Coding Interview Responses Indiana University （编码面试反应印第安纳大学）.pdf

Gorden, Raymond (1992). Basic Inteviewing Skills. Itasca, IL: F. E. Peacock. Coding Interview Responses Interviews have some specific purpose, so it is necessary to store the responses in a relevant, usable, and accessible form to fulfill this purpose. For example, after interviewing and examining a patient, a physi- cian often dictates the results into a tape recorder. Later, a transcription is made and filed in the patient’s case history so it can be reviewed the next time the patient comes in. Human services workers often store information on clients in questionnaire forms or summary notes that cover the most important findings and results of an interview. Public opinion interviewers code much of the information during the interview by simply checking the nearest appropriate answer and leaving a few open-ended responses to be coded in the office; then the codes are fed into computers to obtain quantitative results. Everyone who uses the results of interviews, whether quantitative or not, needs some way to code the results so that they can be used without listening to the whole tape or reading the whole transcript. Basic Steps in Coding Regardless of the type of interview being coded or how the information is to be used, certain basic steps are essential in any reliable coding process. Difficulties in each of these steps arise depending on the type of information and the purpose for which it is to be used. The first step is to define the coding cat- egories. • Defining the Coding Categories. Some coding categories are so obvious and simple that no sophisticated definition is needed. For example, for a census-taker to classify respondents into male and female requires no refined definition. In contrast, other familiar concepts may present a difficult problem of definition. In Chapter 2 we saw how an apparently simple term