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The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers (3rd edition) Johnny Saldaña Sage 2015 ISBN-13: 978-1473902497
The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers addresses an important aspect of many qualitative research traditions, the process of attaching meaningful attributes (codes) to qualitative data that allows researchers to engage in a range of analytic processes (e.g. pattern detection, categorization and theory building). It is a book intended to "supplement introductory works in the subject" and provide an extensive collection of coding methods from a range of sources for a variety of purposes. It is a book that is probably best positioned to those in somewhere in the middle of the beginner-experienced continuum of qualitative researchers, especially to those looking for examples of different ways to analyze qualitative data.
Saldaña states that this manual "serves primarily as a reference work" rather than a monograph to be read cover to cover. This is a claim important for a prospective reader to understand, and one that I agree with to a certain extent. A good reference work needs to have widely understood content in order for readers to know what to look for, and in this way the primary organizing scheme of the book into chapters on first and second cycle coding methods (and subsequently into a multitude of subcategories) is difficult to understand without a high degree of familiarity with this terminology. The opening chapter does a...