Hi folks, just a quick one - has anyone ever done recorded telephone interviews with individual participants? if yes how did it go? I have already done my field work using qualitative methods, analysed the findings etc - but there are a couple of gaps i need to fill in terms of information, hence the idea of telephone interviews. I am not in a position to travel to Africa where I did the original field work -question of money and time. All i need to do are short individual interviews, less than 40 minutes with no more than 8 people.
Any words of wisdom? I am more concerned about the recording bit, how doable is it? Many thanks in advance.

Hi Tsipat,

I haven't done it myself but almost all of the PhD students I know have done it. Seems very easy. Ours use an MP3 recorder which you plug into the telephone and just hit record. As easy as that. There are some disadvantages but lots of advantages too.

Do you have an Audio-visual department? Talk to them. If not, go through IT. They should be able to tell you how to set it all up.

Good luck.

A

Hi there,
I have done about 25 telephone interviews now for my research. I have also done face to face interviews. So a mixture of the two depending on what the participant prefers and how easy it is to get to them.
I actually find telephone interviews very good. I use a digital recorder that hooks up to the telephone. The data is then transferred to the computer into a program called PCmemo scribe which I then use to transcribe my interviews.
Both face to face and telephone interviews have pros and cons. Some people actually prefer telephone interviews and can be more open with me as there is a greater degree of anonymity. However they can be difficult in terms of reading people and knowing when natura pauses have occurred.
I say go for it though and make sure you do a test of the equipment before the first interview as I didn't and my first 4 didn't record! Doh!

Hi Tsipat,

I did some back in the good old days with a cassette recorder, and more recently with a digital recorder. Although nobody uses tapes anymore, I actually really liked it because there was a transcribing machine you could put them in with foot pedals to control the play/rewind functions when you were typing - don't know of anything like that for digital recorders unfortunately. Both pieces of equipment were kept in our department office for general staff use, perhaps you can ask the secretaries in your department office if they know of anything?

I found them all fine, but as with any recording pay special attention to background noise when you decide where to conduct the interview. I've had people emptying a box of cutlery into a plastic tray (!), planes flying past open windows and all sorts spoiling my recordings. Even when I found a quiet office, when I played the recording back it had picked up the sound of the lift at the end of the corridor so every few minutes you could hear "doors closing! life going down!" booming out!

Sorry that should say 'lift going down' not 'life going down'! Freudian slip I think...

I do loads, use this with a digital dictaphone (although make sure you do a practice one to make sure all the settings are ok and it is actually recording)

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=30352

I often find them easier, although with mine, I have to make sure they are speaking somewhere where they can talk confidentially, e.g. in a separate room otherwise results may be affected by their colleagues listening in at work.

Hi Heifer,

I used tapes until a couple of months ago too but the noise was driving me crazy. Plus, my tape recorder recorded at a super human speed and no transcription machine could slow it down enough. Drove me crazy. I've now switched over to an Olympus DSS tape recorder. It's the most amazing thing in the world. I want to marry it. Anyway, I was worried about the transcription thing too but actually, a couple of people in my department have USB transcription pedals. They're pretty good, just have to make sure they work with whatever software you're using.

one example - http://www.altoedge.com/pedals/index.html

Worth asking around if anyone has one you could borrow.

A

For transcription use "transcription buddy" available for free at www.download.com it allows you to use variable pauses (on digitial sound files), which you can set your self. I have mine set (at the moment) to

play 15 secs
pause 2 secs
re-play back 7 secs
(then play 15 secs again etc etc)

So it continually loops and you can change the times according to the speakers speed. Therefore you never need to press play, stop, pause, throughout the transcription, it just keeps rolling. Its fantastic. And its free on 30 day trial, but if you uninstall it after the trial is up and reinstall it you can use it again forever!

I did telephone interviews for my PhD - all open-ended qualitative, and it worked a treat. in fact, i see many advantages of them e.g. anonymity, participants' control over space, less intrusive etc. Go for it!

gosh, this is the 3rd time i am trying to respond, I have been having problems, each time i try posting, the post disappears. something sinister in the state of Denmark. Anyway thank you all for your responses. A couple of questions- A116 & Peppes, the digital recorder that you are  both referring to - the one which can be hooked on to the phone when having the interviews for recording - what is it called? am rather taken by the idea of it. Excuse my ignorance, been living in ancient times. For the other interviews i used the cassette Dictaphone more like what Heiffer used, it worked ok though background noises were a pain.  Back to the digital recorder, let me get this right : i can upload my interviews on to the computer... never mind the lingo???? Sneaks, thanks for the link will follow it through. By the way A116; transcription pedals, what's that??

thanks in advance folks.

======= Date Modified 15 Nov 2008 11:03:03 =======
[quote]Quote From sneaks:


I do loads, use this with a digital dictaphone (although make sure you do a practice one to make sure all the settings are ok and it is actually recording)



http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=30352



/[quote]



This allows you to use a digital dictaphone, I use a Sony one



http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-2gb-Digital-Dictation-Black/dp/B0011971N8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1226746831&sr=8-1



to record directly through the telephone, you can then upload the files up to your computer so you can play them back using the transcription buddy program I mentioned.