AO: This interlocutor perceived "good quality" qualitative data to be signaled through "thick" documentation which would include background context on the interpersonal relationship between the researcher and the person being researched as well as details that go beyond what is said (e.g. laughter, stuttering, etc.). They indicate that close attention and capture of such details would increase their confidence in the data.
"Angela Okune 30:07
So if you were let's say to assess this data set to determine whether this was quote unquote good quality or bad quality, what things would you look out for?
BC-MW-F-S-02 30:16
Oh gosh. Good quality, bad quality? In what way?
Angela Okune 30:27
I mean, even and this can be outside of this particular platform, but like what kinds of qualitative data ... like if you're looking at a transcript, you're reviewing someone's work from the field or whatever...what would make you feel confident in?
BC-MW-F-S-02 30:42
In interpreting it. Um. So usually, for me, ...how it's written. So this is gonna sound strange unless I give an example. But for example, here, you've got "aahhh... noooo... mmmhh...ummmm..."... So I'm seeing it as this person is transcribing exactly what they hear. I've seen other transcriptions here where you can tell that that's not what the person said they've summarized it in their own words, or they've tried to make it grammatically correct. And so it doesn't match up, you don't capture some of those details of this person is unsure at this point, and then they go on to it. Other ones were liker the dot, dot, dot, etc. But there's other ones where sometimes you'll have in brackets "pause" and how long that pause is for. So if someone's sharing [pause] verbal things that you wouldn't necessarily want to record because they are not correct English, or they're also indicating pauses or laughter or other things then I trust that more than one that looks perfect, because I'm thinking they're summarizing it in their own words, and it's not real transcript. Then the other thing I mean, this one is good because you have the respondent talking a lot, and the questions seem pretty open ended. So that's another thing that I will look out for is it one where the moderator seems to be taking up most of the the written work or is it the respondent, if it's the moderator, then I'm assuming that's really just a quantitative interview, and they're controlling it. And there's probably some other dynamic going on then. Then also in terms of your summary at the beginning, ideally, and this has not happened here. But in an ideal world, if there was more information on the person conducting it, or if there was some kind of reflective notes, where they may say, I am from this particular region, and I was interviewing this person from another region, and there's conflict between our regions, having that context would be really useful or we're from the same region so this person would feel more comfortable with me, that would be useful because especially in the Kenyan context, that is often something that could be quite [inaudible]. So if I conduct an interview, the response that I am going to get is going to be very different from a Kenyan conducting the interview. So even having that like if you just have anonymous female, you're not going to know that this is a... like where I'm from etc, of the age, my age whether this person does or doesn't match me. So I think that information would be really useful as well. Yeah."
