🎥 12. Interviews and Vlogs as Primary Research

Are You Where You Should Be?

This is Module 12: Interviews and Vlogs as Primary Research, which should be completed between 4/12 - 4/18. If you haven’t completed everything in Module 11, go back and finish all outstanding tasks now. Don’t forget to click on and review each resource in this guide.

Goals and Checklist

• Learn about qualitative coding
• Identify different types of qualitative coding
• Develop strategies for coding interview data

To help with various access needs, including task identification and separation and advance notice, I’ll include an abbreviated list of tasks at the top of each weekly module. You can check these items off, but your input won’t be saved after you close this window. You remain responsible for checking the Calendar and ensuring that you’re completing everything in a timely fashion.

Important!

Don’t forget to review your Draft 3 (Unit 2 Draft 1) scores along with the updated General Feedback page!

Keep in mind that a single score on a single draft can but doesn’t have to mean much in the end, as this course is holistically graded based on overall frequency and quality of participation and on your enactment of what we learn each week in written assignment. Improvements in future drafts could render a single grade obsolete. If you’re really drifting away from the assignment, an “Nc” score should signal that you need to go over the guidelines again along with relevant course material, general feedback, and all the comments I’ve given everyone to date in #classroom Q&A chats (which I track and expect you to implement in future work). Regardless of score, everyone will be doing serious revision, and that’s to be expected at this point.

Everything Always Needs Revision!

Whether you received a “Cr” or an “Nc,” you need to revise! If you received an “Nc,” make sure to review all feedback/responses I’ve given you (and your peers) since Unit 1 began and reread the Unit 2 assignment guidelines before reaching out to me. My first question to you, no matter what, will always be to ask you to explain to me why you think you received the score you did, to assess your engagement with and understanding of the course content so far and figure out how best to help you with future assignments. Instead, if you’d like to discuss a given score, be prepared to tell me why you think you got it and what you think needs to be done differently moving forward.

Contact and Finalize Interviewees

As the calendar has indicated, you’ll begin conducting your interviews this week and finish conducting them next week (or early the following week due to fall break).

Last week’s module provided a template email, that you have hopefully used by now to contact potential interviewees. If you still need to schedule your interviews, or if you need to email other potential interviewees, please review the material in Module 10.

Remember, your interview questions should be formal and structured, using an interview protocol, i.e. a set of predetermined questions, that’s followed exactly in each subsequent interview so that the order and delivery of questions remains stable. Your probe questions should be semi-structured, meaning follow-up questions that are more like fluid talking points that can be adapted during the conversation.

Make sure to finalize both your structured and unstructured questions before conducting your interviews!

Important!

To give you additional time to plan, coordinate, and conduct your interviews — as well as work on your Lit Review revisions — there are no mandatory Q&A posts due this week. If you do have questions about the process, you are welcome to — and should! — post them to #classroom.

Your analysis of your first-hand observations and what your interviewees’ exact word choices reveal will provide an in-depth understanding of how people interact and create meaning, and will help clarify for your reader why and how your respondents’ experiences took shape.

Choosing a Vlog (If Needed)

You need a minimum of 1 interview with a live respondent. In case you can’t secure 3 interviews, you’ll need a shortform video resource that can substitute for an interview. A video blog (vlog) that could substitute for a live interview should:

• Be about 15-30 minutes
• Involve an established member of your field speaking to at least one aspect of the issue you’re exploring in your project
• Ideally involve an established member of your field speaking to issues that address the questions in your interview protocol
• Include minimal bias in terms of publication venue, i.e. is published in an online forum that isn’t itself inherently known for bias

If you end up using a vlog as a substitute interview source, you should treat the source as though it’s a live interview: transcribe the audio and perform qualitative coding on the resulting transcript.

Looking Ahead to Coding Your Interview Data

🛑 Stop: Read!

Read Johnny Saldana’s “An Introduction to Codes and Coding” for a preview of the coding

In the next two weeks, you’ll code your interview transcripts as you finish and transcribe, i.e. write down verbatim, them.

Qualitative coding can feel like a confusing process, and the method Saldana describes can feel difficult to parse, so it might be beneficial to skim this essay now. Next week, when your interview process should be concluding or well underway, you’ll take a closer look at this essay and learn more about qualitative coding from other resources as well.

Exit Writing

🥳 Congratulations on getting through this chapter! Don’t forget to check the Calendar for the week’s assignments, including your process reflection and #team posts as well as any other assigned writing. Make sure to look ahead to future weeks as well to get a sense of when low- and high-stakes writing for the rest of Unit 2 is due.

Reference List for This Week’s Resources