Budgeting for qualitative research
Well, now that I am ready to conduct interviews, the first course of action is considering what equipment to purchase and the maintenance costs associated with different choices.
This is the first time that I am actually conducting qualitative research off-line and I did not have the necessary equipments, which of course will be used to record audio interviews. Initially, I hope to buy a “multi-mode” voice recorder that would allow me to even record an interview with a cell phone. Unfortunately, it turns out that there isn’t really any good option for an all-in-one audio recorder. I look at various alternatives including adding an accessory like the Olympus TP-7 but this also turns out to be unsatisfactory because TP-7 actually don’t plug into the cell phone – you hold the microphone to the cell phone to record the interviewee’s voice. An ideal tool would actually be the iPhone 3G, which purportedly record audio pretty well over the network. But it is too expensive for me. In the end, I opted for a multiple approach.
I want to add that I did use Skype before. But I stopped using Skype sometime back. In fact, I stopped for a sufficiently long period of time such that my Skype credited had expired. And I junked my filmsy headset, which I brought with me from Singapore three years ago, after significant wear and tear. Oh well……poor graduate student!
Check out http://phonecasting.com, a very simple and inexpensive service to record your calls. Once the call is recorded you can assign a telephone number that your followers can call to hear from any phone.
Phonecasting is record by phone , then assign a telephone number anyone can call to hear your recordings. Callers can subscribe to your phone recordings and be alerted by text message or an actual phone call anytime you have something new to say.
I’m actually a big proponent of the RecordiaPro service. Usually if you call them to order, theyll give you like a 10-20% discount so that brings down the price to in the 25 cents per minute range and then u dont need to pay month to month. and their quality is impeccable. i dont know how they do it, but when you listen to the recordings it sounds better than when u were on the phone
i find them a lot more professional and reliable than using some sort of hardware device or even going with the record my calls business (i hate getting charged per month). sometimes i do interviews and the publicist needs to connect the call so i just give them the incoming number that i got from recordiapro b/c they wont let me call the interviewee.
anyway, all in all i understand your frustrations but i think its worth paying a few more cents to get it done right.
thanks, shamrock. Will think about it.