Over 1,000 Articles Coded

Today was a DELIGHTFUL day for me in that I FINALLY finished coding my sample of over 1,000 newspaper articles for my dissertation. This is my primary source of data for my dissertation and it has taken countless hours over the past 6 months (this being my main focus) to get this done. What is coding some of you may ask? Well, I have a computer program that helps me to be able to organize the massive amounts of data so that I can easily identify trends across the articles as well as retrieve specific quotes. The program is only an organizer- it doesn't perform the analysis for me. So, I still have my work cut out for me, but at least it should be much easier now. I also have a better sense of the contents of the data since I have been through it all. Hmmm- I'm not sure which will be harder. Doing the 1,000 articles or writing up the findings . . . I sadly suspect the latter but at least now I have material to work with. The next question that people ask me is when am I going to be "done" with this. It totally depends on how fast I can analyze and write. My goal/current expectation is to be done with a draft by January (I left a fairly generous amount of time to keep my sanity). I am so happy that one of my fellow PhD candidates from Brandeis is acting moving out to the area in July! She is working on her dissertation too has the same goal of graduating by next year so we are forming our own study group to encourage each other along. After my last post about my work, I am happy to announce that things are looking much better.