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In situational analysis (SA), various procedures are available, including coding and mapping, each serving distinct purposes at different levels of the research process. In this article, I present a case regarding the uses of coding based on a research project focused on the political participation of Indigenous peoples in Chile's constitutional process. The motivation for this article stems from the challenges I encountered as a newcomer to SA. Within the research process, coding-used alongside other techniques like mapping-played a crucial role in enabling engagement with the data and tackling analytical challenges. In the initial stage, coding helped identify various elements and discourses in the constitutional process that were essential to the project's findings. In a later stage, it assisted in redeveloping a positional map that initially did not reflect the full spectrum of discursive positions. In vivo codes also fostered interdisciplinary connections among bodies of literature in political science and education. These applications of coding can benefit other researchers, particularly those who are new to the methodology.

This study explores the integration of ChatGPT-4 into the qualitative research process, focusing on the methodology of Situational Analysis by Adele Clarke and analysing TED Talks transcripts. Findings show ChatGPT's ability to process data quickly in initial coding, formulating broader categories reflecting Clarke's complexity of “situation,” recognising human and non-human elements, discourses, debates, and issues, temporal and spatial. In analysing data for different map types (situational, social worlds and arenas, positional), ChatGPT-4 “understands” their different analytical purposes, recognising different levels of abstraction and theoretical structuring. The research highlighted the challenges for generative AI in translating complex theoretical frameworks into situational maps and visual representations and underlined the importance of effective prompting strategies. Also, the study identified several roles for generative AI in qualitative research, including co-analyst, consultant and trainer, highlighting the central role of human researchers in decision making and interpretation.

Situational analysis mapping is widely appreciated as offering systematical empirical approaches to analyzing relationality. However, the role of grounded theory coding as a technique to analyze sequentially remains somewhat unclear in situational analysis method books. In my contribution, I regard situational analysis as a traveling concept rooted in pragmatism and taken up within research landscapes different from its origin. Scrutinizing how situational analysis is practiced in German-speaking social sciences, I find that grounded theory coding is commonly used in addition to mapping. I relate this to existing debates on social scientific hermeneutics. Relations between pragmatism and hermeneutics are clarified and possible implications for data analysis in situational analysis are pointed out.

Numerous cyber situational awareness models have been proposed in recent years. Yet, one of the main challenges still remains mostly unsolved, which is what information sources contribute to the process for establishing cyber situational awareness and how is relevant information collected. While previous scientific works focused on situational awareness models and decision support based on common operating pictures, ingesting and maintaining a consistent data basis for the cyber domain has rarely been studied in detail. However, this is crucial when data distributed across different systems need to be collected, vetted, correlated, de-duplicated, enriched and finally stored as a basis for flexible cyber security reporting. In this paper, we design an approach and a data model that enable to ingest and store the essential information from disparate organizational units and act as a basis for the flexible creation of cyber security reports. We describe the application of this approach and model in a case study together with the Austrian Ministry of Defense (MoD), in which we surveyed existing data sources and transfer paths and rated the applicability of the CCOP data model and accompanying processes in course of a proof-of-concept implementation.

Security operation centers (SOCs) are increasingly established to meet the growing threat against cyber security. The operators of SOCs respond to complex incidents under time constraints. Within critical infrastructure, the consequences of human error or low performance in SOCs may be detrimental. In other domains, situation awareness (SA) has proven useful to understand and measure how operators use information and decide the correct actions. Until now, SA research in SOCs has been restricted by a lack of in-depth studies of SA mechanisms. Therefore, this study is the first to conduct a goal-directed task analysis in a SOC for critical infrastructure. The study was conducted through a targeted series of unstructured and semi-structured interviews with SOC operators and their leaders complemented by a review of documents, incident reports, and in situ observation of work within the SOC and real incidents. Among the presented findings is a goal hierarchy alongside a complete overview of the decisions the operators make during escalated incidents. How the operators gain and use SA in these decisions is presented as a complete set of SA requirements. The findings are accompanied by an analysis of contextual differences in how the operators prioritize goals and use information in network incidents and security incidents. This enables a discussion of what SA processes might be automated and which would benefit from different SA models. The study provides a unique insight into the SA of SOC operators and is thus a steppingstone for bridging the knowledge gap of Cyber SA.

This paper reports on student perspectives on access to online information resources when conducting an initial search for a school project. Through thematic analysis and user vignettes based on data from 175 students in elementary through graduate school, this paper explores how students determine whether they have access to online information resources, the barriers and enablers they attend to when pursuing access, and the characteristics that influence this process. Results reveal that resource previews, university and library branding, and the word download are generally viewed as enablers of access, while payment cues, learned heuristics around brands and formats, and the need to take extra steps to obtain the full text were barriers that often prevent students from trying to get access even when resources were available to them. Potential influences on individual capacity are also revealed, including experience in high- or low-availability information environments, ability to manage the complex cognitive load of determining access alongside other types of point-of-selection evaluation, a variety of dispositions related to information seeking, and situational factors related to the importance of the information need to the individual. While library staff work diligently to make online resources available, this does not automatically result in students’ ability to access those resources. This paper provides evidence to better equip library professionals for constructing their online information systems, collaborating with information providers about their online information systems, and teaching students about converting availability to access.

