Rationalising the codes in the Template
Authors of this page:Dawn Clarke and Graham R. Gibbs
Affiliation: University of Huddersfield
Date written: 15th December 2008
Learning outcomes
- Revise your initial codes by redefining and combining them.
- Supplement the coding with case summaries.
Frances continued to work on her coding to produce her first template; this was all taking place at the same time as many of the interviews which she felt made the process slower than she had anticipated. The other surprise for Frances was the large number of codes that were initially produced.
This is a common experience when researchers start their analysis. Everything seems important and they are worried about missing things out in case they turn out later to be significant. If this happens to you, you should start to think about ways in which you can reduce the number of codes or rationalise them. For example, many may be versions of the same thing and could be combined. You may have coded to too fine a level of detail. A more general level of coding might be sufficient. Other codes may be simply descriptive and may be replaced by more analytic, theoretical or interpretative ones. Frances did this. Upon reflection she realized that many codes could be merged together, reducing their number and simplifying the structure of the template. Thus the potential categories for the template began to take shape.
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Initial Template (Patients) |
Final Template (Patients) |
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Perception of Seriousness of Accident History of Whiplash Chronology of symptoms Current/Recent Symptoms Seeking Help Initial Consultation Treatment Helpful Exacerbating Factors Self Management Unhelpful Knowledge of Whiplash |
1 The Healthcare Experience NHS treatment |
In other cases she retained the codes but their meaning and significance was changed.
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So although Frances' practical concerns meant she retained the code 'Treatment' and in it included the kinds of options that medical practitioners might choose, she also began to realise that other actions could be included in the code, even if they weren't things that a practitioner would think of as a medical option. An example of this was 'Reassurance'.
Frances felt that the process of reducing the number of codes into categories made the data more manageable and she was better able to understand the participants' experiences.
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With this in mind Frances immersed herself in the data by approaching the transcripts as individual case studies rather than a collective group; she explained the benefits of this:
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Through the process of treating each participant as a single case study rather than examining all the respondents as a group Frances was able to begin to understand how the codes could be reduced into relevant categories. In this way she developed the initial template.
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Therefore Frances felt that template analysis not only enabled her to analyse the data in a way that she could explore the relevant issues but, it also provided a framework to manage the data. This is an important element for all researchers to consider as she stated she collected a large amount of data over a long period of time which was difficult to manage; this is often the case for many researchers.
The resources on this site by Graham R Gibbs, Dawn Clarke, Celia Taylor, Christina Silver and Ann Lewins are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.