Open Coding

Open coding is the first, exploratory phase of qualitative data analysis in which raw text — interviews, field notes, or documents — is broken into discrete segments and labelled with short descriptive codes. Developed within grounded theory by Glaser and Strauss and later elaborated by Strauss and Corbin, the procedure is deliberately open and inductive: the analyst reads line-by-line without imposing a predetermined framework, allowing concepts to emerge directly from the data. The resulting codes are then compared and grouped into provisional categories that become the building blocks for subsequent, more selective analysis.