Selective coding

How it is used

Common in some grounded theory traditions after earlier category work.

Example sentences

1. Through selective coding, we organized the categories around maintaining professional identity.

   A central category gives the account an organizing focus.

2. The selective coding revealed that our proposed core category did not connect all the findings.

   Integration can expose weaknesses in an emerging theory.

Common collocations

• conduct selective coding
• selective coding stage

Related terms

• codingIn qualitative research, the process of labeling parts of the data, such as sentences in interviews, with short codes that describe their meaning.
• theoretical frameworkThe theory or set of connected theories that a study uses to explain its problem, shape its questions and interpret its findings.

More terms: Data and Analysis

• data
• findings
• analysis
• significant
• draw a conclusion
• correlation
• thematic analysis
• account for
• interpret
• dataset
• mean
• standard deviation