Chapter 31: Developing Coding Schemes: From Cognitive Principles to Best Practices

In the field of qualitative research, not much guidance is provided to students in the process of developing coding schemes to analyze qualitative data. Method books and graduate course work focus more on qualitative research methods and designs than on explaining the concrete steps needed to create coding schemes to capture meaningful evidence in qualitative data sets such as, for example, expert interviews, family photographs, or among existing cases files. This lack of guidance is surprising because coding schemes are the essence of data analysis, establishing the structure and content of the research results. More specifically, coding schemes are cognitive tools that qualitative researchers develop in an explicated and deliberate process to enable data analyses that warrant meaningful scientific inquiries and discoveries. To fulfill this purpose, coding schemes need to be methodologically sound and cognitively viable. For students to become successful qualitative researchers, they need to acquire the knowledge, skills, and tenacity to create effective coding schemes for the qualitative studies they set out to accomplish in their professional careers.