Combining Coding and Conversation Analysis of VMT Chats

This chapter considers the relationship between statistical analysis of coding based on theoretical schemes and conversation analysis of VMT participants’ structuring of their chats. It describes how a statistical test on a hypothesis regarding collaboration in VMT showed an unexpected result, whose understanding required the use of qualitative methods. The phenomenon behind the puzzling result was identified using conversation analysis. The chapter explores an approach to coding based on analysis of how sequences of discussion of different topics are defined interactionally by chat participants as accomplishments of their postings. A form of “mixed methods” is proposed using codes for the different sequences and displaying the ordering of these longer sequences of interaction or compiling statistics of these codes.