About the Coding Lab

We code behavior from videotape including emotional expression, facial affect, topic discussions and types of verbal narratives for a broad array of research and industry projects.

Over 200 students have completed internships in this coding lab, most of them have gone on to graduate or medical school. In addition to learning an observational skill, coders generally must learn to regulate their own emotions in order to code emotionally intense videotapes.

What is Coding?

It is not programming!

Coding in the psychological sense means to take a set of behavioral cues and define them based on meaningful constructs. We perform different levels of coding:

1) Speaker Coding - Who is speaking
2) Emotion Coding - We code the emotions of patients through the use of the Specific Affect Coding System (SPAFF) for Breast Cancer and SPAFF for Breast Cancer - Text
3) Listener Coding - Who is back channeling (yah, uh-huh, wow)
4) Listener Emotion Coding - Emotion for backchannelers
5) Topics Coding - Topics discussed in groups
6) Story Coding - Types of verbal narrative

About Janine Giese-Davis

Janine Giese-Davis, Ph.DJanine Giese-Davis received her B.A. in English Literature and B.S. in Psychology from Colorado State University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Oncology, Division of Psychosocial Oncology, Faculty of Medicine, at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She is also affiliated with the Department of Psychosocial Resources at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre, Calgary, Alberta. And she also holds an Adjunct Associate Professorship in the Department of Psychology, University of Calgary. She created and directs The Emotion Coding Lab--Calgary

More Information >>