3.4:Annotator

AmCAT Version
This page describes a feature in AmCAT 3.4
View other version: 3.3 - 3.4 - 3.5

In AmCAT, articles are coded manually in the Annotator. When you open the annotator, you first see a list of coding jobs – articles to code– assigned to you.

Click on a coding job in the list to start coding.

If your coding job does not appear in the list, you might need to change its settings in the create a codingjob screen.

Coding

Below you see a screenshot of a document opened in the Annotator. The document text is to the right, and in the middle of the screen there is a number of variables for coding on the article level. Each variable has a coding field where you can enter information. What exactly you can enter here (e.g. whether you can type in text freely or select an option from a list) depends on the settings in the coding scheme. In the example shown here, you select the value for the first variable 'Article topic' from a list, the second and third variables are boxes that you tick or not, and for the last variable, you select a numerial value from a list that ranges from -1 to 1. If you enter a wrong value in one of the coding fields (e.g. you type a word in a field for numerical values), AmCAT will show an error message, and you cannot save your codings.

You can change the type of variable in the create codingschemes section.

Also, you can enter any comments about the codings for this article, either for yourself or for the researcher who does the analysis, in the 'Comments' field. When you download the coding results from AmCAT, the comments can also be included.

Some useful shortcuts for coding:

• Tab: Jump to the next coding field. When there are variables that use a list of categories (codebooks), use the ↓ and ↑ keys to select a value from the list and press tab to jump to the next field. This way you can code quickly.

• Shift + Tab: Jump to the previous coding field.

• Ctrl + s : Save your coding progress and continue coding. This changes the article’s status to ‘In progress’.

• Ctrl + d: Save your coding progress and continue to the next article in the coding job. This changes the article’s status to ‘finished’.

• Ctrl + i: Change the article’s status to ‘Irrelevant’, save and continue to the next article.

You can use the Save, Finish & Continue and Irrelevant & Continue buttons, respectively, for the same purposes.

Below the variables for coding on the article level, you will find the sentence codings.

Sentence codings

Coding on the sentence level – for coding individual sentences or parts of sentences within a document -- works much the same as on the article level. Again, you fill out coding fields for each variable, and it depends on the type of variable what you can enter in each field.

However, for sentence codings, the coding fields look like a table, where the different variables are listed in the columns. Each row represents a sentence or unit to code. At first, the sentence codings field is empty, save for one row of empty cells. In the first column, you pick the corresponding sentence number for each sentence you code. These sentence numbers are shown in the text on the right side of the screen. When you enter a sentence number, AmCAT will display the corresponding sentence above the current row of coding fields, so you can code it more easily. Use tab and shift + tab to move between coding fields, and ↓ or ↑ to select a value from a list for codebook variables.

When you are at the end of the last row in the coding fields table, tab adds a new row, so you can continue coding quickly.

Some other shortcuts for sentence codings:

• Shift + ↓ : Copy the current row.

• Ctrl + ↓: Add a new row.

• Ctrl + Shift + ↓: Add a new row with the number of the next sentence.

• Ctrl + Shift + d: Remove the current row.

Note that you cannot save sentence codings when the sentence number field (the first column) is left empty for one or more rows.