Toward a Dynamic Conception of Coding and Theorizing

To understand how authors practice coding in relation to theorizing, this study collected textual data articulating the use of coding in methods sections of empirical articles published in five top journals during 2015. A dynamic conception of coding developed over the course of the project and informed analyses: as coding provisionally fixes a link expressing a relation between idea and data, it also creates the possibility to unfix that link. The latter move is central to discovery—making something happen by driving further interaction with data and ideas. While coding can affirm what is expected to be there (in most deductive use), or discern what is there (in most inductive use), in making something happen with our original ways of understanding of what is there, it combines abduction with inductive or deductive use. Analyses disclosed three broad patterns through which authors depicted "fixing and unfixing" in how authors talked about their coding practice and which bring forward different representa...