Data Coding

Gibbs defines coding as ‘the way in which you define what the data you are analyzing are about’ (2012). He highlights this process as one involving the identification and recording of one or more extracts of text or other forms of data collected such as images, theoretical or descriptive data (Gibbs, 2012).

3.7.1. Pre-coding Process

Our primary data collection was analyzed through a coding process that was used in order to detect trends, as well as connecting elements. The first cycle of coding was concentrated in pre-coding all the transcripts and creating a list of topics. This consisted of ‘highlighting, underlining, circling, significant participants quotes or passages’ that seem important and creating terms for the different sub-topics (Saldaña, 2013). This method allowed us to pre-divide some of the text extracted from the transcriptions into general topics, sub-topics. And later on into the four main challenges suggested in Alrawadieh et al. (2018) typology, a process which was facilitated through the interview guides. In this typology, Alrawadieh et al. (2018) divide the challenges met by the Syrian refugee entrepreneurs into 4 dimensions.

Namely, legislative and administrative, market-related issues, finance, and socio-cultural.

The use of the typology has allowed us to distinguish and allocate the barriers gathered from our data. According to Saldaña (2013), this method of coding allows the researchers to begin with a general question as to ‘what is going on here?’ and narrow the focus down. Next in the process was to create a table with the topics listing the barriers and referring to the right passage in each of the interviews conducted that were related to the specific topics (appendix 25). In this table, the quotes of our interviewees are present, the text in bold represents either direct or the narrated quotes. In the beginning, we divided our findings into 19 topics;

namely, support system, language, culture shock, integration, discrimination, roles of institutions, banks, finance, taxation, competition, law, business formalization, residency status, experience, COVID-19, media, property acquisition, employment quota, and suggestions. Topic coding, also referred to as descriptive coding, is a method applied to the first cycle of the coding after having gained a bit of insight into the topics given, prior to the coding process. This coding process allowed us to identify ‘the basic topic of a passage of qualitative data’ by indexing and categorizing (Saldaña, 2013). This method summarizes in a word or a phrase the topic of a passage of qualitative data making it a descriptive coding process (Saldaña, 2013). The structure of the typology has been modified from the original typology to fit our data. The choice behind this change results from our data showing that there are many more elements we deem to belong under the socio-cultural challenges. For instance, elements that would be part of the challenges related to legislative and administrative, market related issues and finance were relocated to the socio-cultural challenges. These challenges were for instance; experience. Originally, we perceived this topic to be under market related issues, nonetheless, we realized that in terms of our study, it was more relevant to have it under integration. This decision is due to the fact that the experience these entrepreneurs already possessed and have acquired in the Turkish society, can relate to their personal and business integration. Additionally, the dimension named finance which previously was under the challenge ‘finance’ was integrated into the support system. What was referred to as the role of institutions was renamed organizations and was moved to support systems. After the first-cycle coding the topics were integrated into the typology structure in the following way: socio-cultural challenges include: support system, culture, language, integration, discrimination and the Turkish media. In this process, ‘culture shock’ was renamed into ‘culture’. The reason behind this is because, despite the

entrepreneurs facing some cultural barriers, they would not be denominated as a shock.

Challenges related to legislative and administrative are: law, business formalization, property acquisition and residency status. This is followed by challenges connected to market related issues which are: competition, COVID-19 and employment quota. Finally, the challenges under finance are: banks and taxation.

3.7.2. Coding Tree

Once we were able to build a clear picture of the interviews and the topics, we moved forward to developing the topics into sub-topics representing the areas of challenges, see appendix 24. These areas of challenges were inspired by Alrawadieh et al. (2018) typology of challenges of refugee entrepreneurship. Firstly, we proceeded by filtering the topics made in our first cycle coding. This process consisted of taking sub-topics and having them function as a divider between what was said on a personal and professional perspective. For instance, in our 1st cycle coding, taking the topic of ‘support system’, our sub-categories shown in our coding table consisted of the ‘inner-circle’, ‘business network’ and ‘belief’.

Within the ‘inner-circle’ sub-category, the topics consists of ‘family’ and ‘friends’ whereas the ‘business network’ sub-category consists of topics such as ‘business partner’ and

‘resources from non-state actors’. Finally, the subcategory of ‘belief’ consisted of the sub-category of ‘religion’ and its role as a support system is further reflected by the quotes gathered from the different interviews. In the process of creating our tree, we made the decision to proceed with a similar structure to the one used in our coding table, but leaving the sub-category section out from the tree. Therefore the coding tree only consists of the following; the 1st cycle coding entails the topics, followed by the sub-topics, the 2nd cycle coding has been divided following Alrawadieh et al. (2018) typology of challenges of refugee entrepreneurs, and finally the key-theme referring to our research area; the barriers (appendix 24).

The topic is referred to as a subject being ‘talked or written about’; leaving the content of the interview the ‘substance of the message’ (Saldaña, 2013). In our case, this phase has allowed us to begin from our general question aiming at listing the barriers encountered by these entrepreneurs and narrow down the focus to finding elements that help us understand the role of the different actors involved. In the coding process, we were able to separate the

topics and sub topics which had emerged from the coding of interviews conducted with the entrepreneurs on the one hand and the organizations on the other. Having divided it all into topics and sub-topics has allowed us to shift away from descriptive coding, by taking the respondent’s terms into a more analytic level.

3.7.3. Pattern Coding

Our second cycle of coding focuses on pattern coding. The pattern codes will allow the previously indexed and categorized data to be organized into sets and themes, leading us to our key theme; namely, the barriers. The pattern coding process further helps in the development of major themes resulting from the data, followed by ‘the search for rules, causes to phenomenons, and explanations in the data; with the examination of social networks and patterns of human relationships; or the formation of theoretical constructs and processes.’ (Saldaña, 2013). This will be further illustrated in the findings chapter with the emergence of 4 main challenges In order to create an overview of the data retrieved from the interviews we conducted, an excel sheet has been created in order to place quotes extracted from the interviews under the different topics. Thereafter, an overview was made by extracting specific barriers from these quotes (appendix 28).

In some cases, analytic codes had to be used in order to avoid similarities between the topics and the sub-topics processed. This has of course been done through analysis, which might have biased the data given our own interpretation of what is mentioned in the interviews.

Taking as point of departure the descriptive coding, and moving further to topics and analytical codes; has allowed us to determine the most important barriers when starting and running entrepreneurial activities for the Syrian entrepreneurs.