Colorism as a Meaning System in Higher Education: The Webb IRIS Interpretive Qualitative Codebook

Colorism as a Meaning System in Higher Education: The Webb IRIS Interpretive Qualitative Codebook This codebook is a qualitative research resource designed to support interpretive analysis of how college students make sense of colorism in relation to campus climate, identity formation, and belonging in higher education contexts. It is grounded in Webb’s IRIS model (Individual, Relational, Institutional, Systemic), which functions as a multi-level interpretive framework for analyzing qualitative narratives across intersecting contexts of experience. Purpose and Use The codebook provides a structured analytic framework for thematic coding of: survey narrative responses interview transcripts supplementary qualitative materials It supports multi-level interpretive analysis of how students construct and negotiate meaning around colorism across academic, social, familial, and institutional environments. Coding Framework The codebook includes: Definitions of IRIS dimensions (Individual, Relational, Institutional, Systemic) Inclusion and exclusion criteria for each code Illustrative examples from narrative data Cross-cutting thematic tags for interpretive analysis Guidance for applying multi-level coding to complex narrative segments Methodological Orientation This codebook is situated within an interpretive qualitative research paradigm. It emphasizes meaning-making processes rather than frequency-based coding or positivist measurement approaches. Publicly available digital ethnographic materials (e.g., TikTok and Reddit narratives) are used as contextual discourse to support triangulation of interpretive patterns, rather than as a bounded participant sample. Related Research Outputs This codebook supports the dataset: Colorism and Student Sense-Making of Campus Climate in Higher Educationhttps://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ES6YEU It is also associated with a manuscript in preparation for submission to a higher education research journal. License and Use This resource is intended for academic research and teaching purposes. Users should follow ethical standards for qualitative secondary analysis, including attention to context, interpretation, anonymization, and responsible use of publicly available data. Author Valerie RayIndependent ResearcherORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-5166-9153DOI (Zenodo record): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20201499