Speech Act Coding Reliability Analysis
These files illustrate the application of the Ninio-Snow-Pan-Rollins INCA-A Speech Act coding system to a session recorded and transcribed by Pam Rollins at the University of Texas Dallas. To trace this analysis, the following files should all be located in one directory:
1. me03-1.cha and me03-2.cha: These two files are only supposed to disagree in terms of the material on the %spa line, because the second was a copy of the first and the coders in both cases were instructed not to change anything on the main line, but only to add speech act codes on the %spa line.
2. The current 0readme.doc file.
3. The codes.doc file that describes the INCA-A codes found on the %spa lines in the *.cha files.
4. The me03.mp4 video file.
To track coder reliability, set your working directory to the current folder (12-rely) and run this command:
rely me03-1.cha me03-2.cha
Triple-click on the last line of the output and it will open the file me03-1.rely.cex. The output in this file will show the disagreements between the two coders on the %spa line. You will see that the first disagreement between coders arises on line 11 between the use of NIA (negotiate the immediate activity) and DJF (discuss a joint focus of attention). You can triple-click on either of the lines with the word “line” in it and it will take you to the relevant spot in the transcript. From there, you can triple-click on the main speaker line with “you want to do the rattle, ahhah” and replay that video segment.
At this point, you will need to determine whether one of the codes is an error, or whether one or both of the categories needs to be refined for more reliable coding.
There are many other ways to expand on this process. Here are some examples:
1. You can use a batch file such as the rely.bat file included here to run on multiple pairs of files, using the command: batch rely.ba
2. You can track overall code usage with this command: freq +t%spa +s$*:* *.cha +u +f
3. You can track a particular code with this command: kwal +t%spa +s$dha:rp *.cha +f +u
--Brian MacWhinney, January 17, 2017