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Sample coding: Interview transcript (National security coordination)

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ddetzi edited this page Aug 28, 2026 · 17 revisions

NATIONAL SECURITY COORDINATION 1

More information coming soon. This will be an example of a third-party interview concerning national security coordination during the War in Afghanistan.

Step 1: Pre-coding considerations

Research question: How do the interactions between bureaucratic organizations shape strategic decision-making during counterinsurgencies?

Concepts to measure: Frequency and strength of interactions (Attribute/Direct Object), rule types (aIm/Function)

IG Level of Expressiveness: Core with Extended

Data collection: Secondary data Third-party, semi-structured interviews

Data analysis: Network analysis, rule type counts, interactions between positions and linked action situations.

Step 2: Identify Institutional Statements

- [ ] Review the text and ignore all non-institutional statements (e.g., interviewer questions, headings, subheadings, etc.)

Interview excerpt

** Lessons Learned: Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR)

XINT: Discuss Interagency Planning and Coordination

LL-01 10272014: There was a degree of frustration in the Pentagon that we didn't get more agricultural experts in Afghanistan. DOD went to the National Guard units and looked within them for agricultural experts, forming Agribusiness Development Teams. These teams were-activated and deployed for their agricultural expertise. These were Guard members who, in their civilian life, were agricultural experts. They were under OSD order and deployed like any other unit. Their job was to work with farmers and Ministers of Agriculture regarding irrigation and livestock. They usually did this on a district level.

- [ ] Identify all segments of text containing information relevant to answering the research question(s)

DOD went to the National Guard units and looked within them for agricultural experts, forming Agribusiness Development Teams [ADTs]

These teams [ADTs] were activated and deployed for their agricultural expertise.

They [ADTs] were under OSD order and deployed like any other unit.

Their [ADTs] job was to work with farmers and Ministers of Agriculture regarding irrigation and livestock.

- [ ] Identify and/or tag the Attributes/Constituted Entities and Aims/Constitutive Functions within the identified text segments. This will aid in the identification of atomic institutional statements.

  • Create a list of those Attributes/Constituted Entities, Aims/Constitutive Functions

  • Assign "labels" to create a uniform terminology for synonymous terms (e.g., the label "Parties" is assigned to any references to "member states", "COP", "Governments", etc., in an international treaty forum)

  • Group similar coded statements together based on their rule typology (e.g., payoff rules, aggregation rules) or by their contribution to a particular decision-making context (e.g., monitoring, compliance), or by any other important context (e.g., design principles, stages of the policy process, etc.)

  • Consider creating a taxonomy or classification of key contexts useful for semantic annotations. For example, any statements outlining the decision-making authority of an actor could be semantically annotated as "authority".

[!FOOTNOTES]

1 The interview excerpts utilized in this sample coding come from publicly available third party transcripts.

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