The coding of the data was initially by the smallest unit or micro-unit, such as, ‘classroom focus’ or ‘focus on core business’. With the data coding progressing from one transcript to the next, the ‘microcodes’ clustered into broader codes which further aggregated into the stems that appear at the beginning of each complete code. Whereas some of the words or phrases used in the codes of the open coding process were those of the researcher,many of them were of the participants or ‘in-vivo’ codes.
The third column, as already explained, was the column in which the text from the transcripts was ‘fragmented’for coding. Almost all the text in each transcript was coded. However, text that was found irrelevant to the topicor had nothing to do with the PMS was uncoded. The creation of the fourth column ‘comment/memo’ was torecord the researcher’s reflections of the ideas that emerged from the data (Bulawa, 2011).
In this study, the researcher includes some categories from the data analysis to support the findings. As indicatedby Glaser (2002) “concept (category) denotes a pattern that is carefully discovered by constant comparing oftheoretically sampled data until conceptual saturation of interchangeable indices” (p. 24). There are instances where numbers are attached to the categories to represent the number of participants whose interview data was
allocated to a particular category but only where this is found applicable. The significance of these numbers is that in grounded theory researchers have to account for varied individual participants’ experiences of a particular phenomenon. Nevertheless, the extent to which such numbers should be interpreted is limited, hence the numbers should not be understood to represent the precise measures of the prevalence of participants’perceptions. This is so in view of the fact that some participants in the group interviews, did not respond toparticular questions or issues under discussion regardless of efforts of the researcher to have them participate.
The findings which are part of a larger study that was undertaken to investigate the senior management team’s perceptions about the implementation of the PMS in senior secondary schools, reveal participants’ concerns about impediments that make it difficult to fulfil their role of implementing the PMS effectively and sustainably (Bulawa, 2011).