Applying a Multi-pronged Approach to Assessing Adaptive Capacity - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 88

Table 5.2 (continued)

Tentative determinants Related questions

Experience What training for such a situation had they received?

What preparation for such an event had taken place?
i.e. what planning for such a situation was already in effect?
Who provided scienti fi c/expert information?

Leadership Vision, leadership, and trust

Ascertain if there are particular individuals who directed the
management of the event, helped to bring stakeholders
together to deal with it
Trust amongst the different stakeholders/institutions

In the first round of coding, the initial codes tended to be a priori/deductive/concept
driven (relating to interview questions built from theory) as can be seen in Table 5.2 .
From this initial list of codes, a number of new codes surfaced as they emerged from
the data collection (empirically grounded), many of which were more descriptive.
Table 5.2 shows the starting list for the coding exercise, which were linked to the
research questions and to the interview questionnaire and to a list of sub-indicators
(bins of conceptual variables).
From this initial round of coding and analysis, the emerging themes helped refine
the analytical structure. Out of this initial round of analysis the most significant
emerging theme was that of the core tensions and trade-offs in mobilising adaptive
capacity at different scales, of which the structural tension between flexibility and
predictability was the most prevalent and significant element. In the second round
of coding, coded segments were extracted and codes refined to remove redundancy
and improve reliability. Additionally, a coding check was performed with another
researcher to ensure the reliability of the coding methods employed, and accuracy
of the definitions given to the codes. There was also an attempt to refine the code set
to move from descriptive to more analytic codes.
Codes were refined and regrouped into the following categories to remove
redundancy and streamline the analytical framework: Legal Framework/Regime
(what actors can / cannot do); Knowledge (what actors know - is there information
exchange, what kinds of knowledge /information are integrated); Networks (How
actors interact - how information/data is exchanged, how it is integrated);
Flexibility - Predictability. Beneath these first level codes, there were a number of
second and third level codes that had been drawn from the original list of determi-
nants. The descriptive and inferential codes also emerged in the first round of
coding and needed to be sorted from the analytical codes and refined in order to
remove redundancy. These included bridges and barriers (Illustrative), impacts
(descriptive), water resources management issues (descriptive).
As mentioned earlier, in order to improve the robustness of the analytical pro-
cess, a reliability check was taken in the second round of coding. According to
Perreault and Leigh ( 1989 ), analytical reliability is seen to increase in correlation
with the use of multiple coders. Coding checks therefore can aid definitional clarity