Author: Áine M. Humble

The Data (continued)

Interviews
Interviews (PDF- 13 KB) were semi-structured, with only six or seven main questions asked depending on who was being interviewed. (Respondents also completed a brief questionnaire, which gathered demographics, at the end of the interview.) Those marrying for the first time were asked six questions; previously married individuals were asked seven questions. The additional question, which asked individuals to talk about the planning of their previous wedding(s), did not provide much rich data. In some cases the comparison wedding was 20 or 30 years earlier, so understandably, individuals could not remember many details.

To begin the interview, I asked individuals to tell me how they became engaged. This question was asked mainly to ease into the interview and help the respondent become more comfortable with talking with me, however it did reveal some interesting information as well. (In my research, the first question I typically ask in an interview may not be absolutely central to the research question but is asked because it helps to develop rapport between myself and the individual.)

I approached these interviews as extended conversations (Rubin & Rubin, 2005). I never read verbatim any of the interview questions listed on the interview guide, which I kept close to me. Instead, I memorized my questions and focused on asking them in as natural a way as possible. Many probes (e.g., Could you say more about that?) and follow up questions were used. I also used active listening skills (Ivey & Ivey, 2007) from the counseling profession to assist me in pulling out individuals' stories. What this means is that I did not rely solely on asking "questions." I used other skills such as (a) repeating key words (e.g., "nervous;" "nervous? could you say more about that?") or key phrases (e.g., "wanted him more involved"); (b) paraphrasing (e.g., "So he did become more involved over time, is that what you're saying?"); and (c) reflecting feeling or meaning (e.g., "I imagine that was extremely important for you.").

Being reflexive about the interviews
Because weddings are often seen as women's domains, it was important for the study that men, who are typically less involved, had a chance to talk openly about their experiences. Thus, I interviewed them separately from their wives. I also planned to alternate between who was interviewed first as I moved from one couple to the next, but a review of the transcripts revealed that I may have been "lazy" about this at times - twice I did not change the order. I alternated because I was concerned that I might probe less in second interviews, and if certain people (i.e., men) were always interviewed second, I might insert a type of bias into the data collection. Couples often expected the woman to be interviewed first, but were comfortable when I requested otherwise.

Interestingly, when I created a table to review the transcripts, I see that longer interviews were split equally for first (7) and second interviews (7) in each couple, but I also note that that longer interviews were more common with the women (11) than with men (3). Moreover, first interviews (9) had more coded segments compared to second interviews (5). And, overall, women had more coded segments in their interviews compared to their partners (13 of the 14 couples), and this was regardless of the type of couple categorization (traditional, transitional, or egalitarian). This pattern is not necessarily surprising - given societal expectations around women's greater interest and investment in weddings, it is likely that they provided more detail or "better data" with regard to the topic. Moreover, women are more likely to give greater detail than men in any kind of interview. However, the patterns are something for me to think about. Did I ask enough questions and probe sufficiently when I was interviewing the men regardless of whether or not they were interviewed before or after their wives?

Transcription
Transcription was an interesting process and a real learning experience for me. In my previous work, I had completed my own transcription, striving for accuracy as much as possible, but recognizing that transcription is, ultimately, an interpretive process (Poland, 1995). I would transcribe each interview and listen to it a second time to review the transcription. The second review often caught small errors and helped me catch words, phrases, or sentences I did not understand the first time. I saw this (and still do) as an essential part of the transcription process. For this study, I hired professional transcribers to do the work. I assumed they held similar accuracy standards, so initially I did not review their work. This cost me both time and money! They left out parts of the transcript that I thought were vital to include, such as nonverbal behavior (e.g., laughing or emphasis on certain words). They sometimes deliberately changed words, which I had a problem with (if any changes are to be made to a transcript, I expect the researcher to make that decision rather than the transcriber). They also did not review their work after their first run-through of the data, even after I asked them to and they assured me that they would! Numerous errors were in the transcripts, such as:

What was transcribed (the error)	What was really said (the correction)
You bought from a designer, yeah.	You got them to sign it, yeah.
I think to be kind to me, she might have phoned in a little small bit of pepperoni.	I think to be kind to me, she might have thrown in some salami or pepperoni.
I vowed that if I ever got in another serious relationship, I was gonna communicate. We don’t ever talk.	I vowed that if I ever got in another serious relationship, I was gonna communicate. We were gonna talk.

Consequently, I had to spend excessive amounts of time, energy, and money on reviewing the transcripts. As I have indicated, this was a very frustrating experience for me, but I learned much from it. For example, I created a specific transcription guide (PDF- 33 KB) and vowed to work much more closely with transcribers throughout the process.

I did not use member checking for this study, but since then I have started providing it as an option to interested participants as an additional way to check the accuracy of transcription. I do not provide my analysis for members to verify, though - Morse (1998) has noted the problem with doing so. A letter (PDF- 32 KB) is provided with the transcript to explain the purpose of the transcript reviews and to help participants understand what a typical transcript looks like.

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