Multiple Definitions
17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33
34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67
68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84
85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101
102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118
119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135
136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146
When coding for revealed causal mapping, it is critical to examine words that describe
cause or effect concepts. Researchers must be very careful because in many cases, the
same word may actually describe something reflecting a different concept or the same
concept at a different level of granularity. For example, the word “training” emerged from
many of the transition interview transcripts. However, when taken in context, “training”
was an individual-level concept in the categories of Knowledge Acquisition, Motivation
and Personal Outcomes, but “training” was also a concept which was described by the
respondents as something that was seen as Corporate Support and Direction which is
at the organizational level. Therefore, it is clearly necessary that in the cross-validation
procedure, the coding assigned to the cause and effect statements in the spreadsheets
must often be traced back to the actual transcript of the interview from which they were
taken to reconfirm the proper context. If this is not done very carefully and all the steps
followed (Nelson et al., 2000), or coders are not trained properly, it is very likely that
concepts will be coded incorrectly.
Lessons Learned
There are several lessons that the researcher interested in this type of study can take
away from this chapter. The first is that it is important to develop a well thought out
interview guide with open-ended questions. These questions should be focused on
guiding the participant to the phenomenon without biasing the participant’s response.
In addition, the success of the interview often resides in the interviewer’s probing skills.
Depending on the phenomenon under study, the interviewee may be reluctant to discuss
the issue or be unsure as to what “answers” you are looking for. The follow-up probes
allow you to fully explore the different facets of the issue, again guiding the participant
to the phenomenon.
The second lesson deals with the concept elicitation. As I stated, an open mind is key
when eliciting the concepts from the transcripts. With revealed causal mapping (as with
other qualitative methods) the researcher should maintain an open mind regarding what
concepts and linkages will emerge from the study. Often it is the unexpected that provides
the most insight to the phenomenon. The researcher should be attentive to the multiple
levels of granularity that a concept may have, as well as the multiple meanings. Care must
be taken to accurately capture the words and intent (context) of the participant, so
valuable data is not lost.