STEP 3: CONSOLIDATE INFORMATION AND ADDRESS INCONSISTENCIES

While identifying the information/potential institutional statements found in the pilot document in STEP 1, you have likely begun to develop processes and procedures on how to handle your particular kind of non-policy text. These instructions should be included in a project-specific codebook that will be continuously updated as document processing and IG-coding progresses.

There are many resources available on how to build a project-specific codebook. We recommend consulting the ethnographic or global health research methods literature, e.g., H. Russell Bernard's Research Methods in Anthropology or Guest & MacQueen's Handbook for Team-Based Qualitative Research.

• Create a project-specific codebook containing additional research-specific coding guidance based on researchers’ case study knowledge and relevant research questions, including:

  • When to apply what annotation

  • What order to code grammatical elements (e.g., Cac-A-D-I-Bdir-Bind-Cex-O for regulative statements and Cac-E-M-F-P-Cex-O for constitutive statements)

  • Guidance on converting passive into active voice (or not)

  • Guidance on how to identify and code Deontics, etc.

• Identify and track instances when interviewees:

  • Repeat phrases

  • Add grammatical elements (e.g. Deontics)

  • Provide additional context

• Merge redundant statements (repetition)

• Incorporate new grammatical elements (extension) (e.g., add Deontics in instances where they are missing)

• Integrate contextual information (context) (e.g., adding information about where to pay a fine)

• Consolidate information into institutional statements

Once the above tasks have been completed for the pilot document, make sure to update the project-specific codebook with any new coding guidance

Then repeat Steps 2 and 3 for all documents.

==> See STEP 4 for component-level and statement-level annotations.