Our Categories
[THE METHODS WE USED FOR ESTABLISHING OUR CATEGORIZATION WORK]
Contents
Summary
Categories group similar data in a hierarchical way. We're categorizing the APCO standard for 911 incident types. Categories will help analysts filter data, create meaningful relationships between APCO codes, and give us a better sense of the types of 911 incidents that don’t require an armed law enforcement response. This categorization work has 2 phases:
Develop categories - Each person separately develops their own categories for the same set of APCO codes.
Synthesize categories - Then, one person will synthesize the categorizations into a single taxonomy.
Our process
1. Develop categories
1) Categorize codes (first pass)
Reimagine911 staff and volunteers review the entire list of APCO codes and create categories for the codes in an Airtable base.
We meet during working sessions to review progress and ask questions about difficult to categorize codes. We're also co-developing guidelines for categorization.
2) Categorize codes (second pass)
Staff and volunteers will refine their categories of APCO codes in their second review of the entire list of codes.
3) Finalize codes
Staff and volunteers conduct a third and final review, at which point each APCO code belongs to only one category.
2. Synthesize categories
1) Synthesize categories (first pass)
A data analyst will review staff and volunteers' categories for similarities and differences then start developing a singular categorization.
2) Synthesize categories (second pass)
The data analyst will get feedback from staff and volunteers on the first draft of the categorization.
Then, they'll revise the categorization based on the feedback for a second and final version of the categorization.
Learnings (so far)
Categories should prioritize people
Incidents are multi-dimensional. Categorizing to better understand the need or lack of need for law enforcement intervention starts with understanding an incident's impact on people.
💡 Example - The APCO codes CARJACK and STOLEN VEHICLE both involve vehicles, but their implied impact is different. Carjacking is “the theft of an automobile from its driver by force or intimidation" (view the definition here). The greatest impact is on the person forced to give up the car – not the car itself – so this would probably be better categorized not as VEHICLE, but as a crime, theft, violent assault, etc.
Categories aren't tags, and vice versa
Categories describe a hierarchical relationship for data. An APCO code will belong to only one category. On the other hand, an APCO code can have many tags.
💡 Example - "Alarm" is a category because there are different types of alarms (fire, gas, panic, etc.) that can be categorized as sub-categories. "Juvenile" is better served as a tag because there aren't a lot of APCO codes that describe different types of incidents involving juveniles.
In our second and third passes, we realized that some of our categories were better suited as tags.
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