I am comparing the rate of specific Response Patterns A through L among students in Group 1 vs. Group 2 (rates for the first five patterns are exemplified in the table). These are response patterns that a research assistant and I coded from student interviews. I also created a code for Multiple Patterns, as I wanted to also compare the rate at which each group of students demonstrates more than one pattern. The problem is that I did not want to make this category mutually exclusive of the others; hence, the percentages across Patterns A through L for each group have different sums, both exceeding 100% (117.23 for Group 1 and 121.94 for Group 2). Each percentage in the table was calculated from the number of times that the pattern showed up in the group divided by the total number of interview items answered by the group as a whole. I calculated it this way because although my interview consisted of up to 11 items per student, some students were administered less (e.g., 8 or 9 items) due to interruptions. Each student's response to each item was coded as demonstrating one or more of the 12 response patterns.
My question is: Would it be valid for me to make statements like "Group 2 exhibited Response Pattern E more frequently than Group 1" given these complications? If not, what is another way to make comparisons between the groups for each pattern? To obtain the percent for each cell and have each group add up to 100, the proportion could be taken out of the total number of codes assigned to each group instead of total number of items administered across each group, but I'm not sure if it makes sense to do this.
I know that I cannot make statements about whether such differences are significant using my current set-up, but I am okay with that for now because this is a more qualitative element of my dissertation research, which already contains other quantitative elements.
% of Group's Responses Showing Pattern
Group 1 Group 2
(n = 22) (n = 21)
Pattern:
A _______________15.79______15.82
B ________________6.70_______6.63
C _______________16.75______20.92
D _______________12.44_______5.31
E _______________6.22________23.98
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
Multiple Patterns ___16.75_______20.92
