Analytic domains contain terms from the researcher and social theory. They are most helpful when the meanings in a setting are tacit, implicit, or unrecognized by participants. The researcher infers meaningful categories and identifies patterns from observations and artifacts, then assigns terms to them.
Domains are constructed from data notes and are embedded in the notes. A researcher reads his or her notes looking for common semantic relationships (e.g., is a kind of place, is kind of person, is a kind of feeling) in order to find them. He or the examples, a witness in a judicial setting or an attitude toward a child’s death are cover terms for the domain. Once he or her has a list of cover terms, the researcher next organizes the information from the notes as included terms. He or she prepares a worksheet for each domain relationship. The worksheet contains the cover relationship. An example worksheet is shown in Box 16.3
Next, the researcher locates examples of the domain relationship from his or her notes. The analysis proceeds until all relevant domains have been identified. He or she then organizes the domains by comparing their differences and similarities. Finally, the researcher reorganizes domains into typologies or taxonomies and reexamines the domains to create new, broader domains that include other domains as included terms.