Definition
Plain language
Reading through a big stack of documents and tagging the themes that keep coming up.
As stated in the literature
A qualitative research method where multiple coders read a corpus and label recurring themes or categories, cross-checking each other; produces tallies of how often a theme appears rather than experimental measurements.
Also called: document coding, qualitative document coding
Why it matters: It turns messy piles of text into organized, comparable themes, and having multiple coders check each other keeps the findings from being one person's opinion.
For example, a researcher reading hundreds of student survey responses might tag each mention of 'stress' or 'confidence' to see which themes come up most.
Heard on the show
“It's qualitative document coding — researchers read a big stack of documents and tag the recurring themes: this one mentions citation, this one bans the tool, this one talks about privacy.”Episode 218 — When Universities Say Embrace AI But Half the CS Syllabi Ban It