Page 82 - IJPS-11-3

International Journal of
Population Studies Low fertility intentions in China

this way, the influencing factors of low fertility intentions these open codes included housing unaffordability, longing
of social media users were obtained, and the conclusions for freedom, work-family conflict, anti-populational
were drawn. growth, and infertility.

2.5. Coding procedure At the second layer of analysis, the open codes were
subjected to axial coding. As typically performed in
The coding procedures were jointly and reflectively axial coding of qualitative data, the process consists of
performed by two Chinese-speaking authors of the iterations of comparative analysis and classifications.
present study throughout the research process where the For instance, we first identified the open codes of “A01:
researchers reflected on own positionality and potential Financial strain” and “A02: Housing unaffordability”. Then,
biases to minimize the influence on the interpretation of by constantly conducting comparisons with other codes
the data. The process was aided by qualitative data analysis from this coding cycle, an axial category of “A: Unfulfilled
software NVivo 14 to identify themes directly from the data. preconditions” was identified and created. A total of four
The two coders started the analysis by working together in axial categories were identified from the open codes,
the first few coding sessions, looking for themes in the data namely, unfulfilled preconditions, individualistic value
and juxtaposing the interpretations interactively to enhance orientations, unconvinced of the traditional view on the
the trustworthiness of the analysis. In the initial stages of benefits of having offspring, and interpersonal conflicts.
the coding, content reliability checks were undertaken
as two coders coded the same content. Discussions were While there were found to be 27 open codes and four
taken place until an intercoder agreement was reached axial codes from the wide range of responses elicited by The
among the coders. Further reliability checks took place at Beijing News’s Weibo open-ended poll, only five themes
the time of each new data collection for consistency. were identified and are presented in this article as the five
most compelling parenthood determinants for not having
Apart from NVivo, a Word document was used to second child among Chinese netizens. Table 3 presents
create a Coding Scheme, which is a table with columns for these major themes along with their corresponding thread
“Category” and “Description.” The coding scheme allowed examples. While a detailed interpretation of all five themes
the coders to be aware of and understand the discovered will be provided in the Discussion section, we will justify
open codes. The practices of constantly updating the the development of the two axial themes in this section.
coding scheme were established and continued throughout
the analysis process by the two coders, even when they We present these five themes according to order, from
were not working together in real-time. These practices most to least prominence. The first and second most
preserved high intercoder agreement and reliability while predominant themes are two axial-coded categories
enabling the coders to work independently on the analysis, of Unfulfilled preconditions and Individualistic value
which involved the successive development and refinement orientations. The Unfulfilled preconditions theme emerged
of codes. The final coding scheme version, shown in from threads along the axial of which the respondents
Table 2, is the product of these practices. A total of 27 open perceived the fulfillment of a range of “preconditions” –
codes were open-coded and translated into English. These ranging from financial strain to genetic dissatisfaction – as
open codes were subjected to axial coding and RTA. constraining their fertility intentions.
A precondition is defined as “something that must
2.6. Development of themes happen or exist before it is possible for something else to

The development of themes encompasses the four phases happen or be done” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2023). During
of the six-phase analytical process as outlined by Braun the open coding, we found numerous factors that typically
and Clarke (2013; 2022), namely, coding, generating refer to situations where perceived necessary conditions
themes, reviewing themes, and refining themes. The or requirements have not been met. This shared feature
process began by performing careful line-by-line reading among these open codes elicited the development of the
and open-coding of each thread with the aid of qualitative axial code. The congruence of these factors under the axial
data analysis software Nvivo 14. As presented in Table 2, category of unfulfilled preconditions is aligned closely with
27 open codes were developed as a result of the first-layer Chen’s (2015) characterization. Respondents of his study
coding. This process breaks down, examines, compares, referred to the achievement of various contexts when
conceptualizes, and categorizes the qualitative data (Braun considering the timing of parenthood and desired family
& Clarke, 2013; Strauss & Corbin, 1990). The analysis size. The contexts included the completion of education,
principle of creating as many open codes as required being in secure employment, and having material and social
was upheld to prevent the loss of the subtle differences in resources for raising children. Chen (2015) categorized
meaning as they emerged from the data. Some examples of these contexts as “Preconditions” and described them as

Volume 11 Issue 3 (2025) 76 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.5124