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Coding and Analyzing Semi-
Structured Interviews: First-
Generation Latinx College
Students’ Perceptions of How
Family Relationships Impact Their
College Success
© 2019 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research Methods Datasets.
Coding and Analyzing Semi-
Structured Interviews: First-
Generation Latinx College
Students’ Perceptions of How
Family Relationships Impact Their
College Success
Student Guide
Introduction
This dataset demonstrates how researchers can analyze transcribed, semi-
structured, qualitative interview data through a process of coding and thematic
development. The data are provided by Dr. Jennifer A. Strangfeld in the
Department of Sociology, Gerontology, and Gender Studies at California State
University, Stanislaus, and were supported in part by a Research, Scholarship,
and Creative Activities Grant from California State University, Stanislaus. The
interviews come from a larger research study designed to better understand
how families may serve as a source of “cultural wealth” (Yosso, 2005) for first-
generation Latinx (a gender-neutral term to refer to Latinos and Latinas) college
students and thereby facilitate persistence towards retention and completion of
degrees. In other words, this research examines the extent to which families
provide their first-generation students with emotional support, motivation, and
strategies for perseverance and the importance these students attach to those
resources in facilitating their college success. This research is rooted in a
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constructivism approach whereby the emphasis is on the meanings participants
attach to familial support and its importance in their overall academic journeys.
The dataset model presented here encourages readers to understand how a
study’s epistemological and theoretical framework impacts not only the research
questions asked but also the study’s methodology and approach to data analysis.
Thus, this exemplar will be particularly useful for those engaging in social science
and higher education research who want to better understand the connection
between epistemology, methodology, and data analysis.
Semi-Structured Interviews
Like other methodological approaches, the choice to collect data through semi-
structured interviews should stem from the epistemological and theoretical
framework guiding the research project rather than serve as a starting point in
itself (Jones, Torres, & Arminio, 2014). For this project, the focus was on how
first-generation Latinx students discussed the concept of family support and its
importance to them, given that their family members had little to no personal
experience with college and generally had limited financial resources to pay for
tuition and other costs. By emphasizing the meanings that participants themselves
attached to their family support, this project took a constructivist epistemological
approach, for which semi-structured interviews are an appropriate methodological
choice.
In semi-structured interviews, the researcher “unpacks” the complex and diverse
meanings that individuals attach to their lived experiences (Ritchie, 2003). They
do this by engaging participants in focused conversations that include appropriate
follow-up questions to ensure clarity and depth of understanding (Rubin & Rubin,
2012). Importantly, however, these conversations are guided by organized
interview schedules of open-ended yet purposeful questions that are as free of
judgement and bias as possible and reflect the project’s epistemological and
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College Success
theoretical underpinnings (Rubin & Rubin, 2012). For example, given the
constructivist focus of this project, I asked participants to discuss what concepts
like “family” and “emotional support” mean to them, so that the focus was on their
meanings rather than my own.
In the planning stages of this project, I solicited feedback on the interview
questions from a colleague with expertise in research on first-generation college
students. Based on that feedback, I made adjustments to some questions and
added others as recommended. Additionally, it is
worth noting here that semi-structured interviews require strong active listening
skills to effectively solicit follow-up information (Legard, Keegan, & Ward, 2003).
Consequently, I used notepaper during interviews to keep track of issues I wished
to follow up on either immediately or later on in the interview. I reviewed these
notes before subsequent interviews with new participants to ensure I asked about
similar points whenever relevant.
Data Exemplar: Semi-Structured Interviews of First-Generation
Latinx College Students
The data consist of excerpts from interviews of how first-generation Latinx college
students framed the importance of their families in facilitating their decisions
to pursue college and encouraging their persistence to degree completion.
Oftentimes, first-generation college students are discussed in terms of their
cultural capital deficits (i.e., the knowledge they lack about college applications
and expectations; see Engle & Tinto, 2008). However, research also suggests that
Latinx students in particular have strong familial ties that may in fact be an asset in
their college success (i.e., a cultural wealth model; see Yosso, 2005). To explore
this, the project’s central questions included:
• How do first-generation Latinx students construct the role of their families
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within the broader frame of their academic success?
• To what extent are students distracted by family obligations and
expectations?
• To what extent do students draw upon family members for support?
Based on the above research focus, the interview outline consisted of questions
based on the following broader topics:
• Motivations for attending college
• Sources of emotional support
• Sources of financial support
• Family responsibilities
• Keys to college success
The extracts below come from questions related to the first two areas of inquiry.
