Now you know how to create codes and code definitions, apply codes and keep track of challenges in code applications and memos. You also know how to link memos to codes and review them in a table. In the last video, we mainly talked about deductive codes. But I also want to talk about some strategies for developing inductive codes. One of the most effective ways to do this is to review the memos you wrote when you first started reading through your data. If you go to the Reports tab, you'll see that there's an option for an Overview of memos. This will produce a table similar to the one we looked at in the last video, but this one will include all the memos you've written in your entire project. This may be a lot of memos. So let's talk about how to modify what you see in the table. First, clicking on a column heading will sort the data in the table by the contents of that column. So if I click on "Documents", all the memos I wrote on each document will appear in clusters on the table, organized a to z by the document name. You'll also notice that there are columns with information that you may not be interested in, such as author, if you're the only person writing memos. You can hide that column by right-clicking in the column heading and selecting hide column. Similarly, you could choose select columns. This will show you a list of each column in the table and you could remove the checks next to those you don't want to see. Of course, you can always go back and recheck columns that you want to appear again if you change your mind. Finally, if you double-click on any row, it will open the memo window where you can easily change the memo name, change the icon type, link to codes, or continue writing. Note that you can add a timestamp to any new writing you do by clicking on the icon that looks like a calendar. This will help you keep track of how your ideas are changing over time throughout the project. So when you're thinking about defining new codes, especially for inductive themes, it can be really useful to review the early memos you've written. Looking through the memos I wrote on the first few texts, I can see a few potentially interesting themes. One has to do with labeling, where the author notes that they felt labeled by others. At this phase of code definition, you really only have a sense for what this notion of labeling is. You might want to go back and reread portions of texts where you've written memos related to labeling. Note that as you click on each memo in the table, MAXQDA will move to where that memo was placed in the document browser window. So it's easy to review the memos side-by-side with the text. Once you've read a bit more and gotten a better sense for what you're seeing in the data, you can work to develop a provisional code definition. For now, I might call the code labeling and then give a definition like, this code captures references to filling labeled by others, including filling wrongly labeled or essentialized to a single characteristic like race or ethnicity. Labeling may characterize someone positively or negatively, but is still experienced as incorrect or partial by the person who was labeled. After developing provisional definitions for the inductive codes you're seeing in the data, I would suggest selecting a few more stories, preferably ones you haven't looked at yet, and trying to apply the codes. Keep track of challenges like we discussed in the last video. Remember, you're trying to work toward a final code definition based on what you're seeing in your data. So wait to adjust the definition until you get through each set of documents and then review issues and revise your definitions. One final thing. In vivo codes. Sometimes something jumps out of the text you're reading that perfectly captures the notion that you want to code for. There's an example in Desi's story that I think illustrates this well. Toward the end of the second paragraph, she says, "I remember being confused about the questions they were asking and wondering why they didn't realize that I was just like them, that I was born and brought up in the United States." When I read this, I thought, just like them. This is a notion that will likely recur in the dataset. Rather than trying to come up with another code name, you can use the actual expression of the data to create what we call an in vivo code. To do this, highlight the words that you would like to use as the code name, and click on the code in vivo icon at the top of the document browser window. This will create a code where the name is the expression from the text, in this case, just like them. Then you can go back and highlight the segment that you'd like to have coded with this new in vivo code and apply the code again to resize the segment. You can see that when you create a code in this way, there's no automatic memo that's attached with the code definition. To create that memo, simply double-click in the column where the memo would go and it will open up with the regular memo screen that you're used to seeing. I'll start by defining this one as, being perceived to be different, incorrectly. If you remember, there's an interesting counterpoint to this notion in Almond cookies, being wrongly perceived to be just like them, erasing on perceived differences. This is a good example of what I mean by including both sides of the same coin in a code definition. Here, we'll be able to review these segments together, later in our analysis, to explore similarities and differences in perceptions of being just like them across various authors and contexts.
