How We Code

• Published in: Advances in Quantitative Ethnography Vol. 1312; pp. 62 - 77
• Main Authors: Shaffer, David Williamson, Ruis, A. R.
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Springer International Publishing AG 2021; Springer International Publishing
• Series: Communications in Computer and Information Science
• Subjects: Automated classifiers; Coding; Fairness; Inter-Rater Reliability (IRR); Validity
• ISBN: 9783030677879; 3030677877
• ISSN: 1865-0929; 1865-0937
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-67788-6_5

Coding data—defining concepts and identifying where they occur in data—is a critical aspect of qualitative data analysis, and especially so in quantitative ethnography. Coding is a central process for creating meaning from data, and while much has been written about coding methods and theory, relatively little has been written about what constitutes best practices for fair and valid coding, what justifies those practices, and how to implement them. In this paper, our goal is not to address these issues comprehensively, but to provide guidelines for good coding practice and to highlight some of the issues and key questions that quantitative ethnographers and other researchers should consider when coding data.