The participants represent four (two males and two females) of the 20 first-
generation Latinx college students (aged 18–25) included in the study. Interviews
were audio-recorded, lasted about one hour, and were conducted by Dr. Jennifer
A. Strangfeld. To protect confidentiality, interviews were done in a private room on
campus, and all participants were assigned pseudonyms.
Analysis: Coding and Thematic Development
Theoretical Grounding
The epistemological and methodological underpinnings of the research project
play a role in the data analysis process as well. For example, in this study,
the emphasis on constructivism and meaning suggests that analysis should go
beyond just a description of the data and include an interpretation of why
participants assign the meanings that they do and how those meanings shape
their lived experience (Jones et al., 2014). In conducting this kind of analysis,
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researchers look for what are often referred to as themes which, simply put, are
labels or phrases the researcher attaches to respondents’ descriptions and ideas
(Rubin & Rubin, 2012). Quoting directly from respondents becomes particularly
useful in this context because the quotes serve as evidence of the researcher’s
interpretive conclusions (Glesne, 2011).
Coding
One way to discover themes in a research project is through the process of
coding, which occurs after interviews have been transcribed from audio
recordings. Coding generally occurs in stages, thus requiring researchers to
review transcripts several times. There are multiple coding techniques and
methods that a researcher can use, and thus the technique a researcher uses
should align with the epistemological, theoretical, and methodological framework
of the study (Saldaña, 2016). Out of the coding process comes the themes that
frame the research findings.
In the first round of coding, I utilized what is known as “in vivo coding,” which takes
the actual words or short phrases that the respondents articulate as the codes
themselves (Saldaña, 2016). In this approach, the researcher does not label or
summarize the respondent’s intent because this technique gives primacy to the
meanings and language of the participants, which, as noted above, reflects the
epistemological and theoretical approach of this project. Generally, this process
results in a large number of codes. For example, in the excerpts below,
participants were asked to discuss their motivations to be the first in their families
to attend college. From their responses emerged the codes “want better for us”
and “owed it to my parents”
I think it was just really to do better than – I mean nothing against my
family – I just wanted to do better for us. I think I’m doing it for everyone
else in my family so that’s my goal and that’s what I’m trying to do
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(Ricardo, age 23).
And mostly I really felt like I kind of owed it to my parents … my parents
have worked their whole lives so I felt like, you know, I was kind of – I
owed them something (Felix, age 22).
To illustrate this in another example, participants were asked to first describe who,
if anyone, they relied on for emotional support and second, what that support
looked like. Codes that emerged from this line of questioning from Gabriela’s
interview were “Parents and sisters” for the first question and “listening,”
“someone to come home to,” and “affectionate” for the second.
Interviewer: Okay, so I want to talk a little bit about emotional support –
who are the people in your life that you think are providing you with – if
any – emotional support.
Gabriela: My parents and my sisters.
Interviewer: Okay and what does that emotional support look like – what
kinds of things would you rely upon them for?
Gabriela: Just listening, I think. Just having someone to come home
to and talk to. And even though she doesn’t know anything … . But when
I’m frustrated or when stuff happened, I can come home and I can tell
them all these things … . My mom’s really really affectionate – she will
sit on the bed with me, she’s like ‘Okay now we’re just going to spoon
and we can watch a movie and don’t worry about it.
Similarly, Ricardo’s interview produced the codes “parents and grandma” and
“talking through it” as noted below.
Interviewer: Who are the people, if any, in your life that you would
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consider your core emotional support?
Ricardo: I would say my parents, both of my parents, and my grandma.
That’s pretty much it.
Interviewer: What are some ways in which you feel like those people
give you the support that you need?
Ricardo: Well my grandma, when I talk to her, she’s always trying to
figure out what’s wrong with me or like if something’s going on. And
I get to the point where when she asks me constantly, I just tell her
if something went wrong. Then she’ll like talk to me about it. And my
parents, just whenever I’m struggling or something, I would just tell them,
I would just give them a call. And they would just talk me through it and
kind of just tell me things are going to work out eventually.
From Codes to Themes
Once the first round of coding was completed, I conducted a second round of
coding using what is called “pattern coding,” which groups related codes into
larger categories and thereby reduces the number of codes into more manageable
categories (Saldaña, 2016). Thus, unlike in vivo coding, codes are derived from
the researcher rather than the respondents’ language. Applying this to the above
examples, I categorized “want better for us” and “owed it to my parents” as
“financially support family.” In both examples, students were motivated to attend
college because they wanted to be able to support their families later in life. This
is evident when Ricardo mentioned he wanted to provide something better for his
family (not just himself), and Felix mentioned that his parents had been working
their whole lives (for him), and he felt that he owed them something financially in
return.
