Hello,
I thought I would contribute to the NVivo coding/validity discussion. I am
a doctoral student in psychology at the University of Quebec at Montreal. I
am using NVivo to analyze Rwandan refugee adolescents' audio-taped
interviews about the meaning they ascribe to the events they survived during
war and genocide. The issue of having the interviews coded by someone else
has been raised to cross-verify my coding is currently being discussed.
Presently, I am ina bit of a quandary. Who ould cross-verify? I am a
white, Jewish female clinician with considerable knowledge about Rwandan
culture and political events. If the interviews are coded by a Rwandan, the
person will be have an ethnic affiliation (Hutu, Tutsi...), while a white
interviewer, les I can find someone highly specialized, will be unlikely to
have both the clinical and cultural knowledge necessary to come up with
comparable codes.
My current thinking of this problem is that I will have to find an
alternative means of makig my codes verifiable, such as those discussed by
Kvale: keeping a detailed log of code categories. I also have very limited
financial means, so I am looking into this possibility. Any ideas about
veryfying coding in cross-cultural qualitative research would be most
welcome.
Best regards,
Esther Ehrensaft
Dept of Psychology
UQAM, Montreal, Canada
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