Process
Your first coding pass on 10 interviews
A seven step process for coding qualitative data for the first time
A seven step checklist for a first pass at coding qualitative interview data. It is for founders, product managers and designers coding their first ten interviews by hand: read three transcripts, build a short code list with definitions, code the rest, clean the list, group codes into themes and check each theme against the data. Koji can run the interviews and give you a first set of codes with quotes to check against your own.
Where this appears
What's in this process
- Get verbatim transcripts: Code from transcripts, not notes. Give each one a participant ID.
- Read three without coding: Note what stood out. These notes are your first memos.
- Code those three: Short codes about meaning, each with a one line definition.
- Code the other seven: Reuse codes that fit. Track how many new codes each interview adds.
- Clean up the list: Merge, split and park codes until 10 to 20 remain.
- Group codes into themes: Write each theme as a full sentence. Three to six is typical.
- Check each theme: Count who it applies to, pick quotes and look for passages that disagree.
Use this image
Free to use in your docs, decks and posts under CC BY 4.0, as long as you credit Koji with a link to this page. To embed it, paste this into your page:
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<a href="https://www.koji.so/visuals/first-qualitative-coding-pass-10-interviews"><img src="https://www.koji.so/visuals/first-qualitative-coding-pass-10-interviews/first-qualitative-coding-pass-10-interviews.png" alt="Process showing seven steps of a first coding pass on 10 interviews, from reading three transcripts to grouping codes into themes and checking them." width="1080" height="1080" /></a>
<p>Source: <a href="https://www.koji.so/visuals/first-qualitative-coding-pass-10-interviews">Your first coding pass on 10 interviews</a>, Koji</p>
