Investigating the Social World
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Conceptualization, Coding, and Categorizing
Identifying and refining important concepts is a key part of the iterative process of qualitative research.
Sometimes, conceptualizing begins with a simple observation that is interpreted directly, “pulled apart,” and
then put back together more meaningfully. Robert Stake (1995) provides an example:
When Adam ran a pushbroom into the feet of the children nearby, I jumped to conclusions about his
interactions with other children: aggressive, teasing, arresting. Of course, just a few minutes earlier I
had seen him block the children climbing the steps in a similar moment of smiling bombast. So I was
aggregating, and testing my unrealized hypotheses about what kind of kid he was, not postponing my
interpreting. . . . My disposition was to keep my eyes on him. (p. 74)
The focus in this conceptualization “on the fly” is to provide a detailed description of what was observed
and a sense of why that was important.
More often, analytic insights are tested against new observations, the initial statement of problems and
concepts is refined, the researcher then collects more data, interacts with the data again, and the process
continues. Anderson (2003) recounts how his conceptualization of social stratification at Jelly’s Bar developed
over a long period of time:
I could see the social pyramid, how certain guys would group themselves and say in effect, “I’m here and
you’re there.” . . . I made sense of these crowds [initially] as the “respectables,” the “nonrespectables,”
and the “near-respectables.” . . . Inside, such non-respectables might sit on the crates, but if a respect-
able came along and wanted to sit there, the lower-status person would have to move. (pp. 225–226)
But this initial conceptualization changed with experience, as Anderson realized that the participants
themselves used other terms to differentiate social status: winehead, hoodlum, and regular (Anderson 2003:230).
What did they mean by these terms? The regulars basically valued “decency.” They associated decency with con-
ventionality but also with “working for a living,” or having a “visible means of support” (Anderson 2003:231). In
this way, Anderson progressively refined his concept as he gained experience in the setting.
Howard S. Becker (1958) provides another excellent illustration of this iterative process of conceptualiza-
tion in his study of medical students:
When we first heard medical students apply the term “crock” to patients, we made an effort to learn
precisely what they meant by it. We found, through interviewing students about cases both they and the
observer had seen, that the term referred in a derogatory way to patients with many subjective symp-
toms but no discernible physical pathology. Subsequent observations indicated that this usage was a
regular feature of student behavior and thus that we should attempt to incorporate this fact into our
model of student-patient behavior. The derogatory character of the term suggested in particular that we
investigate the reasons students disliked these patients. We found that this dislike was related to what
we discovered to be the students’ perspective on medical school: the view that they were in school to get
experience in recognizing and treating those common diseases most likely to be encountered in general
practice. “Crocks,” presumably having no disease, could furnish no such experience. We were thus led
to specify connections between the student-patient relationship and the student’s view of the purpose
of this professional education. Questions concerning the genesis of this perspective led to discoveries
about the organization of the student body and communication among students, phenomena which
we had been assigning to another [segment of the larger theoretical model being developed]. Since
“crocks” were also disliked because they gave the student no opportunity to assume medical responsi-
bility, we were able to connect this aspect of the student-patient relationship with still another tentative
model of the value system and hierarchical organization of the school, in which medical responsibility
plays an important role. (p. 658)