Also known as a qualitative variable; a variable with answers that can be organized around various, often limited, categories (examples: gender, race/ethnicity, nationality)
The systematic examination of the trace communications people have left behind
Bringing order to written information in which text or visual data are categorized into small portions of information
A document that lists the codes in a study and how they correlate with participant responses
Used to determine the extent to which two quantitative variables approximate a linear relationship
A piece of cultural writing produced from the results of fieldwork that provides a thick description of the beliefs, practices, and overall ethos of a group
Codes that are created before the coding begins
Also known as a quantitative variable; a variable that is expressed with numerical values in the original data, such as age, income, or height
Analysis that allows researchers to sketch the details of variables and gain familiarity with the sample
A more deductive approach to theory development in fieldwork that compares the theoretical insights gathered from other ethnographic case studies with one’s own fieldwork experiences
Memo that connects the narrative with past experiences or that provides notations on the researcher’s perceptions of the written information
Responses that do not have a numerical value, but instead represent an ordered sequence of responses
Analysis that provides a deeper understanding of variables because it draws conclusions about the population from the sample
An inductive approach to developing theory by systematically comparing and contrasting qualitative observations to look for emerging generalizable patterns
Coding that is created as it is seen or as it emerges in writing
A variable that can express a ratio between numbers because it has a true zero
The square root of the variance that represents each data point’s average deviation from the mean
The written series of open-ended questions used to conduct an in-depth interview
Taking notes on thoughts while reading