paragraphs will receive a 2, and anything less than this will receive a 1. Likewise, consistent use of advanced vocabulary will be a 5, while use of no advanced vocabulary will be a 1.

Since this assignment was at the doctoral level, it is not surprising that a majority of students scored between 13 and 15. It is apparent that those who scored less did not take a thorough look at the rubric provided for the discussion. Those that received these high marks are likely to succeed in the course, while those who scored lower should readjust their attitudes towards assignments. This experience helped me determine the value of coding in a unique situation. While researchers typically think of coding being used in article reviews or experimental research analysis, it could be used for a variety of situations. Coding qualitative data also allows us to gain a greater understanding of the things we observe that cannot be quantified, which helps contribute to evidence based practice (Edwards et al., 2014).

References

Edwards JA, Lampert MD. (2014). Talking Data. New York, NY: Psychology Press.

Smith J. (2011). Qualitative data analysis: the framework approach. Nurse Researcher, 18(2).