Saturday, November 21, 2009

I love qualitative research

Nerd heaven: after midnight on Friday, and I’ve just spent the past several hours transcribing my latest research interview, drinking and naked in bed. Doing research on kink for credit is absolute joy, one part subversive and one part dutiful; somehow, it works.

Things I’m noticing in this interview:

  • I’m speaking very different on this recording, and I wonder if it’s because on the personality of the interviewee, the setting, or the fact that it’s a guy.
  • I’m a high-talker at the beginning of my sentences. When I make a statement, it sounds like a ski-jump: starting really high and slow, gradually picking up speed and lowering in tone, and soaring with babble. Sometimes I land it, sometimes I don’t. All this in spite of my resolution to speak more concisely and to eliminate irritating and embarrassing idiosyncrasies from my speech.
  • In the previous interview as well as this one, if you look at speed and deliberate articulation, people seem to speak either peaks or valleys: either we start slowly, then speak quickly and flightily, then finish the sentence methodically; or, we start in a rush, plod through the middle, and hurry out of the sentence.

I really enjoy both the interviews (especially being as open-ended as they are at this stage in the research) and the close inspection of the transcription. It makes me want to do a Ph.D, again. My supervisor and I have been talking about spending next semester preparing the research for publication and/or conference presentation, too.

Anyway, enough of that, and off to bed.

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