Support creating the codebook

[tanius]

A codebook shows the collection of codes used in an ethnographic study together with information about what they mean / how they are supposed to be used. This could also include other meta-information about the codes (usage frequency, author etc.).

To support creating the codebook, we'd want three things:

1. Live view of the codebook, optionally public. A comfortable, well formatted way to read the codebook inside the Open Ethnographer software. So unlike when editing the code description of one code, here all code descriptions would be rendered in a type of document. It should be possible to configure Open Ethnographer for making this document publicly viewable, to allow doing "open notebook science" in online ethnography.

2. Export to a codebook document. The software would allow to export a codebook document for a collection of codes. The exported format could simply be Markdown, which can then be transformed to other formats with external tools. The collection of codes would be defined via a coding project (Projects feature #222, already implemented).

3. A code discussion function. In the early phases of the NGI project, we discovered that ethnographers need to discuss and comment their codebook a lot during its development. I proposed to add a "Start a discussion on this code" button to the page of each code to generate a Discourse topic to discuss the code. The idea is to not add any redundant functionality for discussions, but to re-use Discourse for this.

[tanius]

Requirements listed by one of the users about what a codebook feature should contain (from here – access protected link):

We are (theoretically) using the codebook for [adding freetext info about what a code is, how to use it etc.] — now that there is no longer a way to add the note while coding, you have to go into the backend to do it. Initially adding a note while coding was possible (but [not] a requirement), and now it’s gone completely – bringing this feature back would be ideal.

Further, there isn’t a clear way in […] [Open Ethnographer] to compare or visualise free text entries for codes neatly (like you can do in a codebook kept in Excel), so it’s not practical to use the platform for his activity.

[…] At minimum, to be viable in using the platform as codebook we would need:

1. An easy way to add entries to the codebook while coding (easiest way I see to do this is to bring back the notes function). A sidebar with the codebook in it would be most ideal, with that space divided into categories like on the document.
2. A list of codes generated only in the current project and (toggle on/off) only by the specific ethnographer. This has to be separate from codes in other projects, even for the ethnographer (so, I don’t want to be able to see Open Care codes suggested while coding). I also need to be able to view only codes from one project in the backend.
3. A clear backend visualisation of the codebook. This would show a) the code b) its definition (so, free text entry generated in 1) and (even more ideally, because this would make it better than the excel codebook) ability to see the annotations associated to that code (probably on a separate page). This codebook would need to be edited as easily (or only slightly less easily) than editing a spreadsheet on Excel/Google Sheets.

[tanius]

Currently "blocked" as we'll need some more detailed discussion with users about how this feature should look like.