#8 Tweaking the codebook

#8 Tweaking the codebook

I have had a couple of meetings with my supervisors, one of whom coded three of the transcripts with my codebook, and all were sent the codebook (including code’s descriptors) in advance.

We got together to discuss the codebook, to facilitate my reflections and refine the codes. We brought up some codes which we didn’t feel were independent or where the underlying meaning could be mis-interpreted.

It sometimes helped if we asked the question to ourselves, if you had to perform a pairwise comparison: “which is more important in order for a vet student to be “well-prepared” for starting workplace clinical training (WCT): X or Y?” could you answer it?

I will document here the items discussed and the decisions we made:

1. “Filling knowledge gaps [behaviour]” and “selective revision before or around cases [knowledge]” – quite similar – couldn’t pick between – merged and “selective revision” sent to the code graveyard

2. “Basic equipment familiarity and handling [practical skill]”, “competence and confidence in animal handling [practical skill]” and “basic clinical skills [practical skill]” – all quite similar and confusing to differentiate between –

a. Renamed “basic equipment…” as “surgical dexterity and tissue handling”

b. “…animal handling” left as it is

c. “basic clinical skills” added examples in the code name (“e.g. blood sampling, placing an IV catheter”)

d. Checked that the references within each code were still applicable

3. “Managing expectations of WCT” – an unclear code – what does it actually mean? Also difficult to differentiate from “awareness of the challenges and realities of practice”, “awareness of the varying caseload that student’s experience” and “awareness that imperfection, mistakes and failure are inevitable”. “Managing expectations of WCT” was sent to the code graveyard and the references in it were merged into the relevant codes listed above.

4. “Situational awareness”, “seeking learning opportunities” and “teamwork, putting yourself forward or offering to help” could all describe the same student behaviours.

a. Renamed “situational awareness” as “observing what’s going on in the workplace, an alertness”

b. Renamed “seeking learning opportunities” as “proactive in seeking personal learning opportunities”

c. Kept “teamwork…” as it is

d. I feel that these are all distinguishable now and have chosen not to merge any of them

e. Checked that the references within each code were still applicable

5. “Non-verbal communication skills” sits within all of the other communication skills codes – merged and “non-verbal communication skills” sent to code graveyard

6. “Practical experience affords opportunities [practical skills]” and “awareness that you get out what you put in” are too similar.

a. Merge former into latter and send to code graveyard.

b. Rename “awareness that you get out…” as “awareness that enthusiasm and experience affords opportunities in the workplace”

7. “Staying late, or not” and “personal leadership over breaks and finishing” needed distinguishing

a. Removed “or not” from “staying late” and merged any references to not staying late into “personal leadership over breaks and finishing” – now these codes are opposite

b. Then, after further discussion

i. Changed “staying late” to “commitment to completion of tasks”

ii. Changed “finishing” to “work patterns”

8. We need to be clear that

a. “identifying knowledge gaps and saying I don’t know”, specifically talks about knowledge

b. “self-awareness” which might include more than just knowledge gaps, but, weaknesses AND strengths

c. reflection” – which is about how your own actions and thoughts had consequences outside of “self”

9. Do we need to merge:

a. “A growth mindset”

b. “Enthusiasm”

c. I would argue not – you can have enthusiasm without a growth mindset – growth mindset is to do with your motivation – wanting to learn, being receptive to feedback and seeking opportunities, it is cognitive and enthusiasm is one of the ways in which this might be expressed.

10. Remove “good” from knowledge codes, switch to “appropriate” in some cases

11. Add “appropriate” to “asking questions” code

12. Remove “students’’” from “awareness of students’ roles and responsibilities” because all codes relate to students

13. “Observing what’s going on in the workplace; an alertness” – change to “attentiveness”

14. “Taking into account owner or contextual factors” – need to give examples e.g. economic, cultural factors

15. “Clinical reasoning in the face of real life problems, which don’t fit the textbook” – merge with “Awareness of uncertainty and risk in clinical decision making”

16. “Adequate but appropriate level of self-confidence”- can just use appropriate

17. “A growth mindset” – in this context captures reflection and feedback – if reflection and feedback are separate codes, then we don’t need “a growth mindset”, which can also be interpreted in multiple ways

18. Remove “comfort” from “competence and confidence handling animals”

19. Add “with appropriate support” to “willing to try new practical skills”

20. “Awareness that imperfection, mistakes and failure are normal” needs re-wording as mistakes shouldn’t be normalised to “Awareness that perfection is not expected; failure or mistakes are likely, and they are part of the learning process”

21. Add “student’s” to the front of all awareness codes

As I have made the above changes, I have re-read the data that is housed within the surviving codes to check that it still represents the code it’s meant to.

Updates in NVivo:

The code graveyard is where all of the codes who have been merged into others are put, instead of deleting them. The references within these codes have been moved into the surviving code.

I have put an X in front of the codes which are not preparedness characteristics for the questionnaire but are codes to keep and hold interesting data (i.e. they are not merged).

Next up: theme development...