Development of an observational coding scheme for parental behaviour in a play-based instructional context with 5- to 7-year-olds

This PhD thesis outlines and explains the development of an inductive coding scheme designed for the analysis of parents' behaviour during play-based instructional parent-child interactions with 5- to 7-year-old children. Parents and children were video-recorded collaborating on a problem-solving puzzle in a laboratory for 10 minutes. Five-minute fragments of the same task were selected, and parents' behaviour was analysed inductively (i.e., using a data-driven "bottom-up" approach) to establish sufficient segmentation and coding granularity. This required identifying fine-grained behavioural segments, considering all observable aspects of parents' behaviour, and naming the behaviours appropriately. This thesis explains and illustrates with data examples five stages of the coding scheme development: pre-pilot coding scheme development, pilot coding scheme development, coder training, pilot coding scheme testing and finalising the coding scheme, and implementation of the final coding scheme. Throughout these stages, the coding scheme was tested and improved based on the insights gained through the inter-rater agreement (IRA) assessment and coding disagreement discussions with the independent coders. Satisfactory IRA and the coders' understanding of the coding scheme demonstrated that the final coding scheme was successfully developed, comprising 18 codes (e.g., praise, direct instruction, assistive clue) within 8 distinct categories (e.g., positive, control, guidance). A coding manual was developed for future researchers' use containing the coding and segmentation rules, final coding scheme (code definitions, guiding questions, code differentiation, code examples and non-examples), coder training plan, coding procedures, and recommendations for improving coding accuracy.