Discuss (a) coding

Data = the research's raw material — the facts, texts, figures and observations collected to answer the question. Its nature: (i) collected, not found — data are the instrument's product (the questionnaire, the interview, the record-extraction — U5's yield), shaped by the tool's design; (ii) purpose-relative — the same fact is data only for the question it serves; (iii) evidence, not conclusion — the raw material awaiting processing, analysis and interpretation (the chain below); (iv) quality-variant — the accuracy, completeness and honesty of the collection determine everything downstream (the garbage-in principle). The sources' map (the legal researcher's two streets): the documentary (the statutes, the case reports, the court records, the Nepal Gazette, the constitutional bodies' reports) and the field (the interviews, questionnaires, observations); the official statistics (the police figures, the prison and court case-flow data — with the dark-figure caveat); and the archives and databases (the decisions' online repositories, the gazettes' digitisation).