The community-led research team is a central space in the project where we practice our values of equity, co-creation, diversity, and inclusion. All project members (community, Lab staff, and Engaged Cornell students) are able to join the coding process after completing their CITI Program certification and going through co-created training on coding methods and confidentiality. Our intergenerational coding group consists of both community and lab viewpoint from our project. We all come from different cities across the country, different racial and ethnic identities, and varying fields and professions.
We believe, and have seen throughout coding, that bringing together a diversity of experiences and viewpoints gives us a deeper and richer understanding of our data and brings relevance to our coding. Every step of our coding process is co-created and inclusive.
We also rely on a process of communication and consensus to decide on codes and changes or additions to our codebook. Our group embraces open discussion around disagreement, we use these situations to flesh out our understanding of responses and ultimately reach consensus with a fuller grasp of our data and codes.
Coding Moment of the Week
The Engaged Cornell student team wrote and uploaded to the website numerous “coding moment of the week” pieces during the year—typically, Owen would take on writing the initial piece, and then other members of the team would have the chance to edit his work and prompt further discussion. In these pieces, the student team chose a particularly meaningful passage that was coded by the coding team. They broke down the passage, describing the codes that were described and explaining why these codes were appropriate. The piece then posed a question for thought at the end, inviting the reader to consider the issues presented in the article. These pieces served to, firstly, clarify the coding process to those unfamiliar with coding, by detailing the process that was taken to arrive at certain codes. Additionally, these coding moments of the week expanded upon the themes of coding and explained their implications–for instance, if a particular passage was coded “status-quo,” a coding moment of the week article would explain the meaning of this code, its connection to the given passage, and the way in which the passage reveals an interesting or significant aspect of the code.
To explore the Coding Moment of the Week, you can click the link below: