Recording mistakes

I use a digital recorder when interviewing people. The department lent me one when I was doing my MRes and I liked it so much that I bought my own. It was a very reasonable price on Amazon.

However, interviews have potential for technical mistakes in recording:

• battery goes flat
• device is full

I now recognise the warning noises it gives me for these problems, but now I've added another; I didn't switch it on.

The recorder has two switches, one on the device and one on the microphone. I'd switched one on but the other overrode it. During the conversation, I wanted to make eye contact, so couldn't pick up the device and peer short sightedly at it to check it. I only realised as I went to switch it off. Bother!

Immediately I took extra time to think over and make notes on the meeting, switched on the recorder and spoke my thoughts. But my speaking took only six minutes and the meeting had been half an hour. What a pain!

Transcribing interviews

I've transcribed a dozen interviews myself and used www.waywithwords.eu to transcribe a dozen others. I have learned to:

• secure a good quality of sound recording but that what is good quality to me may not be good quality to another transcriber.
• clarify inaudible answers during the interview. But one interview in a crowded restaurant was totally incomprehensible. I couldn't transcribe any, just make notes immediately after.
• listen immediately after to check sound quality and remind myself, in case the recording gets lost
• pose clear questions that interview subjects understand (hence the importance of the interview schedule sheet)
• listen to what is said and how, but also during the interview to watch hands and eyes because the movements add information that the recordings don't make. Hands are interesting. e.g. pointing upwards at the vision, or two turning together from left, then from right then to the middle to "form the middle ground", or a wave that means "switch off that recorder". Some movement then give information, I've "heard" it, but there're no words.
• pay attention to the voice, pauses, sighs - see Kvale, 2007 p137, who suggests the voice indicates whether the topic is important or may be too sensitive to pursue
• follow an interview with second questions - difficult when my reactions are not yet sufficiently gather to create coherent second questions
• avoid the interview becoming filled with small talk to notice the interviewer's variations of question and styles
• become aware of the differences between oral and written language. This really shows up when you try to add punctuation. Where do I put a full stop? Is that where the speaker would have put it? Sometimes when I've used a transcriber, the full stop has change the speaker's meaning
• notice how new interpretations of meanings may arise when working with the recordings - I'm not sure that happens much but I do notice things that I didn't have time for or wouldn't have followed up with the interviewee.

See Kvale 2007, Box 12.1 which is very useful. He suggests learning to interview by witnessing others interviewing, which I've not had the chance to do, expect in the Doctoral training Workshops - I hate those artificial situations.

Perhaps as students we could get together to talk about our interview stories. I'll ask our MRes group next time we reunite.

Kvale on analysis of interviews

Six steps to analysis:

1. Subjects describe how they work with and relate to each other.
2. Subjects discover new relationships, new meanings – yes I noticed this in my first case studies
3. Interviewer condenses and interprets meaning back – do I do that? Sometimes. If I had more time, I’d ask more. Sometimes I interrupt too much – lose what the subject was going to say. Sometimes I note something they’ve said then come back to it when they’ve finished talking. That follow-up may elucidate but may lead into another area.
4. The transcribed interview is interpreted by the interviewer. It’s structured through transcription. I use a computer program (Nvivo) for contextual analysis. Kvale says there are five main approaches to the analysis of meaning: condensation, categorization, narrative structuring, interpretation and ad hoc methods. Which should I use?
5. Kvale suggests as a 5th step a re-interview but I doubt I have time for this, nor do my participants. The other thing that worries me about re-interviews stems from my experience on the MRes when the Friday before the Monday I was due to submit, I received a letter from a participant asking me not to use anything that participants had said. I’d sent out the full unedited transcript with a query on a financial fact, like “was it £50k or £150K?” Participant took fright, I think. I had to check the whole 15,000 words over the weekend, editing out anything and everything that could possibly be attributed to that participant. So now I’m a bit leery about giving transcripts back to subjects to comment.
6. Kvale suggests possibly extending the continuum of descriptions and interpretation to include action, by subjects beginning to act on new insights they have gained during the interview. I doubt that’s immediately possible but perhaps the reports I feedback to my helpful participants organisations will provide insights for them to act upon, though I did have the impression that some participants found the interviews caused them to reflect on their work.
   

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Kvale, S. (1996). InterViews : an introduction to qualitative research interviewing. Thousand Oaks, CA ; London, Sage. Chapter 11 of {Kvale, 1996 #1198}

Access to cases in public organisations

"getting acquiescence to interviewees is perhaps the easiest task in case study research" {Stake, 2005:65}

Such acquiescence is not easy for researching consultant-client relationships. Both parties are shy - skittish. Getting into central government is even more difficult because of the sensitivity and secrecy - hardly surprising given the criticism central government departments can face, like "x department spent so much on consultants or £m wasted on failed government IT. It's about politics here on the BBC. And selling papers here.

Such criticism may not be deserved - government servants face so much accountability and their top people do not want to be hauled up in front of a select committee to explain a public failure. Neither do their suppliers. Is it only the specialist IT media that report the less political good news here?

Maybe they suspect the motives of researchers looking for bad news, and don't believe they are looking to see how they do what they do together. On top of that, they are busy, just plain working with little spare time to explain what they do to outsiders - wouldn't they have to account for their time anyhow?

As a researcher I'm a guest. Despite the research area being a matter of public interest, I have no scholarly right to know {Stake, 2005}, but am a guest in their spaces. My manners must be good and I have no intention of exploiting or embarrassing anybody.

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STAKE, R. E. (2005) Qualitative case studies. IN DENZIN, N. K. & LINCOLN, Y. S. (Eds.) The sage handbook of qualitative research. London, Sage Publications.