MECM90038 Chap.8 Selecting a Sample and Coding Themes
Selecting a Sample and Coding Themes
Week 7 connects data collection to data sorting, the two jobs at the heart of the methodology. The chapter first follows Hansen's three sampling decisions: choosing the media, fixing the dates or issues, and setting rules for which content counts, illustrated by a lecture study of American newspaper coverage of an election.
It then works through the five steps of thematic analysis the lecture draws from Ahmed and colleagues: familiarising yourself with the data, generating initial codes, searching for themes, reviewing them and finally defining and naming them. Along the way it shows how coding memos, Word annotations and Excel records keep the process transparent.
These skills feed directly into the methodology submission, which must explain and justify both the sample and the sorting procedure.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Defining the body of media before any data is collected
- 02
Choosing outlets, a time window and rules for relevant content
- 03
Familiarising yourself with raw data through repeated close reading
- 04
Generating initial codes for sources, issues, word choices and stances
- 05
Grouping codes into interpretive themes linked to the research question
- 06
Reviewing, defining and naming themes with quotations and a coding memo
Worked example · free
Turning festival coverage codes into a defined theme
- 1Set aside "faster queues", which describes convenience rather than fairness, and keep the three codes about who pays or who misses out.
- 1Name the theme in a way that interprets the codes: Unequal access.
- 1Define it in one sentence and support the definition with a published source on digital exclusion found during the literature review.
- 1Link the theme to the research question and plan one short quotation from the coverage to illustrate it.
Key terms
- Sample
- A sample is the portion of a defined body of media content selected for analysis. Hansen asks that it be representative of that wider body.
- Initial code
- An initial code is a short label attached to a meaningful feature of the data, such as a source, issue or stance. Codes are the raw material from which themes are later built.
- Theme
- A theme is an interpretive pattern that brings several codes together and says something meaningful about the data. It must connect to the research question.
- Coding memo
- A coding memo records each sorting decision and the reason behind it. It lets a researcher describe the analytic process accurately and supports transparency.
- Inclusion criteria
- Inclusion criteria are the rules that decide which items inside the chosen media and time window count as data. Exclusion criteria name what is deliberately left out.
Selecting a Sample and Coding Themes FAQ
How many news articles or posts should my sample contain?
The Week 7 lecture frames size through representativeness: it asks for a representative sample drawn from a clearly defined body of media, and for each choice to be justified. A workable size is one you can read closely more than once within the weeks left before the methodology and report are due. Check your tutor's guidance on Canvas.
Do I have to use NVivo to code my data?
No. The Week 8 plan describes an NVivo demonstration as optional and self-paced. The Week 7 lecture shows coding done with ordinary tools: highlighting and annotating texts in Word, logging characteristics such as cited sources in Excel, and keeping memos in a Word document. Choose whichever tool lets you record decisions clearly.
What is the difference between a code and a theme?
A code labels one feature, such as a word choice or a quoted source. A theme groups several codes into a broader pattern and interprets them. In the lecture's election case, separate codes about a possible war and about military drills became one theme about military consequences.
Can one excerpt belong to more than one theme?
The Week 7 tutorial raises this directly by asking which excerpts could have fitted more than one group. Overlap happens, but when reviewing themes you should check that each remains coherent and distinct across the dataset. If many items sit in two themes, consider merging them or redrawing their boundaries.
Assessment move
Draft your three sampling sentences first: media with a reason, time window with a reason, and inclusion and exclusion rules with a reason. Then take five items from your dataset and read them twice, writing first impressions before coding anything. Code those five in Word or Excel, open a memo file and date every decision.
Group the codes into two or three provisional themes, write a one-sentence definition for each and check the definitions against five more items. Bring the SkyHarvest worksheet habit to your own data: label piles simply first and interpret later. Keep the memo, because it becomes the procedure paragraph of your methodology.
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