Intercoder Reliability

Intercoder reliability refers to the extent to which two or more independent coders agree on the coding of the content of interest with an application of the same coding scheme. In surveys, such coding is most often applied to respondents' answers to open-ended questions, but in other types of research, coding can also be used to analyze other types of written or visual content (e.g. newspaper stories, people's facial expressions, or television commercials). Intercoder reliability is often referred to as interrater or interjudge reliability. Intercoder reliability is a critical component in the content analysis of open-ended survey responses, without which the interpretation of the content cannot be considered objective and valid, although high intercoder reliability is not the only criteria necessary to argue that coding ...