What is initial coding

What is initial coding? Initial coding, also known as open coding, is the first step of the coding process, particularly in qualitative methods such as grounded theory. In this initial pass where you break down your qualitative data into discrete excerpts and create codes to label them with.

What are the three levels of coding?

The Glaserian Grounded Theory method uses three levels of coding – open coding, selective coding, and theoretical coding (Figure 26). Open coding is the initial phase of grounded theory analysis (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Strauss and Corbin, 1990).

What is coding in qualitative research?

Coding is a qualitative data analysis strategy in which some aspect of the data is assigned a descriptive label that allows the researcher to identify related content across the data. How you decide to code - or whether to code- your data should be driven by your methodology.

What is first cycle coding?

First Cycle coding methods are codes initially assigned to the data units. Second Cycle coding methods generally work with the resulting First Cycle codes themselves. First Cycle coding methods include over 25 different approaches, each one with a particular func- tion or purpose.

What are first level codes?

Open coding\n\n At this first level of coding, you are looking for distinct concepts and categories in the data, which will form the basic units of your analysis. In other words, you are breaking down the data into first level concepts, or master headings, and second-level categories, or subheadings.