PurposeIn recent years, there has been a growth in research aimed at understanding the foundations of modern activist communication in media-rich and multi-platform environments. For example, Chon and Park's analysis of the American Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement built on Kim and Grunig's STOPS model. Yet, social and political injustice can exist for extended periods of time without successful movements emerging, so what leads people to demand social and political change through activism? This paper posits that crisis is trigger that motivates people to activism and evaluates that within the context of the Scottish independence movement.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on in-depth interviews with 26 advocates for Scottish independence, which yielded more than 32 h of data. Data were analysed using Strauss and Corbin's (1990) constant comparative method approach using open coding, axial coding and selective coding finding thematic saturation after only 10 interviews.FindingsThe study provides a clear extension of Chon and Park's model of activism by finding that crises are critical triggers for activism. Moreover, these findings also provide insights into not only the Scottish independence movement but more broadly the extension of traditional public relations and communication theory in multi-platform and multi-actor environments.Originality/valueThere are several contributions this piece makes. First, this paper extends activist, crisis and strategic communication research to more systematically consider the role that crisis plays in social and political advocacy. Second, this paper affords the opportunity to consider the challenges of communication, democracy and activism in the social media age. Finally, this paper supports an international view that discrimination and affective injustice experiences cut across many different kinds of identities and experiences instead of the traditionally considered ethnic, religious and gender-based experiences traditionally addressed.

Objective. To explore pharmacists’ and pharmacy students’ perceptions regarding the significance of changing the features of test item scenario (eg, switching from a health care to a non-health care context) on their situational judgment test (SJT) responses. Methods. Fifteen Doctor of Pharmacy students and 15 pharmacists completed a 12-item SJT intended to measure empathy. The test included six scenarios in a health care context and six scenarios in a non-health care context; participants had to rank potential response options in order of appropriateness and no two items could be of equal rank. Qualitative data were collected individually from participants using think-aloud and cognitive interview techniques. During the cognitive interview, participants were asked how they selected their final responses for each item and whether they would have changed their answer if features of the scenario were switched (eg, changed to a non-health care context if the original item was in a health care context). Interviews were transcribed and a thematic analysis was conducted to identify the features of the scenario for each item that were perceived to impact response selections. Results. Participants stated that they would have changed their responses on average 51.3% of the time (range 20%-100%) if the features of the scenario for an item were changed. Qualitative analysis identified four pertinent scenario features that may influence response selections, which included information about the examinee, the actors in the scenario, the relationship between examinee and actors, and details about the situation. There was no discernible pattern linking scenario features to the component of empathy being measured or participant type. Conclusion. Results from this study suggest that the features of the scenario described in an SJT item could influence response selections. These features should be considered in the SJT design process and require further research to determine the extent of their impact on SJT performance.

Objective. To describe the role of examinee knowledge and experience in situational judgment test (SJT) response processes. Methods. Thirty participants (15 students and 15 pharmacists) completed a 12-item SJT on empathy. Each participant completed a think-aloud interview followed by a cognitive interview to elicit their understanding of the items and factors that influenced their response selections. Interviews were coded to identify references to general and job-specific knowledge and experiences. Utterances were quantified to explore differences in the occurrence based on the individual item, item setting (ie, health care or non-health care setting), participant type (ie, student or pharmacists), and empathy component being assessed (ie, affective or cognitive empathy). Results. Participants made 480 references to knowledge and experiences: 45.2% were job-specific knowledge or experiences, 27.5% were general knowledge or experiences, 17.9% related to a lack of experience, and 9.4% were nondescript and could not be distinguished. There were significant differences in the reference to general and job-specific knowledge or experiences based on whether the item scenario occurred in a health care or non-health care setting and the component of empathy being assessed. Experience references often included comments about location, actors, task, similarity, specificity, and recency; knowledge references were classified by information, strategies, and skills. Conclusion. Findings from this study suggest general and job-specific knowledge and experiences influence response processes in SJTs.

This experimental study explored the impact of representation + glossary label visuals on science outcomes in a sample of 174 Grade 7 English learners (ELs). Analysis of covariance results indicated that, regardless of English proficiency, ELs in both treatment and control conditions performed similarly on reading comprehension (p = .26) and triggered interest (p = .65) measures, with a trend in means favoring the no-visuals, control group. These findings suggest that, although recommended by the literature, representation + glossary label visuals for ELs may be associated with deleterious (seductive details) rather than beneficial (dual coding) effects. Additional research is needed on higher-level visuals (organization, interpretation, transformation) to identify visual accommodations most effective in supporting ELs' science learning. Regression analysis results indicated that triggered situational interest predicted science reading comprehension above and beyond English language proficiency, suggesting the importance of instructionally stimulating this interest type. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.