Similarly, when participants were asked who they depend on for emotional
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support, “parents and sisters” and “parents and grandma” were categorized as
“family.” Other codes that developed in this round included “university personnel”
(which included the in vivo codes “faculty,” “administrators,” and “advisors”) and
“peers” (which included the in vivo codes “club members” and “friends”).
Furthermore, in reference to the question about what emotional support looks
like, the in vivo codes “listening” and “talking through it” from round one were
categorized as “sympathetic listening.” In the examples presented above, both
Gabriela and Ricardo talked about just having someone that they can talk to or
with – someone who will be sympathetic and tell them that things will work out.
Likewise, the in vivo code “affectionate” was categorized with other first round
codes like “hugging” and “hand holding” as “physical affection” in the second
round.
Though the terms themes and codes are often used interchangeably, themes are
phrases that derive from the codes and help the researcher move from a mere
description of the data to an interpretation (Saldaña, 2016). In developing themes,
the broad topics from the interview guide can provide a useful context. For
example, in questions related to “motivations for attending college,” the pattern
code “financially support family” consistently appeared across a multitude of
interviews. From this code, the theme of collective family upward mobility rather
than just individual upward mobility emerged as a primary motivator for first-
generation students attending college. Students attend not just to pursue
individualistic goals towards their own financial success but rather with the
intention of supporting and even uplifting the entire family. Additionally, the theme
addresses the broader research question of how first-generation Latinx students
construct the role of their families within the context of their college experiences.
Another prominent code was “family,” which emerged in the context of the
interview questions related to sources of emotional support. From this came the
theme families are a primary source of emotional support, which again speaks
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to the first of the three broad research questions listed above. Another theme
was family emotional support is primarily non-academic. In other words, the
emotional support that families provide generally consists of hearing complaints
about academic stress or offering unconditional affection. Families can offer very
little in terms of specific strategies for dealing with academic problems, but
students nonetheless see their support as invaluable. This theme addresses the
third research question, which speaks to the extent to which students draw upon
family members for support.
Summary
The steps outlined in this exemplar offer one example of how to analyze qualitative
data from the coding to process to thematic development. An important
component of qualitative data analysis is understanding how epistemological and
theoretical frameworks guide all aspects of the study, including the research
questions, methodological approach, and the techniques used for analyzing data.
In this example, the constructivist approach suggested primacy be given to the
meanings participants attach to their families and the support they receive. This
is reflected in the first round of in vivo coding where codes reflect the language
participants themselves used. From there, a second round of pattern coding
focused on broader categories that represented the meanings articulated in the
in vivo coding. Finally, from the pattern codes emerged the broader themes that
emerged from the interview topics and ultimately connected back to the research
questions themselves.
Reflective Questions
1. What is the author’s epistemological framework and how exactly is that
shaping the author’s choice of methodology and data analysis
techniques?
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2. What problems can arise when researchers do not consider how
epistemological or theoretical underpinnings should guide
methodology and data analysis?
3. Conduct in vivo coding from the passages provided. What other codes
emerge besides the ones the researcher has presented here in this
exemplar?
4. Group in vivo codes into pattern codes and themes. What other
themes emerge besides the ones presented by the researcher in this
exemplar?
Further Reading
Engle, J., & Tinto, V. (2008). Moving beyond access: College success for low-
income, first generation students. Washington, DC: The Pell Institute.
Glesne, C. (2011). Becoming qualitative researchers: An introduction (4th ed.).
Boston, MA: Pearson Education.
Jones, S. R., Torres, V., & Arminio, J. (2014). Negotiating the complexities of
qualitative research in higher education. New York, NY: Routledge.
Legard, R., Keegan, J., & Ward, K. (2003). In-depth interviews. In J. Ritchie &
J. Lewis (Eds.), Qualitative research practice: A guide for social science students
and researchers (pp. 138–169). London, UK: SAGE.
Ritchie, J. (2003). The applications of qualitative methods to social research. In J.
Ritchie & J. Lewis (Eds.), Qualitative research practice: A guide for social science
students and researchers (pp. 24–46). London, UK: SAGE.
Rubin, H. J., & Rubin, I. S. (2012). Qualitative interviewing: The art of hearing
data (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Saldaña, J. (2016). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. London, UK:
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College Students’ Perceptions of How Family Relationships Impact Their
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SAGE.
Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of
community cultural wealth. Race, Ethnicity, and Education, 8(1), 69–91. Retrieved
from https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006
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College Students’ Perceptions of How Family Relationships Impact Their
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