HyperRESEARCH: Quickly Determine Code Order in Your Source Files

Sort Codes by Reference

It's often helpful to know what order codes appear within your source material. For example, does evidence of 'friendship' come before 'love' in a research study on dating?

SortCodesIn HyperRESEARCH, the order of the occurance of codes can be determined from the list of codes on any given case. Of the four columns (Code Name, Source, Type, and Reference) shown on the case, Reference contains the order in which the codes appear.

To sort your code instances by Reference, select "Sort..." from the Codes menu. If you have only one text source per case, you can sort by Code Reference alone. If you have multiple source files coded to each case, sort codes by Code Source and then by Code Reference. (See screen shot of the "Sort Codes" dialog box to the right.)

You can also filter the codes appearing on your cases to limit them to the codes you're specifically interested in examining at the moment. In the example of "friendship" and "love" given above, you'd want to limit the code instances you're looking at to the ones labeled "friendship" and "love."

To filter your codes like this, use the "Filter Codes" feature to "Filter Codes by Name" (choose "friendship" and "love"). You may access the Filter Codes menu as a drop-down menu directly from the Study Window (below your list of code instances applied to the current case), or via the Codes Menu.

 

Use the "Preceded By" and "Followed By" Selection Criteria Plug-Ins

As an alternative to using the "Sort Code by Reference" and the "Filter Codes by Name" features, you can use the "Filter Codes by Criteria" feature.

CodeFilteringCriteria

 

From the Build Critera pull-down menu, choose "Function...." HyperRESEARCH will present a list of currently installed "Code Criteria" plug-ins for HyperRESEARCH.

 

SelectFunction

 

After selecting "FollowedBy" or other code selection criteria, you'll need to choose two codes. Whenever the second code (the "target" code) follows the first code within a source file, both codes and their underlying source material will be chosen to remain on your Study Window. So in the example below, any instances of "major outbreaks of food-borne ilnesses" in source files that have the code "food-borne human hospitalizations" appear later in that text file will be chosen while other cods are filtered out and not displayed on the Source Window.

 

CodeFilteringParameters

 

What do These Functions Do?

Each function accepts 2 codes as parameters: Code1 and Code2. The functions have specific meaning based upon the Type for Source material they are applied to.

For TEXT Sources

  • FollowedBy means that the Start of Code2 is after (by at least 1 character) the End of Code1, that is Code2 follows Code1
  • PrecededBy means that the End of Code2 is before (by at least 1 chatacter) the Start of Code1, that is Code2 precedes Code1

For IMAGE Sources

  • FollowedBy means that the rectangle of Code2 is Below OR To the Right (but not Above-Right) of the rectangle for Code1
  • PrecededBy means that the rectangle of Code2 is ABove OR To the Left (but not Below-Left) of the rectangle for Code1

For MEDIA (Audio/Video) Sources

  • FollowedBy means that the Start of Code2 is after (by at least 1 second) the End of Code1, that is Code2 follows Code1
  • PrecededBy means that the End of Code2 is before (by at least 1 second) the Start of Code1, that is Code2 precedes Code1

You can use these new function for either the selection of Cases by criteria or Codes by criteria (shown below). Simply use them as any of the other coding functions, as described in the HyperRESEARCH Help file or PDF User Guide.

 

Install the "Preceded By" and "Followed By" Selection Criteria Plug-Ins for HyperRESEARCH 2.8.x

While the "FollowedBy" and "PrecededBy" selection criteria come with HyperRESEARCH 3.0, if you're still using HyperRESEARCH version 2.8.3 and wish to use these functions you'll need to install them.

First download HR_Bonus_Funcs.zip, the ZIP archive containing the additional code functions (click on its name to download). Unzip this archive to extract the HR_Bonus_Funcs.hpg file.

Once the "HR_Bonus_Funcs.hpg" file opened and unzipped, you're ready to load the function. In HyperRESEARCH, select "Options..." from the Edit menu and click on the Reports tab (shown below).

techtip_codeorder_fig2

Next, click on the "Add.." button and select the HR_Bonus_Funcs.hpg file to add the addiitonal functions.

After you load the "HR_Bonus_Funcs.hpg" file you will see two new function added: FollowedBy and PrecededBy.

techtip_codeorder_fig3

See the instructions above for using the new FollowedBy and PrecededBy functions.