With the Excel coding workbook established, I began working through the qualitative questionnaire responses and assigning initial codes. The purpose of this stage is to move beyond simply collecting people's experiences and begin identifying repeated ideas, concerns and behaviours within the responses.
One thing I have been particularly conscious of is avoiding deciding my themes too early.
Instead, I am trying to keep my initial codes close to what participants actually said.
For example, responses have already raised ideas surrounding:
At this stage, I am treating these as individual observations rather than immediately grouping them into larger themes such as "anxiety", "accessibility" or "independence".
As I work through each response, I am beginning to compare codes and notice where different participants describe similar experiences in different ways.
The process I am following is:
Raw Response → Code → Related Codes → Candidate Themes → Refined Themes → Design Implications
Importantly, I have not reached the design implications stage yet. My focus is currently on understanding the research rather than looking for a solution.
Coding has already made me look at the questionnaire differently.
When reading a complete response, it can be easy to focus on the overall story someone is telling. Breaking the responses down into smaller codes has made less obvious details more visible and has started to reveal connections between participants.
I also need to remain aware of my own interpretation throughout this process. Because I already have knowledge and assumptions from my secondary research, there is a risk of seeing themes I expect to find.