It was 2017 and the third time I was boarding a plane in my young adult life. I was heading to East Lansing, Michigan to begin the Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) with the Department of Sociology and Chicano/Latino Studies at Michigan State University (MSU). As an undergraduate McNair Scholar from Southern California, this was an opportunity that many Chicanx students didn’t even know about. As a young qualitative scholar developing skills in research methods, I was excited to participate in SROP, which is meant to “prepare undergraduates for graduate study through intensive research experiences with faculty mentors and enrichment activities” at Big Ten Academic Alliance universities (The Graduate School, MSU). In the summer of 2017, I conducted a research project using Dedoose for the first time.  

It was Dr. Ayala’s first time participating as a mentor with SROP and she offered academic, professional, and personal support in ways that other first-generation students lacked. Our first meeting consisted of walking to a local coffee shop and talking about who we were as individuals, what we wanted as minority scholars working together for the first time, and my goals in life. After checking-in and getting to know each other personally, we began talking about summer research expectations. She let me know that we would be using  Dedoose for our research.

With my summer mentor, we collaboratively decided the primary research question guiding my research project to be: how are stories about Latinx education framed in Spanish language newspapers? When I met with my mentor, she asked me if I could read and write in Spanish: I said yes. The goal of the qualitative research project was to unravel the stories written on Latinxs’ education that may provide a structural and asset-based counter story to the hegemonic descriptions of Latinxs’ relationship to higher education from a cultural deficit lens. It was important for the qualitative research project to incorporate theoretical frameworks we were building from such as critical race theory (CRT), Latina/o critical race theory (LatCrit), and critical discourse epistemologies and methodologies allowing us to reframe colonial, essentializing, and race-based media narratives of Latinxs (Alemán & Alemán, 2016). As a qualitative analysis tool, Dedoose allowed us to incorporate theoretical insights in our project in every step through codes and descriptions we created.

The project’s data sources included a sample of twenty Spanish-language news articles with the largest circulation in, respectively, the United States’ Northeast, South, Midwest, and West written between 19 October 2016 to 30 June 2017. The study period was selected to situate our investigation within the context of the first Trump administration’s framing of Latinxs education. After identifying the articles we would analyze, we uploaded the twenty articles onto Dedoose. Since this was my first time using Dedoose, my mentor walked me through the different features we would be focusing on specifically and my tasks within the software: coding, descriptions, and translating.  

After a few demos in her office, together we combed through the text of the articles as well as images for an initial overview of the data on Dedoose to make sure everything looked accurate. We used Dedoose for the analysis with an initial inductive coding of the Spanish data which included text and images, where general themes emerged. The initial coding involved line-by-line and paragraph-by-paragraph coding that yielded themes shaped by both the data itself and theoretical frameworks. On Dedoose, we were able to identify patterns across the Spanish language news articles through the codes we created and the overall themes by using the code tree feature. We changed the colors of codes to visually distinguish them from each other and to help us organize our themes later in the process.

The second step involved axial and selective coding, synthesizing the main and intersectional themes that emerged from the newspaper stories. The initial, axial, and selective coding was done with the material in Spanish on Dedoose, and once the excerpts were chosen, they were translated to English by myself and reviewed by my advisor for accuracy. Dedoose was a beneficial tool for the bilingual research we conducted and did not limit our interpretation of the data but instead encouraged us to make more connections between our data and theoretical frameworks that highlight the pervasiveness of racism in everyday life including education, language, discourse, and policies in the United States.

After coding on Dedoose, we reviewed our code tree and descriptions associated with each code to develop a series of the three overarching themes as our findings: 1) racialization of education, 2) education as the state’s responsibility, and 3) Latinxs value education. With Dedoose, the integrity of our research examining specific issues Latina/o/x communities navigate including ethnicity, culture, identity, language, immigration, phenotype, and sexuality (Delgado Bernal 2002) as well as relationships between language and power within broader understandings of social processes, and specifically within my project, education narratives, remained intact.  

Overall, my first project using Dedoose facilitated a “bilingual analysis of the stories on Latinx education in our sample of Spanish-language newspapers” which “allowed us to critically approach and honor the nuanced and strength-based narratives of Latinx communities” (Ayala, Ordoñez, and Ruvalcaba 2025, 1024). As a qualitative research project in the fields of sociology and Chicana/o and Latina/o studies, Dedoose facilitated my academic research interests and passion for social justice to expand and develop a deeper grasp of qualitative methods.

Outcomes and Impact

The impacts of this project were fruitful for my own academic and professional development as an undergraduate student aspiring to attend graduate school and for my mentor, whose first time participating in SROP was a reminder of the need for culturally responsive guidance in higher education. The tangible outcomes of my first project with Dedoose include two poster presentations, 1) at Mid-Michigan Symposium for Undergraduate Research Experience and 2) at the McNair Summer Research Symposium in California. Additionally, research findings developed with Dedoose were presented at a panel at the national American Sociological Association conference in Philadelphia, and an article publication, “Framing of Latinx Education: An Examination of Spanish Language Newspapers,” in the Journal of Latinos and Education published in January 2025.

As with any project, there were challenges I learned to navigate including learning how to engage with Dedoose as a qualitative research tool, which was overcome by consistent check-ins with my advisor and online tutorials. If I had questions or clarifications about next steps in Dedoose, I had a responsive mentor whose insights and expertise facilitated the use of the qualitative research software.  

We were able to develop an expansive web of themes and subthemes with the coding feature of Dedoose so, deciding on what themes to focus on was also a challenge. The latter challenge was an exciting one since it reminded us that this project has important insights to offer that exceeded the time limitations of my summer research program in Michigan. Dedoose visualized the codes and themes important to the research project, and slightly nudged us to think about future directions.

Lastly, a piece of advice I would give to new users is to explore the challenges faced when learning how to use features, ask clarifying questions, and be patient with the process. It is okay to make mistakes, it is part of the learning process.  

Since my first project using Dedoose and after completing my 2017 SROP experience in Michigan, I finished my undergraduate bachelor’s degree in 2018. In 2024, I completed my PhD in Feminist Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and I am currently a Latinx Sexualities Postdoctoral Fellow at a research university showing my students how to use Dedoose and other qualitative research software.  

Works Cited:

Ayala, María Isabel, Magaly Ordoñez, and Angelica Ruvalcaba. “Framing of Latinx Education: An Examination of Spanish Language Newspapers.” Journal of Latinos and Education, January, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348431.2024.2444

Delgado Bernal, Dolores. 2002. “Critical race theory, Latino critical theory, and critical raced-gendered epistemologies: Recognizing students of color as holders and creators of knowledge.” Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 105–126. https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004020080010

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