QRJ 1

Back to contents

V o l u m e

2

•

N o .

1 / 2 0 0 2

The enthusiasm with which people responded to the theme suggests that misery in the coding phase is a real, but often unacknowledged issue for researchers and that protocols for dealing with it would be useful to many. Uncertainty about when to stop An aspect of head wrecking is uncertainty about when to stop. If “there is always something else to be found”, then even if one has reached “theoretical saturation” where no new themes emerge, has one finished coding? One correspondent pointed out that this is characteristic of all qualitative research: Well, I would consider some of the longest running qualitative research projects: the exegesis of sacred texts. They have been “coded” – that is, people have been saying, “This is an important bit” – for up to five thousand years … Maybe one could conclude … that there will NEVER be a point where all possible meaning has been found.

While texts concerned with large methodological questions (e.g. Blaikie, 1993; Blaikie, 2000) or with the issue of paradigmatic differences (e.g. Feldman, 1995) make the point that social analysis, like psychoanalysis, is theoretically interminable, there is evidence here that the fact can pose practical problems. It would be helpful for researchers to discuss the “logics in use” that bring an end to coding in any given project, so that textbooks could give grounded illustrations of what a term like “saturation” means. Impact of CAQDAS on analysis Another concern, widely shared, was the potential impact of CAQDAS on analysis. In this discussion, we can see the debate between alchemists and housekeepers operationalised. Interestingly, the majority of comments shared the concerns of the alchemists that CAQDAS may trap researchers in endless cycles of coding and little understanding. I found only two comments on problems that could be seen as defending the good housekeeping position. One correspondent asserted that CAQDAS were nothing  but tools and how one coded was “purely a matter of personal choice and convenience”. The second was my own contribution (to the effect that we should use the capacities of  CAQDAS to enhance rigour, while maximising imaginative engagement with data), which I would see as no more than mildly sympathetic to the housekeeping view. The main area where these participants seemed to share the concern of alchemists was that of “coding fetishism”. A typical comment was: I think there is far too much emphasis on (coding) and one of the consequences is that you lose what I call “the conceptual flow” – the linking between words and phrases and ideas … The conclusion I have come to is that easy repetitive coding stops me really thinking about what I doing.

Fetishism, however, is an avoidable hazard, and is not necessarily caused by CAQDAS. Here discussants diverged from the view of the alchemists. Coding fetishism was described by one as: … possibly the worst and also the most avoidable of the dysfunctional unintended consequences of qualitative computing! Trouble is, that when you are starting out,

W h a t d o w e d o w h e n w e c o d e d a t a ? / M a r s ha l l ( 1 5 p a g e s )

61