Speaker 1: So in this video I'll show you how to use Microsoft Word to code your data and to develop a thematic framework. If you have been following me you know that I'm a big fan of using a specialized software for qualitative data analysis specifically Envivo, but I also know that some of you may not want to use it. Some of you are anxious about the idea of having to learn this new software, some Some of you may not have a license, maybe your university doesn't provide a license for Envivo, or maybe for whatever reason you just don't want to use the software. Normally I use the software, but if I were to choose between not using any software at all, so doing it manually on printed data, printed pieces of paper, or using Microsoft Word, I would definitely use Microsoft Word. I have another video on my channel, so you can see the link now, where I introduced this topic and I explained how to do coding. I just decided to do a follow-up, so I have some more ideas. Also, the quality of sound was not very good on the other video, but mostly I developed some new ideas. So in the previous videos, I focused on coding. Now I also want to show you what to do next and how to actually develop the thematic framework based on these codes. So in this video, I will start over, so I will show you first how to code the data and what to do next. So basically, there will be three steps. What I'll be showing, what I'll be doing can be divided into three main steps. The first one is to code the data, the second one is to clean up our codes, and the third one is to develop a thematic framework, to put these codes into a framework. Now, at the moment, you can see that there is plenty of nonsense, Basically, on my screen, I just used some example words and example paragraphs here. So you'll just have to be quite creative. Use your imagination. It doesn't really matter, because I just want you to understand the process of what we are doing and how to code it. So obviously, there is no sense in this text that you can see. But for the purpose of this presentation, for the purpose of this lesson, this video, let's imagine that we are conducting a study of advantages and disadvantages of online teaching. It's an example I use a lot, especially recently, obviously, online teaching is on the rise. And so we are conducting a study in which these are the interview transcripts. Our participants are talking about challenges or barriers and also advantages related to online teaching. So the first thing that we want to do with this data, of course, is to code it. So how do we do it in Microsoft Word? So there are many approaches people use this software. Like I said, I've never done it. I just developed this idea, this framework, and this method for those who want to use this software. I know that people use color coding, people use comments sometimes but I prefer to use a table in which we indicate our codes on the right hand side of the text so this will be the first thing that we do. So let's create a table that has two columns and we're just gonna put our text, our main text, so our interview transcript because this is as I said, what this normally would be. So we're gonna put it in this left column and in the right column we will be indicating our codes. So the problem, I mentioned that some people use comments, so you can just select the text and create a new comment. The problem with it, in my opinion, is that as you have many codes the comments will be overlapping, it will become quite messy, so you will not be able to see which line or which segment of the text this given comment relates to, refers to. So for this reason I prefer to use this option with the table. So maybe let's change our text color so we can easily distinguish between the codes and the main text. So basically what we will be doing now is reading our text and on the right hand side inserting the codes. The codes which are just like a description. I've mentioned that many times in my other videos. It's basically something that describes and summarize this given part of the text. Doesn't matter what approach to coding you're following but this approach is very flexible what I'm showing you. So if you're for example doing a grounded theory study, if you want to do very detailed line-by-line line codes. Again this approach is perfect because next to each line you can actually insert a code. So basically let's imagine like I said this is an interview transcript. We're reading it and we're creating our codes. So advantages and disadvantages of online learning. So let's say somebody here talks about difficulties and motivation. So this would be probably our disadvantage. Here we keep reading, so let's say that in this fragment they mentioned something that's actually a good thing, so let's say a variety of activities, because in online learning you can usually have a big variety of different things and visuals, so a variety of activities. As we keep going we keep coding more and more so let's say there is a problem with different levels of learners so if you have different levels of learners perhaps it's not that easy for the teacher to control that to support them so not suitable for different levels or for classes with learners at different levels. So let's say this is our disadvantage that somebody mentioned somewhere here in this text. As we keep going, obviously we continue to code. So let's