The category list is also called the codebook in the Categorization section, which is similar to the questionnaire in a survey. The researcher designs coding categories and the coders will code or classify the sample text. In a questionnaire survey, the interviewer asks the respondent for answers, and in the process of categorization, the coder asks (investigates) the text data and answer the questions in the codebook. To a certain extent, category construction determines the quality of content analysis.

There are two ways to create coding categories on DiVoMiner® platform: manually creating categories and importing categories through TXT files.

Manually create category method: Go to [Categorization]-[Create a Question] and enter the title of the category in the title box. Select the Question Type (details of the question type in the following paragraph). For the category options, click [Keyword] on the right side to set the keywords, together with the corresponding logic for machine coding later on.

There are four types of questions: [single selection], single choice question, where only one category option can be selected: [multiple selections], multiple choice question, where multiple category options can be selected; [drop down single selection], where a single choice question will be displayed in a drop-down menu; [drop down multiple selections], where a multiple choice question will be displayed in a drop-down menu. Drop-down questions are mainly used for category questions with many options, which result in lengthy paragraph of questions and make manual coding difficult. In this case, a drop-down question can hide the category options and display the options in a pop-up list when clicking on the option box. You can also type in certain keywords in the options bar to search for the targeted options from the options list.

Click [Keywords] to set the keywords for each category option. The function of keywords setting is to highlight keywords in the coding text by machine for manual coding reference. In the machine coding process, keywords are the logical basis for machine evaluation. Namely, after the keywords setting, machine-assisted manual coding and automatic machine coding can be executed for coding.

Note: There are certain format requirements for keywords setting:

• Brackets (), quotation marks “”, etc. need to be punctuation half-width format; brackets must be used in pairs.
• Logical keywords (Boolean terms): AND/OR/NOT need to leave a space before and after. With correct input, the logical keywords (AND/OR/NOT) will be shown in black color, and the target keywords will be shown in red color;
• Logical keywords (AND/OR/NOT) need to be capitalized;
• Keywords in English can be set with or without capitalization. Keywords in Chinese can be set with both Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese;
• It is recommended to add double quotation marks (“”) in English format when “English phrases” or “mixed Chinese and English phrases” are used, in order to ensure the accuracy of machine coding.