dialectic recoding

Dialectic recoding (or recoding dialectic) is a technique to evaluate inductive coding techniques such as grounded theory or to augment theory-drive approaches to qualitative data analysis. Given a set of codes (from an inductive process or prior theory), you code each utterance or event in a qualitative data set. If an utterence is hard to code this may suggest a gap in the coding and perhaps a new category needs to be added. If there is a coding, you say to yourself (not necessarily literally!), "it is is just an X" (where 'X' is the code). This might feel wrong, that "just an X", misses something critical (this is the dialectic). If this is the case you try to articulate what is wrong, and in so doing may find that a subcode, or addtional code is needed.