Divya Kothari worked as a research assistant for Professor Hans Jochen Scholl during the fall of 2015 on a project studying the response to the 2014 landslide disaster near Oso, Washington. Over thirty incident managers and responders were interviewed, with interviews ranging from 55 minutes to over 4 hours. Divya coded several of the interviews using a pre-established codebook, and her coding was found to be of very high quality and highly reliable when checked against other coders. Professor Scholl attests that Divya is a proficient, fast, accurate, and caring research assistant.

1. The Information School
Mary Gates Hall Suite 370D Box 352840 Seattle, Washington 98195-2840
Phone: (206) 616-2543 Fax: (206) 616-3152 Email: jscholl@uw.edu
Website: http://faculty.washington.edu/jscholl
January 22, 2016
Divya Kothari
MSIM Candidate
University of Washington
The Information School
To Whom It May Concern:
My name is Hans Jochen Scholl, and I am a tenured full professor at the Information School in the
University of Washington. The following represents a recognition for excellent volunteer work.
This is to acknowledge and attest that MSIM candidate Divya Kothari worked with me as a research
assistant during the fall quarter of 2015 on a research project that studied the response to the 2014
landslide disaster near Oso, WA (also known as the SR530 landslide disaster).
In this research project over thirty incident managers, responders, and leaders from federal, state, and
county departments as well as from local municipalities were interviewed. These interviews were semi-
structured, and the interview sessions lasted between 55 minutes and over 4 hours and were audio
recorded. In a previous project phase all recordings were transcribed.
Using a cloud-based coding and analysis tool, Divya coded several of these interviews in a deductive
fashion along the lines of a previously developed and theory-based codebook. The code applications
and excerpts, which Divya produced, were of very high quality. The applied codes were checked
against other coders’ work to assure a maximum of inter-coder reliability. Divya’s work was found
highly reliable and consistent in these inter-coder reliability checks.
Coding and contextual analyses were performed by means of the Dedoose cloud service.
I can attest that Divya is a very proficient, fast, accurate, and caring research assistant who also shares
her insights and observations from the coding process with other researchers thus providing important
hints for the data analysis.
I can highly recommend Divya as a very careful, curious, and highly engaged research assistant.
Sincerely,
Hans J Scholl, PhD, MBA
Professor