DBA: 31 interviews coded and defended in 9 weeks
Tom, 45 | DBA in Strategic Management | Private university, Texas
The challenge
I had 31 transcripts, 400 codes, and no themes. I had been coding line by line for five months and every code was its own category.
What we changed
- We rebuilt the codebook with definitions plus inclusion and exclusion criteria, collapsing 400 codes to 46.
- A second coder independently coded 20% of transcripts, giving 87% agreement, which the committee had asked for and I had skipped.
- Themes were reported with participant counts, and each theme closed with a disconfirming case.
The outcome
Four themes with eleven sub-themes, approved on first submission. The disconfirming cases became the strongest part of my defense.
The disconfirming cases I was scared of are what convinced the committee I had actually analyzed the data.