Efficient coding of eyewitness narratives: A comparison of syntactic unit and word count procedures

Researchers rely on two types of coding systems to evaluate eyewitness narr atives. Features-of-events checklists offer coding simplicity but are impra ctical when target events are complex. Units-of-information (UOI) systems s core all information reported, regardless of event complexity, but are diff icult to implement. To test whether simpler systems would alter conclusions about memory performance, transcripts from children (3-8 years of age) who participated in an eyewitness study, originally coded using a UOI system c alled syntactic units (SU), were recoded using two word count procedures. C orrelations between SU, modified word count, and raw word count values were high, and the proportion of information that was inaccurate was comparable across systems. Considering their high interrater reliability, procedural simplicity, and convergence with SU coding, word count procedures are effic ient alternatives to UOI coding.