ABSTRACT
Analysis of qualitative data often involves systematic coding in order to discover patterns or themes that can subsequently become the basis for interpretation. Because of its wide applicability and versatility, thematic analysis is commonly used in qualitative L2 writing research to analyze data from sources such as observational field notes, interviews (see Chapter 9 ), stimulated recall, open-ended responses to questionnaires, and various types of written texts (see Table 10.1 ). Unlike in studies in which researchers apply a pre-determined coding scheme to the data (see Chapter 7 ), coding in qualitative research tends to be emergent ; that is, the codes are derived from the data rather than being imposed on them. Qualitative coding can also be distinguished from quantitative coding in that instead of reducing the data to numeric codes for the purpose of statistical analysis, it aims to bring order to what might otherwise seem to be a large and unwieldy data set and to facilitate deeper understandings and interpretations of what the data represent. In other words, qualitative coding is not an end in itself but “a first step to somewhere else” (L. Richards, 2009, p. 93).
