Examine either the transcript of a taped interview in Box 12.12 or the transcript in Box 21.8, taken from a study by Jocelyn Cornwell (1984). Then do the following:

(a) Consider what themes you can find in this extract and use these to make a list of codes for the passage. Mark your transcript with code words that describe the themes on the margin.

(b) Consider what assumptions you have made. What have you found difficult?

(c) Are your codes objective? What decisions have you taken in choosing particular codes to characterise particular words or phrases in particular ways? How do you account for similarities and differences in coding between other people in your group who have coded the extract? What has been left out? Can the use of such codes give us agreed interpretations of these data? If codes are not agreed, does this matter?

(d) Report back to the rest of the workshop. Can interviews of this sort be used as a basis for generalising about the beliefs, practices and feelings of women?

(e) If you are using a computer package for analysing qualitative data, such as NVivo, you may find it helpful to enter the data and your codes and use the computer to search for coded segments, or segments where codes overlap.