9. Coding and the Creative Process

Dear Reader,

Last 2 weeks has been very important for the process of this thesis. I have put all collected data, which are the transcripts of the recorded interviews and the Researcher Notes of Informal Conversations (RNIC), in the software program Atlas.ti. Before I did this, I had to find out how this program, or tool, actually works and then I finally ended up in the process of coding. Finding out how the Atlas.ti worked took me some hours, or even days; and then there I am… Watching to the screen and thinking, and now…. What is the next step?

So I put some drawings, tables, graphs and ideas on paper, which helped me to finding out which first themes I could connect to all these statements, judgements, opinions, conflicts, interactions, perspectives and explanations from all participants. In total there were 33 people who participated in this research. From these 33 people, there were 11 divers, 13 local fishermen, 3 marine park rangers, 1 employee of the ministry of GMN, 2 researchers and 3 restaurant managers. The focus of this research is mostly on the divers and local fishermen, but the others could maybe also help with better understanding the case.

These 33 participants have provided me with a lot of information and I ended up with 39 document (16 Transcripts of Recorded Interviews & 23 RNIC). Then the reading started…. During reading I already started with open coding, which is the first step in the analysis. After 4/5 days of reading and open coding, the first themes emerged. I was happy and glad that the first kind of chaotic mess was solved. And then….

The focus of this research is on the frames that coral reef users have on coral reef health. However, the open coding didn’t actually worked out for the perspectives on coral reef health. To solve this, I had the feeling that it was time for some more chaos to be solved. So I collected many statements, sentences and judgements on coral reefs, individual corals, the biology of corals or interactions with coral reefs from all participants together. I wrote these down on sticky notes and tried to find some patterns, relations or connections. The process of finding structure in the chaos of perspectives can be found in the picture below.

The final result of this process is that I ended with some primary themes, categories and codes of how the participants mainly frame the health of the coral reefs of Curaçao. Besides this, the process brought me the first idea for structuring my final thesis, which gave me extra positive energy, because now I have a first idea of the end result of this (in my eyes) huge, 6 month project.

For now, it is time to continue the process and determine the primary frames on coral reef health. Then, I have to go back to the 39 documents to re-read everything and re-code everything, according to the new code-system. I think this will take me one more week in total, and then the analysis and writing part can start.

For now, thanks for reading and I will keep you up-to-date.

Michiel