Friday, October 08, 2021

DBA: Pilot study 2

I see that I last wrote on this topic a month ago. After a flurry of activity, nothing happened during the rest of September due to the many holidays. Things picked up again at the beginning of October, and a few days ago I interviewed the CEO. As I wrote in my thesis, the objectives of the pilot study are:

  • to verify that the methodology used is that of Action Research;
  • to determine the questions to be asked in the interviews or written responses;
  • to determine how much time is needed for an interview;
  • to determine how much time is needed to transcribe an interview and possibly translate it into English;
  • to determine how much time is needed to analyse the interviews;
  • to determine whether there are problems in the collection of collateral material (primarily emails) and to overcome any that arise.

Whilst the pilot study has only just started, I have answers for at least the third and fourth points listed above. The interview with the CEO lasted 17 minutes, the last two minutes of which were not really connected to the topic. It didn't help that several of the answers were "I don't remember", but one must remember that the purpose of the interviews is not so much to glean data about the enhancement being discussed but rather to check the methodology. 

Does anyone want to guess how long it has taken to transcribe an interview of 15 minutes? So far I have got 10 minutes into the interview and it has taken me ... 105 minutes! A factor of about 9-10 minutes transcription per minute of interview! I am seriously considering contracting the transcription out to a service that specialises in this. I wonder how much transcription services cost - of course, Friday night is not the time to reach out to Israeli companies. No one publishes their prices on their sites.

I want to conduct two more interviews in the coming week and maybe two more in the week after. I can't say that I conducted a pilot study consisting of one interview.

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