The qualitative 'style' content came from a lecture by Dr. Ronald Chenail, Nova Southeastern University class QRGP 6301, Tuesday March 26, 2013.
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I am trying to plan my ethnographic field notes project for class. I really wanted to collect data during a group bicycle ride but this has been one terrible spring! I feel as if this week is my last chance from a time standpoint but the forecast shows snow (?!?) as a possibility on Wednesday. I usually ride Mondays mid day but may need to change that. I have not yet tested my new action cam - which I had planned for yesterday or today - and it rained both days. It is a waterproof camera but I prefer to have slightly better conditions to test this.
The adventures of Qualitative Ninja Girl continue (actually, we are able to get a glimpse into her past). This one was tough - it took a lot of time and I can see why filmmakers use story boards - better to have everything planned before you get started. Qualitative Ninja Girl - the beginning by slccmh on GoAnimate
Animated Presentations - Powered by GoAnimate. This is a picture of the late Donald T. Campbell - co-author of several books on research design (Campbell & Stanley, 1963; Cook & Campbell, 1979, both Houghton-Mifflin;and Shadish, Cook & Campbell, 2002, Wadsworth). These books - especially the first - are considered seminal works on research design of a quantitative nature. The emphasis, of course, is in proving causality. There are a lot of things I want to do on this blog/journal that I have not done yet.
-Sample some bad tape and sample how different software and effects sound when applied to the bad tape -Post at least one (short) movie made with a handheld camera -Try out Transana and write about it (maybe that will be a fit for my practice effort producing a more detailed transcript) -Finish the latest episode (and further episodes) of the adventures of "Qualitative ninja girl" But before any of that, there are still things I want to write about the class interview assignment. I mentioned some time ago that I would write some more about the consent process for my class interview. For the purposes of this assignment, we were to obtain a signed consent form from the co-researcher. I obtained approval in late 2011 to conduct multiple interviews for another project, from my 'home' university, without the need for signed consent. I needed only to provide a notification letter that informed the participants/co-researchers of their right to withdraw. The letter also described the project, provided contact information, and warned the co-researchers of the potential danger that being asked to recall events in the past might present. When I embarked upon this project, therefore, I knew that at least one other university considered a general, information gathering, semi-structured interview to be pretty inocuous. In fact, conducting this interview with another student in a class for a grade is not necessarily considered research by my institution's IRB. All of that aside, there were things about this process in this instance that did not necessarily go as well as they might. This is 'old faithful,' my Olympus DM-420 with my added directions. I do not know how anyone keeps all of the cords and accessories straight although some may work on more than one device (it is my experience often that this is not the case). I actually considered buying a label maker - these are pieces of colored paper held on with tape - but I decided it was not worth the cost at this time; function, not fashion is my goal.
Today, I completed and emailed the transcript of my class interview (which lasted approximately 29 minutes) off for approval of the co-researcher. Because I am using this blog as my journal and I did not want to share too many details relating to someone else, I redid my notes (see the prior post that shows the format) so the interview is supplemented with 7 pages of 3 column notes plus one analytical memo. I am going to select a segment of this tape to try some detailed, not quite Jeffersonian, transcription because the inflections seem to be quite clear despite less than ideal tape quality. Here is the process I followed to improve a poor quality tape: So after I did not post much for days, I am now up to multiple posts in a 24 hour time period. I have spent a lot of time this a.m. on my transcription (with the goal of being absolutely done today) but I found myself full of thoughts and responses, so I am rewriting my notes from the interview. They were in a two column format - "Event" and "Meaning," and I have added a third for my impression now as I listen and complete the transcription - for the most part this means filling in some blanks and cleaning things up. Last night I decided to try a different audio editor. I have used ExpressScribe from NCH extensively but was unaware of WavePad. I downloaded the free version and tried noise reduction.
This was really good for what I want to do right now. Unfortunately, Audacity is so sophisticated that it is not so quickly navigable. I was able to run my tape through the default settings of noise reduction and make a tremendous and immediate difference in quality. I am making slow but steady progress on my interview transcript. If you read the prior postings about this, you know that I am dealing with technological issues. The issue is not so much with sound quality of the co-researcher - it is quiet but audible, and I am having no more of an issue in understanding than I have had with typical recordings. The biggest problem for me is that I picked up a lot of other noise - including at one point the start up of the furnace blower. I have briefly (very briefly) considered requesting a re-do with my co-researcher, but for several reasons I have decided not to do that.
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AuthorI am Sheryl L. Chatfield, Ph.D, C.T.R.S. I am a member of the faculty in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. I also Co-coordinate the Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research and I am a member of the Design Innovation Team at Kent State. Archives
February 2024
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