Qualitative Research Tools

For those who have asked me my approach to qualitative research, here are some tool tips:

Recording Interviews

Skype with Pamela Call Recorder (gotta love the name) or Google Voice Call Recording (However, it has the pesky habit of losing your interview about 5% of the time)

Transcribing Interviews

InqScribe in conjunction with Windows Speech Recognition (Vista or above). WSR comes for free with the OS and works with about a 90% accuracy.  If you aren’t happy with that, try buying Dragon Speak Naturally (there are websites that sell an academic version for about $85).  However, don’t think you can just feed your audio recording into any speech recognition program.  No, you will need to train it to your voice and repeat your interview to be transcribed. Sorry.

Coding Interviews

Atlas.ti. I like Atlas because it lets you query based on your codes and is considerably cheaper to get an academic license than NVivo (I wonder why they changed their name from NUDist? Hmm.)

Tracking References

EndNote (Happily, UNCC provides this license to students for free!)

Happy researching!

Research Update

I just submitted a manuscript to a special call for papers in ISJ, and my next project is writing a paper on coping mechanisms to submit to CHI 2012 that is due late September. Meanwhile, I am operationalizing the survey for my second dissertation study examining the impact of awareness and burden on the privacy paradox between end users’ privacy desires and their actual behavior. Submitting a poster to iConference 2012 may be a possibility, time permitting.

Other News

On a sad note, Mike’s grandfather is not doing very well after a failed heart surgery, so please keep him and Mike’s grandmother in your thoughts and prayers.  We will probably be making a trip back up to Grand Rapids in the near future.  I will be teaching a class on using Facebook for Seniors at Conner Financial in September. We also have plans for a Caribbean cruise on the horizon, and we will be bringing my mom and her boyfriend Watson. Otherwise, I am not busy at all. 🙂

Pam