Thank you, @alberto!
My pleasure, @Wojt .
There is an additional point that I did not mention: turns out that rich posts are… rich, with 10-20 annotations. Picture them as points in the highly multidimensional space of human experience, for example a reported episode of workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation in Warsaw. You have two choices:
- either collapse them into a n–multiple code, like
homosexuality:discrimination:workplace:large_cities:poland - or attribute each of the n codes separately.
The latter solution will show up as an n-clique in the semantic graph, with all codes connected to each other. This is how the SSN knows that they all occurred together. You do not lose that information. At the same time you are protected from having to carry the logic of multiple codes to a rather silly conclusion. And you can reach the post from any of the codes: “let’s see what happens in the part of the convo that describes Poland”, or “hmm, that about the LGBT+ community?”
SSNs are quite elegant objects, you see. As you get the knack of them, you will find yourself picturing drawing edges as you code: “wow, I have seen discrimination a few posts back, but I don’t think it ever co-occurred with homosexuality yet!”. That sort of stuff.
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Heads up, everyone: moving this out to the public workspace. There seems to be no reason for keeping it secret, in fact it is super-interesting methodological debate!
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@alberto is right (you have learned well, young padawan.) @Wojt and I just had a call to clarify.
I’m making a wiki now so that we have a centralised list of coding conventions in POPREBEL (and in general, an updated centralised list of best practices for coding in SSNA). Will link when it’s finished.
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I was going to suggest that!
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Hi! @amelia
Yesterday Jan and I had a meeting and we came up with a few questions.
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Say, we have a code stigmatisation, an example of which may be labelling, and we encounter a text where a set of labels is listed. So a person mentions that people call her a feminazi, a dike, etc. Is it ok to code every label? I know we should rather avoid coding word-for-word, but some of them, like Polish “pisior” (a Law and Justice hardcore supportrer) wil keep popping up and we think are worth coding.
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Jan came up with the idea to introduce the code constructing_common_identity with children such as: nation, religious community, Europeans, etc. I have already noticed the issues of common identity being raised here and there, people speaking of the need for finding, (re) building it, complaining of it being dismantled, so I think it might be worthwhile to have it.
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Matters related to inclusion/exclusion dychotomy seem to play a central role in our investigations. Have you guys come across any mentions of these two? How do you code them?
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We have a story about living libraries, and we’d like to code them under countering_exclusion → learning/teaching pluralism → living libraries. Does that sound ok?
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Jan and I think that having two codes positive_sentiment and negative_sentiment to code for positive feelings/attitude and negative feelings/attitude towards something respectively might be of use. Do you code for emotions? Does it make sense at all to put these into backend (I have my doubts since their proliferation may distort the SSNA graphical output, yet they seem to be ethnographically valuable). Please advise.
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Polishness is described using various labels (provincial, religious, tolerant, etc.). How can we code a phenomenon that is being defined by means of listing its characteristics.
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One last thing. When I put my codes in the backend they sometimes merge automatically with already pre-existing codes by other annotators, sometimes they don’t (for example my homophobia, or country_comparison are now under Amelia’s, while my code church stays separate). It’s not a problem now, but may somehow make adding tranlsations more difficult. Will see. Just saying
Ok, that’s it for now. I’m getting back to coding, I have another meeting with Jan scheduled for today. I keep working on refining my codebook and writing definitions for the codes I decided to keep.
@jan did I put it right?
Have a great day, everybody!
@amelia and @Wojt Can we, please, meet on Thursday? I am totally flexible, but to start planning: how about 15:00 in England (10:00 am here and 16:00 for Wojtek)? We are making progress, but have questions (see also above → Wojtek’s last entry). Jan
I would code this, yes, and code it with double quotations to indicate that it is an invivo code (as is the convention we have agreed upon, see the wiki). I would assume this occurs in a sentence, so attach the code to the sentence and not just the word.
Use the code “constructing common identity” – that is an excellent code. But it is not a parent code. Just code it along with the other codes, and it will appear as a co-occurrence in the graph.
If you look at my codebook, I have quite a few codes around this concept. Take a look in the “hierarchies” tab and see if any work for you. And please leave a note if they are closely connected to any of yours.
Your codes shouldn’t have these underscores – just use a space. Also, are the arrows supposed to be designating hierarchies? Don’t use hierarchies, just code the content with each of those codes. Then you will get a co-occurrence emerging in the graph. And feel free to then use them as categories in your own codebook, which we can then discuss later (see the wiki on hierarchies).
If you look at my codebook, you can see that I have an entire category of codes with different emotions in them. If you are coding particular emotions that informants are expressing, feel free to use that emotion as a code. But “positive” and “negative” are too vague / non-semantic and don’t belong in the SSNA. @hugi has a way of designating “non-SSNA” codes, but I’m not sure yet if we can implement it in POPREBEL.
