This week’s topics were data collection & coding, where we learned great organizational tools to better understand and view our research. Some data collection aids include: recorders, photography, videography, etc. We’ve become pretty comfortable with our recorders thus far from conduction our own interviews on campus, so we’re really excited to use other forms of documentation to capture the paradox of chaos and organization that is Lolla. Personally, I’m really excited to put my videography skills to use to take our data collection one step further!
From stats, we knew that quantitative coding involved data mining/running statistical analyses. But qualitative coding doesn’t test for significance, it tests insights. This helped us to group data observations from different collections to make more sense of it all. From looking through last year’s data, one code that stood out at Lolla was the idea of it being a “rite of passage”. The philosophy that, “I’m an adult because I can go to Lolla” rang true for many of the adolescents at the festival. These ideas were easier understood once coded together.
To better understand coding first hand, we got some practice by reading through an interview of a newlywed couple; what they learned from married life. Some codes we developed included: newness/change, communication, monetary dependence, expectations (gender roles), work, and sacrifice (adaptive living). Although this interview was several pages long, using codes helped our group to really get a good general sense of what was going on. Being a whole group of girls, we loved the chance to use as many different colored highlighters as possible to represent each code 🙂
Erin, February 2017
