Coding Manual for Sources of Meaning and Life Goals Among Turkish Emerging Adults: Category Definitions and Illustrative Quotes Across Four Elicitation Frames
Description
This dataset contains the full coding manual (codebook) used in a qualitative content analysis of sources of meaning and life goals among 440 Turkish undergraduate counseling students (emerging adults). Data were collected via four open-ended prompts (Q1: general sources of meaning; Q2: indispensable sources under a counterfactual-absence frame; Q3: current life goals; Q4: ideal life goals under a miracle-question frame). The codebook lists each main category and subcategory identified through inductive analysis, along with its coding definition/criterion and one illustrative participant quote per prompt (Q1–Q4) where applicable. Categories include Close Relationships, Future Orientation, Well-Being, Personal Growth, Lifestyle and Comfort, Existential and Spiritual, Societal Contribution, Social Recognition, and Unconditional Meaning, among others. Quotes are presented in English translation; participant identifiers (e.g., P303) correspond to anonymized case numbers with no identifying information. This material accompanies the manuscript "Different Elicitation Frames Yield Different Reports of Meaning: Sources of Meaning and Life Goals Among Turkish Emerging Adults" and is provided to support transparency, reproducibility, and secondary use of the coding framework in future research on meaning-in-life elicitation methods.