Where were WE?

So now, I'm coding...finding themes/ categories and realizing these:
-what if I make a matrix of codes to sort of 'count' or keep track of 'hits' to the each code
-why? cuz some themes have double codes to mean that one code seem to answer 2 questions?! is this okie at all?!!


MORE RE DATA ANALYSISI am now recalling the time when I was thinking of a way to 'organize' findings for this study on SOC=Sense of Community. Reading more about SOC, has led me to decide that perhaps the 4 elements can be a means to classify our data. My plan was to discuss the findings through these four elements--influence, membership,fulfillment of needs and shared connection or as later on surfaced by my co-writer, the stages of community building. Then later on, in the midst of look into our available data, other matters arose which led me to decide to do it differently. While we did maintain discussion of our findings through these elements, the data presented and analyzed turned out to be different. This was realized due to our 2nd research question which relates to the meanings adult learners attach to virtual community.

I'll explain later on.

But here's what I found to verify this:
p 183-185 of Sharan Merriam's Qualitative Research A Guide to Design and Implementation

"Names of your categories can come from at least three sources ( or a mix of these): yourself, the researcher, the participants or sources outside the study such as the literature....Applying someone else's scheme requires that the categories be compatible with the purpose and theoretical framework of the study. The database is scanned to determine the fit of a priori categories and then the data are sorted into the borrowed categories.....As Glaser and Strauss (1967) point out "Merely selecting data for a category that has been established by another theory tends to hinder the generation of new categories, because the major effort is not generation but deata selection. ALSO EMERGENT CATEGORIES USUALLY PROVE TO BE TH EMOST RLEVANT AND BEST FITTED TO THE DATA...."

Merriam proceeds to specify criteria for construction of categories:
these should " be RESPONSIVE to the purpose of the research...should be EXHAUSTIVE...MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE....be CONCEPTUALLY CONGRUENT" (from exhibit 8.2 p 186)


..."In summary, dat analysis is a process of making sense out of data. TI can be limited to determining how best to arrange the materials into a anrrative account of the findings. More commonly researchers extend analysis to developing categories, themes or other taxoomic classes that interpret the meaning of the data. The categories become findings of the study..." (p193)

Then I chanced upon this: NARRATIVE ANALYSIS p 202

Now isn't that one of my earlier concerns...what sets it apart from other types of analysis.