Has anybody found a good way of recording telephone interviews? Are the little digital gadgets that you connect to the phone line any good? There's also Call Trunk, which records the interview for you (but you need to pay) - has anybody used it? Are there any other options? I've got to do a telephone interview soon and am beginning to panic about how I'm going to record it!

Thanks. :-)

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Use an iphone. Yours or a friends if you don't have one. it has the option on the screen when you are in the call I think.(up)

Edit: It might not, I'll need to check it out. For some reason I remember it though... :$

Edit: Yep, it looks like I imagined it. Probably a crap dream or something. Sorry!

I recorded a few telephone interviews with my digital recorder. What I did was put the telephone on speaker and just recorded as normal. Tbh it came out clearer that the face to face interviews in many instances. I found it good to do them in an enclosed space such as the car; the subsequent recording was very clear. One I did while my recorder was on a pillow - not good and not to be advised!

Have you seen these articles?
http://qrj.sagepub.com/content/4/1/107.short and
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09500799509533370

just to add that I didn't have the phone on speaker when I started the call but I asked all my telephone interviewees if they minded if I put them on speakerphone as I wanted to record the call - none of them objected:-)

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Thank you! I have now found the acoustic coupler which one of my supervisors gave me ages ago :$ - it works brilliantly! You just attach it to the phone (where the sound comes out) and then plug it into a digital recorder. :-)

I think there is an app for the iphone and for some HTC phones (which is what I've got), I'm not sure how well they work. In any case, the mobile phone signal is virtually non-existent in our house - unless you're half-way up the wall at the front of the house, where my mobile is currently perching. :$

Thanks for those papers, Ady! I've found the first one but don't have access to the second one (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09500799509533370) - if you have it, is there any chance you could possibly send it to me? :-)

Thanks again!

Hi Moonblue

Can't seem to go back past 1997 with Evaluation and Research in Education :-(. However I did come across another paper by the same author 'phone interviewing as a means of data collection: lessons learned and practical recommendations' available at
http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/959/2095.

In searching for the 1997 article I came across 'Comparing telephone and face-to-face interviewing: a research note' (2004) in Qualitative Research. I got it through Google Scholar with a freely available pdf
http://www.akademiska.se/upload/52362/Comparing%20Telephone%20and%20Face-to-face%20qualitative%20interviewing%20-%20a%20research%20note.pdf

Let me know if you can't access either link and I can send you them to you by email.

Good luck with your interviews



8-)

Brilliant, thank you! :-)

For anyone who finds this thread in years to come and needs the same info - you can find adapters at maplins http://www.maplin.co.uk/play-and-record-telephone-recording-adaptor-30352

I used the gadget thing that plugs into the recorder and the phone line and it worked amazingly - all my interviews were very clear, probably clear than face to face ones. The alternative I tried was to use skype and download an add on called pamela, but I think the normal phone line worked better and as you have one of those plug in things would go for that.
Those links are really useful - thanks Ady!

The gadget I have is actually less high-tech. It doesn't plug into the phone line but fits over part of the telephone receiver (the bit you put up against your ear - I'm sure there is a proper word for it!). :-)

http://www.maplin.co.uk/telephone-pick-up-coil-3519

??

The best photo I could find is on this page http://www.dictationworld.com.au/products/accessories/index.html , 6th down on the left (Acoustic Coupler 163). They probably don't even make them anymore. :$ But it works very well!

oh wow, i didn't even realise such things existed ;-)

It might be a valuable antique. ;-) But (have I mentioned this before?) it works very well. :-);-)