That’s an analytical/interpretive question that you and Jan need to try to approach using the codes! I personally would create a code 'Polishness' (using the single quotes to denote an informant concept, see the wiki) and then co-code with the other concept labels that appear (so, provincial or religious ). Then you’ll end up with a nice co-occurrence network of all the concepts that your informants associate with 'Polishness'
I’m happy to meet with you and @Jan, but you need to first engage properly with my codes and @Jirka_Kocian’s codes (by using the comment function, as described in the wiki), and read the wiki in detail, because this will answer a lot of your questions and give us more specifics to talk about. So if you can commit to doing this before Thursday, we can talk then. Otherwise, we can speak next week.
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@amelia and @Wojt We got it. Wojtek and I just finished talking. Here is our plan: the two of us will meet again on Thursday to further discuss and coordinate Polish codes (after studying your wiki). On Saturday, we will meet to further discuss your codebook, the wiki, etc, and start coordinating the codes. Next week , we will be ready to meet with you and the rest of the team. How about Thursday, July 9? (Please accept our apology for some slowdown and delay: Wojtek is now on a short vacation with his family and I have tomorrow (Wednesday) the wedding of our son and on Sunday the whole family is going to the beach until Wednesday evening). J
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That sounds great. @Jirka_Kocian and @SZdenek, can you make a call on the 9th? I’m flexible time-wise on that date at the moment.
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Hi, the thing is that a number of them occur in one sentence. I did not specify that, I’m sorry.
We were planning on using it in our codebooks. Is it ok?
Will do, already started looking through it.
Yes, the arrows were supposed to present categories and again, just for the codebook. We remember not to create any in backend.
Ok, will look for those!
In the backend, yes. But how would you present it in the codebook? These codes are not really members or examples of Polishness (these words have much broader meaning, obviously). Should they remain independent in our codebooks?
I apologize for my lack of precision on these matters. I should’ve specified at each instance whether I meant our codebook or backend.
So code the same sentence with multiple codes.
I don’t see why not. Check if others have used similar codes, then either choose to use theirs, or use yours and mark in their codebook that you think yours might be a better fit (or just mark the connection).
Hierarchies in the backend and categories in the codebook should be thought of in the same way. Think of your codebook as a “staging” for the hierarchies you’d like to implement in the backend. So the same logic applies to both.
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Repeating this so everyone sees it. We will meet on the 9th if everyone is ready. If not, we will find another time the week after. Please update ASAP when you know if you’ll complete the work on time (with quality – if it’s going to be low quality because you’ve rushed it, just say so and we will push back. Better to work with good data.)
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Roger that. Thank you for your help and patience
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Hi team – based on some communication, I’ve decided to push back our meeting so everyone feels they have time to do their best work.
With that taken into account, I propose the following:
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Please finish coding and arranging your codes into categories by the end of next week (so, Friday the 11th).
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Please finish reading and reviewing/commenting on codebooks (PARTICULARLY with an eye to merging codes that are the same or similar across codebooks) by the 15th of July. You can and should be doing this work in parallel with the coding itself.
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Take the rest of the week (til the 17th of July) to resolve any low-hanging fruit – easy merges, etc – since everyone’s codebooks should not be gaining new codes by then, and firm up your own edits based upon others’ feedback as best you can.
We will then plan to meet the week of the 20th, at which point I will have created the new SSNA visualisation. In that meeting we will:
- a) discuss and carry out more complex code merges we have noted
- b) create hierarchies in the backend based upon the categories we have created in our own codebooks and
- c) discuss the SSNA and what it means for future coding.
The deadline for a writeup of your findings based upon our meeting and the visualisation is August 1st.
Can everyone please verbally confirm that this works for them, and if not let us know why (e.g. if you will be on holiday the week of the 20th) so we can plan otherwise. This will be set in stone, no more pushbacks.
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Hello Amelia, hello all,
this works for me. And thank you for the postponement.
Best, Zdeněk
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Hi Amelia,
for some reason, I received notifications on these messages only yesterday :-/, hence the missing answers from me. I confirm, we are just having a coding meeting with @SZdenek, so more codes are on the way as planned.
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Is everyone free Thursday July 23rd? I propose 9:30am for @Jan , 14:30 for @amelia and @Richard, 15:30 for @Jirka_Kocian @SZdenek and @Wojt.
Please like this post if this works for you. Otherwise, please propose another time!
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Could we push it back 30 minutes to 10.00/15.00/16.00? I have a REF meeting at 13.30 and they have a tendency to drag on.
Fine with me!
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