Answer to Question #155865 in Management for Prabhdeep

Question

What is coding? what is the importance of coding in processing of data ?how would you undertake coding in a research study?( please answer in 200 to 250 words)

Answer 1

Coding is the process of transforming information that has been collected to a set of meaningful and cohesive categories that are to be used for the purpose of generating information. It is a process of summarising and making presentation of data so as to provide a systematic account of that has been observed. Data can be in form of field notes, interviews, face-to-face conversations and social media details. With codes, concepts are linked with theory. Codes can be arrived at by being predefined or through the coding process. Researchers normally classify data and give them conceptual labels so as to be able to organize and interpret the data easily. That process is what comprises coding.  

Coding of data is important as it helps with generating important insights from data. By assigning codes to the observations, it becomes much easier to analyse them on the basis of their themes and their categories even for complex types of data. If I were researching, I would follow several steps. First, I would determine if my research uses deductive or inductive method. I would then read through my data to have a better understanding of the type of data my research would use.Lastly, I would categorize the codes in order to capture all the categories of my research data.