From: lonkila@franz.Helsinki.FI (MARKKU LONKILA (SOSPO))
Subject: Coding in qualitative analysis
Organization: University of Helsinki, Faculty of Social Sciences
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1993 12:43:55 GMT

Dear QUALRS -folks,

I am writing my thesis on computer-assisted qualitative 
analysis. One of the methodological/technical problems 
I've come across with is the question of coding. A while 
ago I asked through this list references to textbooks 
dealing explicitly with different coding procedures.
(Thanks to all who responded!)

My question to you is: What alternatives to coding you 
see in qualitative analysis? 

The bulk of the software I know about is based on some 
kind of coding. What I fear is that with the diffusion 
of these programs we will forget the fact that not all 
qualitative researchers use coding in their work. This 
doesn't necessarily mean that computers would be responsible 
for the (possible) change in researchers' analysing habits. 
On the contrary, the first "code and retrieve" -programs 
were developed to imitate the manual "notecard-box" way of 
coding the data.

If you think of coding as a way of classifying data, 
it is  hardly avoidable (all our thinking is based on 
classifications). But classifying in this broad sense 
is a far cry from classifying texts for instance by 
attaching strings like "teacher stress" to certain lines 
of texts.

I have found at least the following alternatives and 
I would be very happy if you could add to the list:

1. You give a damn about making your analysis explicit. 
This is what Tesch (Qualitative Research: Analysis types 
& software tools) calls "impressionistic analysis". 
This means that the researcher first reads people's 
stories and then writes his own story.

2. In the conference on computer-assisted qualitative 
analysis in Bremen Thomas Muhr (the developer of 
ATLAS/ti) suggested "annotating" as an alternative way 
of working with the text. 

I imagine that for instance the humanists analysing 
classical texts don't work by explicitly coding the 
texts but by reading and commenting them. Then other 
researchers comment these comments etc. Somebody  
has even sair that the whole western philosophy is basically 
about commenting (not coding!!!) the writings of Plato. 
These comments results in a large network of texts 
connected with different kinds of "links". (The father 
of hypertext, Ted Nelson dreams about combining all 
the texts in the world to one large computer-accessible 
hypertext system). 

Commenting and coding are not contradictory as we can 
see for instance in the way ATLAS/ti and some other 
hyper-text based programs work: Before creating a link 
the user has at least mark (code?) the texts he wants 
to connect.

3. In Bremen conference "objective hermeneutics"
(Objektiv Hermeneutik), was mentioned as an alternative. 
It is totally unknown to me - I imagine it is well known
in Germany. Could somebody give me a brief overview of it? 

Please write directly to me not to clutter the list. I'll 
summarize the  responses if somebody else is interested.


Best wishes,

Markku Lonkila
Researcher
University of Helsinki
internet: lonkila@cc.helsinki.fi
bitnet: lonkila@finuh
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