No video update today! This is where vanity rears its ugly head – I need a haircut, have been working mostly nonstop for about a month and a half now, and am therefore not feeling terribly camera-ready.

However, I did get a question from one of my research participants a couple of weeks ago that I wanted to talk about.

After our interview, she asked me what exactly would happen with all of this information — specifically, with her interview — you know, what I would do with it, what it meant to use it as ‘research,’ etc.

What I want to say is that everyone has different processes: they coalesce at times, but they also diverge at times, and those points are contingent on the values and orientation of the researcher. I will happily get into a much larger spiel about that at some point down the line, but what I think she wanted to know was more in line with specifics.

So. Specifically, as my participants know, we conduct the interview via Skype (or FaceTime in one instance), and I screen capture the whole thing. This means I have all the video and audio from our whole talk — including my face and my reactions. This is actually incredibly unusual!

From the giant file that is generated, I export a video file. I then import that file into a software called F5, which is an open source software out of Germany. It’s an incredible transcription software.

Once I’m done transcribing, I import the text and the movie into another software called TAMS Analyzer (beware the 1996-looking website!). There are prettier (and more expensive) software packages out there, but almost all of them are for PC computers, not Macs, so TAMS it is.

The software doesn’t really “do” anything to my data – it doesn’t interpret it or analyze it – but it lets me classify, annotate, and sort of create buckets of meaning to apply to the transcripts. I look for patterns of meaning in the interviews and the IGBP videos themselves, the software lets me track it all in a semi-organized fashion. During that process of analysis, I’m writing notes to myself and rethinking things and going back to the video and rewatching for things I’ve missed and etc. etc.

What I try to approach this with is a real philosophy of and ethic of care and compassion. I’ll talk more about that another time.

Anyway, that’s a real summary of what happens (in brief overview) with your interview when it’s over!

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