|
Constitutions are often unclear in their meaning, which means one of the primary jobs of our employees is constitutional interpretation. To deal with interpretation issues, we have established a system very similar to a system of judicial precedent. Our primary coders make the initial decision but when there is disagreement, they “appeal” to higher level staff who reconcile discrepancies. The principal investigators are our final appellate body, dealing with tough interpretation issues.
We have created a mechanism for keeping track of our interpretation decisions and bringing future employees up to date on past decisions. The primary mechanism for keeping track of interpretation issues is our message board system. If the coders or reconcilers have questions about how to interpret specific provisions, they can ask the principal investigators directly by posting a question to the message board. These message board posts are answered by the principal investigators on a daily basis. A searchable archive of all posts to the message board is maintained, so that “precedents” established through earlier interpretations are available to primary decision-makers. Moreover, in the future, we anticipate organizing and releasing these interpretations, so researchers and practitioners who use our data are aware of the interpretative decisions made during the data generating process.
In addition to the message board, we have created a glossary of constitutional terms and a list of our coders most Frequently Asked Question (FAQ's). The links to view these pages are below. The main purpose of these resources is to give our new employees the necessary background to start coding reliably and efficiently. Not only do they give examples of our coding protocol, but they answer fundamental questions we are commonly asked by new coders. All new employees are required to view these pages before coding their first constitution.
Glossary
Frequently Asked Questions
|
