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History of Dedoose Part 3: The EFI and Using Narratives to Construct Ratings

5/1/2023

Part III of VI 

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Video Featuring Dr. Eli Lieber and Dr. Tom Weisner  

Written By Kris Castner, M.A., M.A., A.B.D. 

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Dedoose History 101: Episode Three 

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In Episode Two of our video blog series documenting the history of Dedoose, we learned how Drs. Weisner and Lieber tried to answer the question of what a three circled on a rating scale truly meant in a qualitative context.  
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Once they were able to gather, analyze, and summarize narratives across many families, they discovered the participants in their samples tended to talk about related topics.  
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Today, we return with the origins of Dedoose the product; as both researchers worked to provide a tool that would help them put all of their information together within a single platform. 
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This video blog also links you over to our YouTube channel (@DedooseSupport) where you can catch up on Episodes One and Two. You can also peruse other helpful pre-recorded content!  
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Part Three of Six: Enter, Dedoose 

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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:  

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EL: The EFI Manual, which we can make available on our website and in our documents already, is a thorough description of how you get there. Because that’s part of the challenge when we think about measurement.  
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EL: That’s part of one of the most frequent topics that we hear about is inter-rater reliability. How do you do that? We have these quantitative approaches from Cohen’s Kappa Coefficient and then you have the problem of somehow putting reliability around these ratings. 
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EL: What I learned from- I am a quant nerd, I lean that way, my brain still works that way as much as my work in Dedoose is much more qualitative. My brain still works in very quantitative ways, but to think about it from my perspective we must have a way of describing that, and Tom has many presentations I have listened to and have slides from talking about how you produce these ratings. 
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EL: The EFI manual, I was glancing at some of the pages the other day, how do you start? Describing this especially important versus less important? Its richness must be based on the data. So, people come to Dedoose to say, how do I accomplish inter-rater reliability in a qualitative approach with these ratings, and it is hard. It takes some work. But boy, when you can accomplish it, it is tremendous the data integrative possibilities that it allowed us to accomplish. That is where our technology I think has been able to boom. 
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TW: One of the great advantages of Dedoose and it was important in our development process, is to be sure we captured reliability as traditionally measured, as Eli was saying. Also, validity is matched to the narrative experience or behavior of the family or medical establishment, or whatever you are trying to measure. 
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“One of the great advantages of Dedoose, (which) was important in our development process, is (being) sure we captured reliability as traditionally measured, as well as validity that is actually matched to the narrative experience.” 

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TW: Then there’s veridicality, give me an example of what someone who scores 5 on a rating would be like, would do, say, feel. If you can do that, now you have something that is truly interpretable and meaningful. So, we always try to include those three things in assessment. That is why the EFI has a little interpretation or story of what someone with a “5” or a “7” or a “2” would think, feel, would do.  
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EL: Yeah, I am compelled to say, what part of what we are talking about is, the methodological foundation of where Dedoose came from. As a tool, under Jason’s leadership, it is a fantastic tool. We have accomplished marvelous things with the technology itself to serve this goal. That is what we were always after in building this, we just wanted to make our service better.  
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EL: What I am compelled to say here, as we talk about how we do it, how do you accomplish these things, you need the tools, yes Dedoose can be it or not, but you also must have a framework for thinking about it and the knowledge base.  
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EL: When we conceived of the IMMR (Institute for Mixed Methods Research) I do not know how many years ago, that is what we were thinking about in addition to all the other things that we, ambitions that we had for what kind of services could a research or academic branch of the Dedoose operation provide. 
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TW: Eli mentioned the EFI, or Ecocultural Family Interview, which he emerged from this perspective if you want to be able to integrate many ways of trying to understand interpretive significance.  
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TW: One example of this is a mother who had kids with disabilities who was participating in a round table. One of the quantitative researchers in the audience asked her to talk about the family assessment scale, which is one of the rating scales we use.  
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TW: She paused for a second and said, “Let me just tell you what I do every day to take care of my son. I am just going to start in the morning, and I will walk through the day. Here is what we must do to get him up for school and deal with temper tantrums,” and all the things this mother had to do. 
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TW: That leads to the EFI part of all of this, which is “How do you capture this type of information?”  
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“What we decided to do based on ecocultural theory and activity theory was to ask parents and kids and other people who were participating in our various research projects to walk me through their day from the time they start from the time they go to bed.” 

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 TW: What are the activities you do? Who is there? How are you feeling about those activities? Do you have the resources you need or are you struggling to get them? Do you feel this is sustainable? Can you keep doing this or is it always a margin on the edge and you are struggling all the time? Can you persist and do it on a routine basis? Which of course makes it easier. If you could change something about your daily activities and your routine, what would you like to change?
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TW: These were very revealing about the context, the circumstances, the cultural ecology around the kids, parents, and schools and all the institutions involved in many of our research studies. 
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TW: The interviewing technique we developed which is part of the EFI which Eli developed, the interview starts not with asking someone “So on a 7-point scale how happy are you with how things are going in your parenting these days?” It does not start with that. It starts with taking me through your day, tell me about it. Tell me about your morning, tell me about good and bad experiences.  
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“Then, you use that narrative to prompt the parent subsequently to compare themselves to others. When you have that lengthy narrative, you can code it and make scales based on parents who -in many ways- have similarities based on a large sample.”   

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TO BE CONTINUED IN NEXT MONTH’S (VIDEO) BLOG...  

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 IN CASE YOU MISSED IT... EPISODE 2 of 6:  

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Can’t Wait 'til May for Episode Four? Enjoy More Dedoose Content. 

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As we enter the academic summer cycle, we’re excited to turn our attention to online content generation and resources.  
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Stay tuned and check back often for additions, which will continue to populate as we feature upcoming events and pre-recorded overviews.  
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 Get Started (or Level Up!) with Dedoose... 

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The best and most interactive method to learn Dedoose is one of our free weekly webinars!  
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In the event you cannot attend one, however, our YouTube channel is a great resource. We work to update our videos as often as possible, so check back often.  
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 A Beginner’s Guide to Our Videos with Highlights for Experienced Dedoosers 

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  • "Getting Started with Dedoose” is quite literally the best video for newbies to start with. You’ll learn the basic features, charts, data prep, and import procedures.  
       
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Remember to Tag Us this Summer on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or YouTube 

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