imagine it may not be suitable for low-level learners in general. so again, not suitable for low-level learners. Maybe here they talk about an advantage, time efficient, so you obviously don't have to get up and drive or take a bus to your school. So basically, this is what happens at the initial stage of coding. We are coding, we are indicating what a given part of the text is telling us. So basically, we want to continue this process for two or three or four of our first transcripts, especially if you're doing line-by-line coding. I usually continue this detailed coding for the first couple of files or transcripts. And after that, I want to really look at my coding framework and just organize it a little bit before, so actually turn it pretty much into themes, into something more meaningful, more organized before I continue to code the subsequent interviews. So in order, so what do we want to do now? I already coded, I did the same thing for our example transcript three and example transcript two. So I have them here in these files as you can see. So what I want to do now is I need another file in which I want to see all of these codes in one place. But I still want to distinguish between the different transcripts where I found them. So let's create, first let's change the layout. So the landscape orientation, it will give us more space. And again, we want to create a table, but this time into this table, we want to copy and paste our codes from each individual transcript that we finished by the time we finished coding so I'm gonna put it here I want to insert a column here I'll put another one And then I'll do the same, so I'll insert another column, and finally, I think I did transcript 2, so finally transcript 3. So I want to, as I said, I want to look at them, I want to be able to see all the codes that I created. And this is very important because now, as I said, we are now in stage two, so we're getting ready to organize our codes because this is an example transcript, of course, so it's very short. I don't have that many codes. My approach to coding was not that detailed either, but if you have like three or four proper interview transcripts, of course you will have plenty of codes by this time. And there are several things that you want to do. So the most important goal at this stage for us is to make sure that the code names, firstly, are consistent within each transcript. And the second thing is we want to make sure that the code names are consistent across different transcripts. Because then we'll be creating a framework. We want consistent names, as I said. So quite often, especially if you have lots of codes, and especially if you're doing line-by-line coding, what happens is that you code similar or the same things, but you just name the codes differently, of course, because you're just reading the text and you may just use a slightly different wording for the same things because you don't remember what exactly, what kind of wording you used before. So this is, we need to eliminate these codes. We just need to change their names to make sure that they are consistent. So in the first transcript, it's quite easy because I don't really have many, many codes, but let's have a look at the second transcript now. So the second one, struggled to focus. Then we have difficult to motivate, difficult to stay focused on the task. So you can already see that here I call this struggle to focus, here I call this difficult to stay focused. So let's just stick to difficult to stay focused. I want to use this wording in my future framework. So I'm gonna, two things I need to do. I need to change this first because this says struggle to focus. So I'll just rename it. I'll call it difficult to stay focused. And the second thing that we want to do and we have to do is to go back to our transcript and also change the wording. Because later on we will be using the search option to basically to find the examples of our themes from the table. So we have to be sure that the names in the table of themes that we'll be creating are the same as the names that we attributed to the codes in our transcript. So difficult to stay focused. So I'm just gonna go to my transcript. I'm gonna use the find, the search option to find anything that related to focus, the word focus. So struggle to focus. I'm gonna replace it here as well. Let's see if we have anything else here. Difficult to stay focused. I'm gonna correct this as well because I deleted this part. So this is our second transcript. And now I need to do the same in the third transcript. So if I have anything about focus, I can see that I do have something about being focused. So again, difficult to stay focused and motivated. So I definitely want to keep difficult to stay focused because this is my new, I decided this is gonna be the name of this code, but motivated is a different thing. So maybe affected motivation or something. Remember, this is just an example. Depends what this actual transcript would be talking about. So affected motivation is gonna be the other code. Okay, so first I'm just gonna finish the difficult to stay focused code. So again, let's see if there's anything else. Again, difficult to stay focused. And I'm gonna break it down into affected motivation as well. I believe that's all. So now, again, we're going back to this table where we keep all of our codes, and we want