This is a picture of one of the two Olympus voice recorders I own and had prepared for the telephone interviews today. I tested both recorders yesterday and consulted the manuals to be certain I was comfortable with the operating instructions. I charged one yesterday afternoon and the second one today. What I failed to do was a test of the ear pickup for telephone recording. I used it successfully many, many times between January and February of 2012, and it turned out good quality recordings over and over. When I started the call, I took a look at the levels, and seeing them move, I was confident everything was working. (Of course, no one writes a set up like this and ends it by saying...."and, I was right - everything went perfectly well!") I am now convinced that you need to have at least one mess up to take all of the warnings (to test, test, test your equipment!) seriously. It was my experience back in community theater (and before that, in the rock bands I played around in during high school and college) that pretty much anything that might go wrong will at some time. So, today I had plugged the ear pickup into the wrong place. I am going to put a (third) taped on note on my recorder to mark where this goes. (I have a note that shows which cord goes with which device and I have a note with directions about how to charge the unit. I also have color coded labels on two of my wireless mice and the USB plugs that go with them - I am really label crazy!)
I do not (at this point) think this created an impossible situation - from my side, the worst is that I have to turn up the volume quite a bit for the answers and make certain I turn it down again before I deafen myself with my voice asking questions. However, since I had wanted to do some more detailed transcription, I have the added difficulty of working with a less than ideal source. I do not know how the other recording was received (I did both) but it was minimally impacted because my responses came out just fine; it is the questions that may be difficult to discern. So, that is the 'confidence' part of this post - as far as the 'competence' goes, I felt I was really lacking during the interview itself. My co-researcher did a much more appropriate job of setting up the scene, introducing the interviewer, explaining the interview, etc. I just jumped right into it - and I do know better. I had at one point planned to script out the intro and failed to do so - but that was what I have done in the past. I do have 'closure' words in my mind but I think (my excuse for today) that I was focused on the transition from #1 (me interviewing) to #2 (me being interviewed) so completely overlooked the closure lines. I glossed over the intro because I was not thinking of this as an interview, but instead as an assignment. I will need to listen again (I have heard it twice so far, but not straight through either time) to assess my questioning skills. I spent a lot of time afterward mulling over this and nearly passed on my now regular Monday and Wednesday noon bike ride. But I knew I would feel even worse if I sat around feeling like a failure, especially when I can go out and chase after someone on a bike who is waaay faster than I am - and know that I am (in comparison) a failure! I actually thought the ride was going well, when I realized, as is usually the case, that we had a tailwind going out. But, there is nothing like a hard physical workout to let you know you are alive! So, worst case scenario is that one interview will need to be redone. I do not plan to ask to re-do the one in which I was the interviewer, and if I really feel as if the detailed transcription is too much of a challenge, I have another recording (my practice from yesterday) that I will use for that. I also have very detailed notes. One thing I have overlooked in all of this is what a terrific experience the interview themselves were. No technological or protocol issues can minimize that. I truly enjoy speaking with other people who are enthused about qualitative inquiry and I found conversation with my co-researcher a real pleasure.
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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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