How to code a qualitative interview
Read the whole transcript
Read the transcript from start to finish before marking anything, to get a sense of the whole.
Mark passages and give them a code
Read it again and mark each passage that says something important with a code: a short label that names the idea. This is open coding: the codes come from what you read.
Try the categories you already had
If you have an interview guide or a theory, start from your categories and look for where they appear. Note which codes came from reading and which from a search: when you report, you have to be able to explain how the codebook was built.
Organize the codebook
Halfway through, look at the whole: codes that say the same thing get merged, and unclear names get renamed. If you have several interviews, use the same codebook in all of them so they are comparable. Write a note on the quotes so you don’t lose the ideas that come up while coding.
Pull the quotes and document
A code isn’t a result until you read it with its quotes. Gather the verbatim quotes for each code, with their reference and your notes, and choose the ones that illustrate each idea. In the report, count how many quotes each code has and explain how you built the codebook.
Other ways to do it
You can do it in Word, marking passages to cut and paste, or with qualitative analysis software such as NVivo, ATLAS.ti or MAXQDA.
HILO is a good fit for one interview or a few: it runs in the browser, there’s nothing to install and coding doesn’t require signing up. Another tool is a better fit if you have many cases, several people coding, or audio or video. Coding and annotating don’t use AI; “Propose with AI” and search by meaning (step 3) need an account.
Code your own interview
Upload the transcript, mark three passages and see how the codebook looks.
Reference
- Saldaña, J. (2021). The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers (4th ed.). SAGE.
Updated
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