Research Projects: Record Keeping During Interviews

Video Transcript

"Okay, it's time for the interview. What you have to do in an interview scenario is keep extremely accurate records of what you said and what they said. Now no matter how profound of an impact this person makes on you, unfortunately your short term memory and your long term memory may not be able to reproduce it exactly as it was when you leave this interview and you go to write your paper or give your speech, or whatever it is that you're doing. It's real important, if you can, to tape this interview, whether it's with a tape recorder, or whether a video camera, but you must ask permission before you do that. Like I can't like, you know, slip a tape recorder in my pocket, and "Ha, ha. I'm getting this." No, no, no, no, no, because some people don't want to be taped, especially on video tape, so you have to ask permission. Most people will allow it. That gives you the experience of word-for-word, right there. You can walk out and transcribe it, and I'm going to talk about transcription in just a second. But it's real important that you get that permission. Asking to tape a person is not asking them to let you spread this information all over town. It is simply being allowed to tape it, and you should never, ever take this taped material and print it or distribute it or let someone else hear it. It is for your own personal use. What you're going to do is you're going to walk away with this tape and you're going to transcribe, meaning play it back, and write down everything that you hear, and that way you can get it word-for-word, and you can look at it in front of you and decide what parts you want to use for your speech or your paper, etcetera."