Wo categories from Coder 2, “avoids being negative–self-control” and “honorable–related to cultural manliness.” Accordingly, the optimal solution involved creating the common thematic category of “honor, respect, and self-control” (see Table 1). Moreover, the review team agreed that extraction of certain culturally framed aspects/codes of machismo were important and should be developed into a category. Thus, in the optimal solution, this category was labeled culturally constructed stereotypes (as these related to the Mexican or American cultures). A similar rationale was applied to the remaining categories of physical control–abusive to … others and emotional controlabusive to … others,” as contributed by Coder 1, and their match to the broader, “high-ego, superiority, controlling, and arrogant” category contributed by Coder 2. This led to the creation of the thematic categories of “physically controlling and abusive” and “emotionally controlling and domineering” (see Table 1).MGCD516 manufacturer NIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptJ Mix Methods Res. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 December 11.Castro et al.PageIn summary, this concordance analysis used initial and revised solutions to generate an “optimal solution,” while also working to create “strong thematic categories.” In the present Cycloheximide cancer illustration, merging two smaller thematic categories into larger and broader thematic categories, “physically controlling and abusive” and “emotionally controlling and dominating,” contributed toward satisfying this heuristic criterion of creating “strong thematic categories.”6 Issues involving “weak thematic categories.”–As noted, thematic categories that contain less than 20 of the total number of response codes are regarded as “weak” because they contain few response codes and thus few cases that mention the noted theme, that is, a high percentage of null (0 = no mention) codes. In the extreme case, a thematic category consisting of one or zero response codes is by definition an “empty thematic category.” From our prior research, “weak thematic categories” later produce “skewed thematic variables,” which are problematic for quantitative data analyses. As an important note, a low-response weak thematic category can be strategically retained if the investigator believes that it is of interest to identify and later examine certain cases that are unique or different, to give voice to these cases in later analyses. Step 4: Dimensionalization or Scale Coding Rationale for dimensionalization–Dimensionalization via scale coding7 adds the dimension of frequency of response or intensity of emphasis to a thematic category. Recall that for the construct of machismo, the first focus question asked, “Please tell me what a real `macho’ man is like (their traits or characteristics: _________).” From the response codes, one inductively produced thematic category was “aggressive/controlling.” Some representative response codes that were used to identify this thematic category were “likes to get into fights,” “his word is the law,” and “he bosses everyone around and makes [others] do what he wants.” As we have developed this procedure, in IMM, scale coding allows the encoding of nuances or “shades of emphasis,” an approach described as dimensionalization by Strauss and Corbin (1990). Scale coding also converts a dichotomous category (0 = no mention, 1= mention) into an ordinal or interval-level variable, that is, 0 = no mention to.Wo categories from Coder 2, “avoids being negative–self-control” and “honorable–related to cultural manliness.” Accordingly, the optimal solution involved creating the common thematic category of “honor, respect, and self-control” (see Table 1). Moreover, the review team agreed that extraction of certain culturally framed aspects/codes of machismo were important and should be developed into a category. Thus, in the optimal solution, this category was labeled culturally constructed stereotypes (as these related to the Mexican or American cultures). A similar rationale was applied to the remaining categories of physical control–abusive to … others and emotional controlabusive to … others,” as contributed by Coder 1, and their match to the broader, “high-ego, superiority, controlling, and arrogant” category contributed by Coder 2. This led to the creation of the thematic categories of “physically controlling and abusive” and “emotionally controlling and domineering” (see Table 1).NIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptJ Mix Methods Res. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 December 11.Castro et al.PageIn summary, this concordance analysis used initial and revised solutions to generate an “optimal solution,” while also working to create “strong thematic categories.” In the present illustration, merging two smaller thematic categories into larger and broader thematic categories, “physically controlling and abusive” and “emotionally controlling and dominating,” contributed toward satisfying this heuristic criterion of creating “strong thematic categories.”6 Issues involving “weak thematic categories.”–As noted, thematic categories that contain less than 20 of the total number of response codes are regarded as “weak” because they contain few response codes and thus few cases that mention the noted theme, that is, a high percentage of null (0 = no mention) codes. In the extreme case, a thematic category consisting of one or zero response codes is by definition an “empty thematic category.” From our prior research, “weak thematic categories” later produce “skewed thematic variables,” which are problematic for quantitative data analyses. As an important note, a low-response weak thematic category can be strategically retained if the investigator believes that it is of interest to identify and later examine certain cases that are unique or different, to give voice to these cases in later analyses. Step 4: Dimensionalization or Scale Coding Rationale for dimensionalization–Dimensionalization via scale coding7 adds the dimension of frequency of response or intensity of emphasis to a thematic category. Recall that for the construct of machismo, the first focus question asked, “Please tell me what a real `macho’ man is like (their traits or characteristics: _________).” From the response codes, one inductively produced thematic category was “aggressive/controlling.” Some representative response codes that were used to identify this thematic category were “likes to get into fights,” “his word is the law,” and “he bosses everyone around and makes [others] do what he wants.” As we have developed this procedure, in IMM, scale coding allows the encoding of nuances or “shades of emphasis,” an approach described as dimensionalization by Strauss and Corbin (1990). Scale coding also converts a dichotomous category (0 = no mention, 1= mention) into an ordinal or interval-level variable, that is, 0 = no mention to.
