Monday, April 6, 2009

Transcribing & Coding Interviews - Classical GT Process

Quite a few of the advanced classic GT scholars advocate against recording and transcribing interviews.  They prefer to take field notes and to memo.  This is to avoid from becoming overwhelmed by the data.

One thing Barney said to me was that I can go back to my recorded interviews, and instead of transcribing them, just listen to them and making field notes.

But I am having trouble doing that.  I am so afraid of missing out on the data and precious quotes that I end up taking too many notes and transcribing too much.  One 1-hour interview can take me up 6 hours to note.  What is worse is that after about 1 hour of such work, I get tired and don't want to continue.  It is starting to feel tedious (the way that I am doing it).

And so, I decided that if I can "out" the block of mine on my blog and make it public--let the world know of my secret research shame--it might help me to better stick to the process.  The last thing I want is to become so bogged down by the data that I become ineffective in data analysis.

Keep it broad.  If it is an important aspect of the people's lived experience, it will show up again.  I need to trust the classical GT process!