Coding Matrix Query

What is a Coding Matrix Query?

A Coding Matrix Query finds all text that meets conditions between two codes - such as “text coded at Code A AND Code B” or “text coded at Code X but NOT Code Y”. You provide a list of codes to use for the rows, and another for the columns, alongside specifying whether to use AND/OR/NOT condition between the two.

Zombie🧟 Slaying QDAS Zombies

Coding Matrix Queries are a good example of how QDAS facilitates analysis that would be incredibly time-consuming with pen and paper.

It requires though also dispensing with a common notion we have about coding - that you only code text to a single code. It is easy to overlook, but a huge benefit of QDAS is being able to easily code text to multiple codes. Imagine with pen and paper going through one of the focus group transcripts coding - participants, structure, main themes, organisation codes. It would quickly become complex - and risk becoming a mess.

QDAS not only helps us avoid such a mess, in contrast to the QDAS zombie that claims software distances you from your data, we can code our text to multiple codes with ease and use this coding to further organise and explore our data as we develop our analysis.

Creating a Coding Matrix Query

OK, lets first create a coding matrix query that finds text coded at both the thematic codes and our organisation codes.

To make it feasible to go through the examples within the time available for the training session we are going to ‘Autocoded (Theme)’ rather than spend time doing manual coding. I have included a “warning” note at the top of the folder setting out important limitations with thematic autocoding. In practice, you will want to use orgnaisation codes with your own manual thematic coding.

First, we need to ensure we have some initial coding for the organisation codes. To quickly set this up, we can view what is coded to some of our existing thematic codes and code bits of them to our organisation codes as well. As this is just for purposes of creating coding to work with, don’t worry about this being rigorous -

• Select two or three existing codes from the top-level Codes folder or ‘Autocoded (Theme)’ sub-folder.
• Open tabs to view the code results for the 2-3 you have selected.
• Quickly go through coding sections from the code results to ‘Example’, ‘Gold’, and ‘Unsure’.

OK, now that we have text coded at both our thematic codes and organisation codes, we can now create a coding matrix.

• Go to the Query Criteria folder
• Right-click and select New Query
• and, Matrix Coding Query

Not-you🤢 It’s not you, it’s NVivo

Despite there being a Queries > Coding Matrices section, we do not use that for creating a new Matrix Coding Query. That section is where you can find the saved results from a Matrix Query. And the eagle eyed may have the following questions:

• There is a ‘Query Results’ section, which is used to save query results, so why also have a separate ‘Coding Matrices’ section to save coding matrix results?
• You create a ‘Matrix Coding Query’, but its results are referred to as a ‘Coding Matrix’?

The answer to both is ‘Yes, but no idea why - that’s just NVivo being NVivo’.

Then within the Matrix Coding Query:

1. Hit the ‘+’ button.
2. Click ‘Select Items…’

Within the ‘Select Project Items’ dialogue, select the three codes you picked:

1. Navigate to the folder containing them.
2. Check the boxes for them.
3. Hit the ‘OK’ button.

Repeat steps for the Columns with our organisation codes:

1. Hit the ‘+’ button.
2. Click ‘Select Items…’

Then:

1. Select Codes.
2. Expand the parent z - org code. (or name you chose for it)
3. Tick the boxes for the three organisation codes.
4. Hit the ‘OK’ button.

Finally:

• Hit ‘Run Query’

Remember to also -

1. Hit ‘Save Criteria…’
2. Provide a suitable name.

Not-you🤢 It’s not you, it’s NVivo

With some queries NVivo will ask you for a name upfront before letting you add criteria, with others you can modify criteria before saving - just always ensure if its a query you plan to reuse again in future to ‘Save Criteria…’ before closing the tab for it. It is painfully easy to setup a complex query and then accidentally close it without having saved it.

This will then produce a coding matrix you can then use to find sections coded at both a regular and organisation code.

It may not look that useful at first, is it not just a bunch of cells with numbers?

Each number is a count of how many sections of text are coded for the relevant row and column codes for the cell.

Far more important though - and not made obvious by how NVivo displays the results - is that you can double-click on any of the cells! That will open a Code Results view for all the text for that cell. So, for the coding matrix query used in the screenshot, if you click on the cell where row = campaign and column = Gold, it will open a results view showing all text coded at both campaign and Gold - in other words, all the text for campaign that we coded as potential gold for using as quotes when writing up.

Zombie🧟 Slaying QDAS Zombies

Now imagine as you have gone through doing your coding you have coded to your thematic codes and organisation codes. With a single simple matrix query you can now find every excerpt coded as your main thematic codes and your gold - or equivalent - code.

It would also be easy to add another layer of complexity to this - creating a matrix query filtered to only have find excerpts for these cells for only specifc groups of participants; sections of our interview transcripts; or also coded at one of our ‘writing’ organisation codes.

NVivo is clunky and not intuitive at first, but once you start to get a sense for what each feature does, you can then start to consider how each can be woven together based on the needs of your analysis. Rather than forcing you into specific ways of doing your analysis, combining features provides a vast range of creative flexibility.