The Use of Coding in a Situational Analysis of the Political Participation of Indigenous People in Chile's Constitutional Process

Abstract

In situational analysis (SA), various procedures are available, including coding and mapping, each serving distinct purposes at different levels of the research process. In this article, I present a case regarding the uses of coding based on a research project focused on the political participation of Indigenous peoples in Chile's constitutional process. The motivation for this article stems from the challenges I encountered as a newcomer to SA.

Within the research process, coding—used alongside other techniques like mapping—played a crucial role in enabling engagement with the data and tackling analytical challenges. In the initial stage, coding helped identify various elements and discourses in the constitutional process that were essential to the project's findings. In a later stage, it assisted in redeveloping a positional map that initially did not reflect the full spectrum of discursive positions. In vivo codes also fostered interdisciplinary connections among bodies of literature in political science and education. These applications of coding can benefit other researchers, particularly those who are new to the methodology.