Qualitative Coding Boot Camp: An Intensive Training and Overview for Clinicians, Educators, and Administrators

Abstract

Qualitative coding is a tool for analyzing data involving strings of meaningful words. While many schools and universities have staff who can assist faculty with quantitative data analysis, qualitative data analysis is interpretive and requires both content-specific knowledge and research methodology tools. In this qualitative coding boot camp, we introduce clinician-educators, staff, and administrators to a general overview of qualitative coding and analysis. We designed and implemented an in-person training to help researchers who had limited exposure to qualitative research gain a general orientation to it. We provided an overview of qualitative data collection and qualitative coding and developed focused research questions related to sample interviews for participants to use in working together to develop a codebook. We concluded by discussing the iterative process of coding, how to work from codes to themes for a manuscript, and how to present and disseminate results. To examine participants' learning during the boot camp session, we used a series of nonparametric sign tests to compare pre- and postsession responses on our evaluation form. The results of these tests showed significant growth in participant comfort with undertaking qualitative analysis. Qualitative coding is an important skill for clinicians and their research teams to have, as it can help them to understand the experiences of those around them through an empirical lens. With this 2-hour training, we were able to increase participants' comfort level with the set of skills required to analyze qualitative data rigorously.