Contribution of community radios in rural areas development case study of Habwa Ijambo? program aired at RC Huye

2.5. Coding and Processing

In  Kelle and Seidel (1995) codes are differentiated in two basic ways; they can act as «objective, transparent representations of facts» or they are heuristic tools to enable further investigation and discovery.  At one level the codes are acting as collection points for significant data. At another level the code labels themselves are acting as markers or pointers to the way you rationalise what it is that you think is happening. At a third level they enable you to continue to make discoveries about deeper realities in the data that is referenced by the codes.

The processing can be very labour intensive, in much the same way as it for processing qualitative interview transcripts. Using highly trained coders and a rigorous unmbiguous coding scheme is very important particularly where there is no clear demarcation of events or behaviour in the dairy entries. Clearly, awell designed diary with a coherent pre-coding system should cut down on the degree of editing and coding (J.D. Brewer(2003).^8(*)

After collecting data gathered from the field, the following stage is to process the data collected. Therefore, analysis of data is a process of inspecting, cleaning, transforming, and modelling data with the goal of highlighting useful information, suggesting conclusions, and supporting decision making. Data from various sources is gathered, reviewed, and then analyzed to form a sort of finding or conclusion. In this research data from different sources will be analysed, interpreted and will form a particular finding about how this radio is participating in promotion of freedom of expression.

* ⁸ The A-Z of social research: a dictionary of key social science research concepts by John D. Brewer