In the Fora Insights platform, there are three main types of codes that you’ll see in the panel on the right hand side of the screen.
Structural Codes: match the names of the question sections from your conversation guide (i.e. Story for Starters, Connecting Questions, etc.). Tagging highlights with structural codes reminds you of which questions each highlight is responding to. Structural codes are important for analyzing your conversation collection because they allow you to directly connect the questions you created in the conversation guide with responses elicited from participants in the conversation.
Notes: Structural codes will not be visible on the Portal.
Thematic Codes: are the concrete and abstract codes that describe the ideas, concepts, and topics found within each highlight. There are two kinds of thematic codes.
- Child codes: are the most specific codes in your codebook that can be grouped together based on similarity. In the example below, “frustration,” “sadness,” and “anxiety” are the child codes underneath the parent, “Climate Emotions.” In Fora Insights, child codes will always be listed beneath parent codes with a slight indentation to the right.
- Parent codes: provide a big idea umbrella for more specific codes to be grouped under. In the example below, “Power and Empowerment” is the parent code under which “money,” “community power,” “local knowledge,” etc. are child codes. In Fora Insights, the parent code will always be listed at the top.
Together, parent and child codes create code families that hold a cohesive meaning. Typically, codebooks consist of 7-10 code families, but there is no ideal number. Codebooks can be large or small, and there are some key questions your team should ask each other when consolidating your codebook.
Note: Thematic codes will be displayed prominently on the Portal. Below is an example of how parent and child codes are displayed for this project, Blue Hill Ave Real Talk Conversations.
Internal Codes: are useful for your team to keep track of highlights that you may want to return to later. The basic internal codes are “Exclude from Portal” and “Standout Highlights.”
- Standout highlights: tag a highlight with this code when you hear or read exceptional stories that you definitely want showcased on your Portal.
- Exclude from Portal: tag a highlight with this code when you hear or read a highlight that you may want hidden from public access via the Portal. There could be a number of reasons to exclude a highlight from a Portal, and those reasons are for your team to decide.
You can easily add more internal codes to your catalog in Fora Insights. See below for an example of one projects’ internal codes. This team added “create additional code?”, “Please review" and “Delete this highlight.” For this team, they wanted to return to the collection later and further curate which codes and highlights would be featured on their Portal.
Note: Internal codes will not be visible on the Portal.