in vivo coding

  • use participants’ own words and phrases in open coding
  • direct reference rather than encoding something into it
  • still have to consider carefully what fits categories and what is crucially distinct
  • preserves their own meaning-making
  • culturally specific language and not acadmeic jargon
  • if its too filtered through your language it might miss the point
  • great for discourse analysis, cultural studies, and research on how people construct meaning through words
  • crucial in multilingual research to reduce miscommunication
  • can preserve slang or professional terminology
  • more appropriate for sensitive topics to not erase emotional emphasis
  • good for grounded theory as data directly creates theory
  • first step in thematic analysis before broader themes emerge