Applying a Multi-pronged Approach to Assessing Adaptive Capacity - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 86

Closing General

24. How able is the water management/governance system to respond to these
stress periods?
25. What would you see as the main impediments (legal, policy, political, social)
for the system to cope with stress periods? How could this be remedied?
26. Do you have any final thoughts about how climate change will impact (or already
is) water resources, and the system's ability to cope with these impacts in terms
of minimising damage or taking advantage of opportunities it may present?

5.5 Qualitative Data Analysis

Interviews were recorded, transcribed and translated from Spanish, French and
Swiss-German into English. This time-consuming initial process of translation and
transcription provided a valuable initial interpretation of key themes emerging from
the qualitative data, as well as pointing to issues that needed to be covered in subsequent
interviews. The transcripts were then coded according to the analytical framework
(Fig. 5.1 ) and then analysed using MaxQDA software, a qualitative data analysis
software tool. Archival data (legal, policy and presentation documents) were given
the same treatment.
An initial round of coding was applied to interview data according to the set of
determinants that had been used in the semi-structured interviews (Table 5.2 ), as well
as a number of free codes (Miles and Huberman 1994 ) for the external drivers, percep-
tions of bridges and barriers to adaptive capacity and that arose out of the preliminary
coding exercise. Coded extracts were then downloaded from MaxQDA and re-analysed,
categorised and then the amended coding structure was uploaded into a new MaxQDA
project. The aim of conducting three waves of coding was to increase the reliability of
the interpretation of the data. Coding schemes should not be a 'catalogue of disjointed
descriptors or a set of logically related units and sub units, but rather a conceptual web,
including larger meanings and their constitutive parts' (Miles and Huberman 1994 ,
p 63). Moreover, a 'conceptual structure must, whether pre-specified or evolving, must
underlie the definitions' (Miles and Huberman 1994 , p 63).
Both descriptive and analytical codes were given to the data. Initial analytical
codes related to the determinants listed in Table 5.2 , as well as to the categories of
change, were used to analyse the adaptive responses (as a means of defining out-
comes and establishing linkages and causation - transformation, persistent adapta-
tion, and passive). Descriptive codes were used to identify relevant information to
construct the case, i.e. information on impacts of the extreme events and the broader
water management challenges in the different case areas. Miles and Huberman
( 1994 , p 65) state that the 'ultimate power of field research lies in the researcher's
emerging map of what is happening and why'. The practice of coding data allows
the researcher to work through iterative cycles of inductive and deductive analysis
to better map out these causal relationships. Through the different waves of analysis,
codes may change, develop and emerge (Miles and Huberman 1994 ) .