Editing Interviews for Analyzing and Interpreting Qualitative Research: Trace Taylor, Project Film & Copy Editor

Dr. Charles Vanover

Charles Vanover is Associate Professor in Educational Leadership at the University of South Florida. He entered the field of qualitative studies working as a qualitative data analyst at the University of Michigan on the Study of Instructional Improvement. He met Johnny Saldaña at a session at AERA and together they developed Charles’ first ethnodrama, “Chalkboard Concerto,” a monologue about Charles’ experience teaching in the Chicago Public Schools. Charles’s 10 ethnodramas have been performed more 60 times, including 25 peer-reviewed sessions. Beyond “Analyzing and Interpreting Qualitative Research,” Charles is co-editing a book on assessing performance-based research that examines “Chicago Butoh,” a film and a set of live performances he developed with Bob Devin Jones.
In this interview with Michelle Angelo-Rocha, Dr. Charles Vanover discusses his hopes for the book and shares some ideas behind this YouTube video series for the After the Interview Project. Charles and his co-editors, Paul Mihas and Johnny Saldaña, decided to create a book for and by people who love qualitative research. In each chapter, the field’s leaders and emerging voices take readers through the practices and strategies they use after the interview: from transcription to coding to analytic and interpretive practices to write up. Every chapter is a celebration of the qualitative journey. Every chapter provides how-to’s on how to manage a critical aspect of the qualitative research process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daBmzmHheAY

In this interview with Michelle Angelo-Rocha, Paul Mihas discusses his hopes for the book. Paul and his co-editors, Charles Vanover and Johnny Saldaña, created a text on the how-to aspects of qualitative data analysis. The field’s leaders and emerging voices describe what they do to engage with their data after the interview: from transcription to coding to analytic and interpretive practices to write up. Each chapter shows what happens in “the qualitative kitchen” and describes each contributor’s efforts to prepare their data, one messy detail at a time. Paul emphasizes for teachers of qualitative research, the book provides strong examples of many analytic and interpretive practices: readers will be able to see how the work gets done in 25 qualitative kitchens. Every chapter is written from a love for qualitative research and is intended to inspire readers to try out new recipes and take new steps on the qualitative journey.
Paul Mihas is Assistant Director of Education and Qualitative Research at the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He teaches qualitative methods at the Global School in Empirical Research Methods at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, the BI Norwegian Business School, and the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He serves as faculty at the ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research and the annual Qualitative Research Summer Intensive. Recent publications include chapters on qualitative data analysis in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods in Education (2019) and in Research Design and Methods: An Applied Guide for the Scholar-Practitioner (SAGE, 2019)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhtyOLjocKc

Dr. Fiddler indexed this recorded dialogue with a set of notecards and transcribed small parts of the research conversations based on the interpretations she developed by listening and speaking to the teachers in her study. Her chapter provides a set of step-by-step methods to interpret interview data ontologically aligned with narrative inquiry. Jaime L Fiddler describes the interpretive process she developed to analyze interview data as part of a year-long narrative inquiry with a group of mid-career teachers. Dr. Fiddler did most of her interpretive work during a set of “deep listenings.” Dr. Fiddler did not transcribe the data after each research conversation. She listened to audio tapes of the group’s previous research conversation before facilitating the next monthly interview. By listening deeply, Dr. Fiddler was able to engage with the whole of the conversation within the context of her and the teachers’ mutual relationships.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAylWA5x7p8

Dr. Sally Campbell Galman discusses her hopes her chapter might take the mystery about how to do qualitative data analysis. Sally created her chapter to help people go from having data to having something to say about data. The chapter is written in comic form and shows readers how to employ techniques and tools from the arts to interpret qualitative data. In this video, Sally describes her career as a feminist, scholar, cartoonist and she shares her passion for arts-based research. She discusses the work involved in transforming research into comics and describes her efforts to make sure that every word communicates and every image speaks.Dr. Galman is Professor of Child and Family Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She is the author of the Shane the Lone Ethnographer series on qualitative research methodology and 5 other books. Sally wrote and illustrated her chapter for “Analyzing and Interpreting Qualitative Research” while at home as the single parent of three children during the COVID-19 Pandemic: a crisis that continues to disproportionately affect female academics. Her work is generously supported by the Spencer Foundation. In this interview with Michelle Angelo-Rocha.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5e3k0qnRmY

Dr. Andrea J. Bingham, Associate Professor of leadership, research, and foundations at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs discusses two core ways to engage with qualitative data. She discusses how to make meaning from data by first using deductive, or a priori, analysis, which generally means applying theory to the data. Andrea then discusses how to make meaning from data using inductive analysis, which generally means engaging with the data and allowing meaning to emerge. Inductive analysis is a bottom up strategy in contrast to deductive, top down approaches. In the second half of the video, Andrea draws on material from her and her colleague Dr. Patricia Witkowsky’s chapter in the new book from SAGE, Analyzing and Interpreting Qualitative Research: After the Interview. Andrea shares a step by step approach to combine deductive and inductive approaches in a single study and describes how to analyze qualitative data in five cycles of analysis. The figures Andrea discusses in this video may be found in the companion blogpost for SAGE MethodSpace.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1OCkH21NdE

Dr. di Gregorio discusses how her chapter helps qualitative researchers seize opportunities provided by automatic transcription systems and transform what had been a mind-numbing task into a major step in the analysis. The chapter begins with a literature review that describes the development of automated transcription tools and discusses how contemporary automated transcription systems change voice to text. Dr. di Gregorio argues automatic systems liberate transcription from a mechanical practice, where researchers struggle to “get the words down,” to a fluid step in the interpretive journey. Dr. di Gregorio argues the tools provided by automated transcription systems allow researchers to change the sequencing and flow of their interpretive work. High quality transcription systems provide a raw transcript in half the time it took to record the interview. Researchers may immediately engage with this material and, for example, note participants’ gestures and tones of voice directly on the transcript. This fluidity allows researchers to revise their interview instruments, immediately after the first interview, and quickly query respondents about the transcribed text.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H1LWMz4-7U