Process guidelines for establishing Intercoder Reliability in qualitative studies

Qualitative interviews are increasingly being utilized within the context of intervention trials. While there is emerging assistance for conducting and reporting qualitative analysis, there are limited practical resources available for researchers engaging in a group coding process and interested in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Qualitative research : QR 2016-04, Vol.16 (2), p.198-212
Main Authors: MacPhail, Catherine, Khoza, Nomhle, Abler, Laurie, Ranganathan, Meghna
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome
AIDS
Credibility
Data collection
Females
Intervention
Qualitative research
Young women
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Summary:Qualitative interviews are increasingly being utilized within the context of intervention trials. While there is emerging assistance for conducting and reporting qualitative analysis, there are limited practical resources available for researchers engaging in a group coding process and interested in ensuring adequate Intercoder Reliability (ICR); the amount of agreement between two or more coders for the codes applied to qualitative text. Assessing the reliability of the coding helps establish the credibility of qualitative findings. We discuss our experience calculating ICR in the context of a behavioural HIV prevention trial for young women in South Africa which involves multiple rounds of longitudinal qualitative data collection. We document the steps that we took to improve ICR in this study, the challenges to improving ICR, and the value of the process to qualitative data analysis. As a result, we provide guidelines for other researchers to consider as they embark on large qualitative projects.
ISSN:1468-7941
1741-3109
DOI:10.1177/1468794115577012