to make sure that difficult to stay focused is the word we're using. But also, affected motivation is something I introduced, so I can see it here. Affected motivation, difficult to stay focused. Again, difficult to stay focused. Affected motivation. Basically, what happens now, you can see, I don't want to bore you to death with the whole process, especially that we don't have actual data, of course. I can see difficult to motivate, by the way, so I'm just gonna change it, effective motivation. But basically, that's the thing. So at this stage, we are cleaning, like I said, these codes. We want to make sure that all the names are consistent. So I have to keep checking. Ideally, what I want to do first, I think I would focus on this table, just find everything and all the inconsistencies within the table, first within one transcript, then across all these transcripts, and then I would trace these codes in my original transcript. So I want to replace the code names in the transcript. So this is this step. And of course it will be a lot of work, but qualitative data analysis is generally a lot of work, and especially if you don't want to use software, like I said. So, of course, it will be a lot of work, but it's probably not as bad as it seems. So, this was our second step. The third step is, if you enjoyed this video, if you want to see more of this kind of content, if you want me to perhaps develop some new methods related, or further, more detailed methods related to using Microsoft Word for this kind of analysis. Please like the video. I'll see how many of you enjoy the video this way. Also, it will obviously help the video get found on YouTube. Like the video and consider subscribing to this channel. Okay, so now what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna continue to work on this framework. I don't want you to watch the whole process, but I'll continue to work on cleaning up the codes, and then I'll show you what we'll do next. Okay, so now, as you can see, I've done a little bit of cleaning. So I organized these codes and made sure that most of them are quite consistent. I didn't do the whole thing, but again, this is just for the purpose of our presentation. So the first thing, so the next thing that we want to do, as I said, we want to develop a thematic framework. So basically, a thematic framework is something more inclusive, more meaningful than just a list of codes. The codes are just units that help us break down the data and remember what was being said at which stage. And thematic framework is something that relates more to our actual research questions and aims. So it has themes, they are more inclusive, they are more organized. So remember, our study, our imaginary study is about challenges, advantages and disadvantages of online learning. And let's say that as I was coding the data I also found a lot of instances of suggestions for how to improve these classes. So basically what we are doing now at the next step I'm going to copy all of the codes from each from each column. I want them this time to be listed just in one column, in one place. So let's copy and paste all our codes that we we have at the moment. I'm just gonna correct this one because I remember it said time-efficient. So again I'm just gonna copy and paste it to our list. So as I'm looking through these codes I can see that there are three major themes, three major topics that I can see in this data. So they are advantages like I said, they are disadvantages and they are some suggestions that the participants made in this example interview. So I want to add these themes to my list and then I will be organizing all of my codes on under one of these themes. So let's make sure they stand out. So advantages, disadvantages, and suggestions for improvement. And now, the way I will start organizing them is by finding, cutting these codes and just putting them in one of these groups, in one of these categories. so under one of my newly created themes. So, of course, affected motivation will be a disadvantage. A variety of interactive activities is an advantage. Time efficient and convenience, so convenient access to lesson materials, of course, is an advantage. Difficult to stay focused and affected motivation. These are our first codes, and they are definitely a disadvantage. So basically, again, I will start moving all of these codes into one of these categories, and I will come back in a second when I'm done. Okay, so finally, I had a chance to look through all these codes and put all of them under one of our themes, so either advantages or disadvantages, or the suggestions for improvement. Now we have one more important thing to do. So we want to be able to indicate how many times a given code, or in this case a sub-theme, appeared in our data. So it's very easy because I did not, if the code was repeated several times, of course I copied and pasted it every instance of that code. So as you will see, they keep repeating. So, for example, in disadvantages, I have affected motivation, affected motivation, affected motivation. So this is every time that the code appeared. And this is very good. And the reason I did this is because now I can easily count how many times this given code occurred in my data. So in this case, at this stage, I will be going through the list under each of my themes and just this time deleting the codes that are