Full steam ahead with interviewing

It's full steam ahead with interviewing this week.

I've had two interviews and have one more this lunchtime. Each interview takes 30-45 minutes (not including travel and 'chatting' time), and then another 6-8 hours to transcribe I suppose. But transcribing is very intense work, so I can only do it for about an hour at a time.

In transcribing, you have the interview recorded in digital format, so it's playing in a screen on your computer. You listen to about 3-5 seconds, then stop it and type exactly what they said. And continue. If you didn't catch what they said you have to rewind by a bit and listen again - and again. If you have the situation where people are talking at the same time as each other (which does sometimes happen, even if they are not meaning to interrupt), then you might have to go over a portion of tape 6 or more times to catch each voice.

So why do this? Well, I'm researching people's experience of their child starting school. In some cases I ask questions and people have already thought about it and can answer quite succinctly. In other cases, people have to ponder and try to put their intuitions and feelings into words - whch can involve hesitations, and starting again, and sometimes if you are interviewing a couple (as I have been) they also build on each other. this can lead to some of the overlaps mentioned above. In a few cases I'm asking questions that people have not thought about before, and they are actively considering a new angle to what they were doing or why for the first time.

And the net benefit? Well, already a few things have cropped up where I'm thinking to myself if the school knew how this (sometimes they've done) appeared to parents, they would do it differently. And so on. So I hope to provide insights that will help early childhood centres and schools to be better (or more consistent) at helping parent help their child with the transition to school. That is, remove the aspect of "good luck" from whether any particular family actually gets the information and support they need.