There are five groups of searches with seventeen types overall, as listed in Box 14.4 They permit asking and getting answers to many different kinds of questions about the data. Using index searches forces you to be precise about the questions you are asking the data. They can also reveal problems and inconsistencies in your coding, perhaps indicating that your definition of a node has in effect changed as you are going through different documents.
Each index search automatically creates a new node which is placed in the ‘Index Search’ part of the index system (i.e. the Node Explorer). Link other nodes, these can be browsed and can be used to develop new nodes which can be inserted into the Index Tree system (or left as free nodes); see the discussion above on text searches. As a result of carrying out a number of index searches you may well decide to make major modifications to your index system. This is particularly likely if you are following a grounded theory approach where the theory (in the form of the index system) arises from your interaction with the data.