Relationships record statements or hunches you have developed about how items in your project are linked. You may represent as relationships the ways in which your research participants are related (i.e. Anna lives with Sunil), how concepts are related (i.e. Context of volunteering impacts Images of volunteers) or any other links between items in your project.
In theVolunteering Sample Project
It became apparent that the context in which they volunteer impacted the images of volunteers reported by the participants.
These contexts and images of volunteers had previously been recorded in the project as tree nodes, so a relationship was created between them with a type of impacts. Any evidence for this relationship was coded at it.
To record relationships between items in your project, you need to indicate the nature of those relationships by creating relationship types. These relationship types classify the relationships within your project and allow you to make comparisons between all the relationships of a particular type to another. Relationship types have both a name and a direction.
It is a good idea to name relationship types with a verb or verbal expression, like "is friends with". Verbal relationship type names assist because they make it clear what is being stated, clarify the relationship type's direction and what items the relationship is from and to.
In the Volunteering Sample Project
The relationship Bernadette is friends with Ken is a verbal expression. This makes it easy to determine who is friends with whom. If it was expressed using a noun (ie. Bernadette friend Ken), the nature of this relationship would be difficult to determine.
When creating a relationship type, you must give it a direction. There are three types of relationship type direction, each giving different meanings to the relationships you create:
Associative (or no-direction): An associative relationship can be used to demonstrate that items are in some way affiliated. Associative relationships between two items must always hold both ways (i.e. Anna lives with Sunil, Sunil must also live with Anna).
One-way: A one-way relationship can be used to demonstrate a relationship between items which has a definite direction, an agent and a recipient. A one-way relationship but doesn't have to hold both ways, it may or may not. (i.e. Bernadette likes Ken, Ken may also like Bernadette but may not and that doesn't change the fact that Bernadette likes him.)
In the Volunteering Sample Project
A relationship exists between the contexts in which people volunteer and how people see those volunteers (i.e. their image).
This is represented using a one-way relationship illustrating that the context of volunteering impacts on the images of those volunteering, but the reverse is not necessarily true. How people see volunteers does not seem to impact on the context of the volunteering.
Symmetrical (two-way): A symmetrical relationship demonstrates some sort of two-way activity between the items. These relationships imply they hold both ways, such as "being married to" or "being a sibling of".