repeating, but also counting them. So in brackets, I want to indicate how many times a given theme was mentioned. So affected motivation, it says one, two, three. I would just, I'll be deleting them. Four, five, and six. So I just want to have it, obviously in my thematic framework, I want to have one of them. So affected motivation is six. Difficult to stay focused is one, two, three, four, five. So it's five, five times. Limited support for low-level students. I can see, I think it's three times. No, it's five times as well. So it's gonna say five. not enough teacher support, student collaboration, self-discipline, time efficient is not a disadvantage. So all of these just appeared once. Of course, you can organize them whatever way you want them to be organized, but I usually use this number as the indicator of how strong a given theme was. So if it appeared six times, I do want it to be at the top. and then maybe the remaining ones you could organize alphabetically. So you want to do this for advantages as well and then suggestions for improvement. And now the final thing that we want to do, we want to go back to our original transcripts and also indicate, in addition to our codes, we want to indicate what kind of themes this code represents. So, advantages or disadvantages or suggestions for improvement. So, for example, affected motivation. We want to find each instance of affected motivation in our original data and we want to add that it's also a sub-theme of disadvantages theme. It will be just clear, it will also make it possible for us to, for example, find, rather than looking for individual codes, maybe we want to find in the future anything that relates to disadvantages. So, in this case, what we want to do, as I said, we're going back to our transcripts, and this time we will use the comments option. I said before that the comments option is not suitable for codes, because if we have lots of codes, then we'll have many, many comments, especially in the initial stage, because one thing I did not mention is that some of these codes will simply be deleted. Here I used, obviously, codes that sound very relevant and very specific to the imaginary research aims, but normally you would have plenty of codes that are not that relevant. So you'd also, as you're cleaning up your coding framework and the separate file, you would be deleting them from this file. So as a result, you would probably have less codes that I have now, and they would be covering bigger chunks of the text, rather than having these line-by-line codes. So what I want to do now, as I said, I copied the first code from our framework. So this was affected motivation. I'm going to use, again, the navigation, the search option to find affected motivation. Unfortunately, I cannot find it, because I don't think I did a very good job at cleaning up this file. But let's say motivation, so let's just use the original wording. I don't think it's there either. So motivation, let's use the word focus. Okay, so difficult to stay focused. This was our, the theme was disadvantages. So in this case, I will probably, I will either create a comment right here. So I'll just say disadvantages. Or another idea is to actually select the piece of text that is coded. So difficult to stay focused. So let's say, perhaps you have, these are just two things that you can do. Perhaps you have a reason to do one of these. So this one was, again, part of our disadvantages. You can do either this way or this way. But the point is that now, as I said, you are selecting, you're indicating not only what code was used but also you're indicating what theme that code was a part of. So this is basically, these are all the steps for creating our coding framework first and then our thematic framework. One more thing is when you actually report on that, so when you start writing about your findings, about your themes, of course you want to use extracts from the data, but I think it's quite obvious, but I will say it. So if you, let's say you're looking at this framework now and you want to find extracts that relate to being focused. So again, you'll just use, or you want to find extracts relating to disadvantages because you're talking about disadvantages in your data. So of course, you will just go to the transcript. You'll use the search option to find disadvantages. and this way you can easily find extracts for that talk about disadvantages. As you can see in the second option that I offered or suggested, what is actually quite nice is that you can also see the highlighted text straight away. So now you'd obviously just copy this and paste it to your report, your results chapter or wherever you're reporting on the findings. So for now, this is it when it comes to using Microsoft Word for coding and developing themes. Do let me know if you enjoyed this. Do let me know if you have some good ideas for what else to include for some kind of analysis. It'll be nice to develop this method that can help so many people. Because like I said, I know many people don't want to use software. So we can kind of develop this new method together. Maybe you have had experience of using Microsoft Word. maybe there is something about color coding or something I did not mention. So do reach out and do comment. And also, like I said, like the video if you want to see more of this kind of content on this channel. You