Meta Comments on the Recordings
In order to assure the possibility to listen to our interviews again after the conference, we used digital recorders. We used two different types of recorders, which we borrowed from our English department. One recorder was small and handy, whereas the other, which is usually used for fieldwork, was bigger and more challenging with regard to its usage. Although our group was shown how to make the professional recorder work, we had problems connecting the external microphone. We therefore used the small Sony recorder with its integrated microphone, which was easier to handle. Although the external microphone was supposed to ensure a better sound quality of our recordings, we realized that with too much background noise, the interviews would be difficult to listen to later on. We therefore conducted the subsequent interviews in a separate room with as little background noise as possible, or attempted to hold the microphone close to the interviewees, in order to make the recordings understandable. To facilitate good quality recordings, Maria and Marie worked together. While one of them asked the interview questions, the other held the microphone, so that the answers of the interviewees were captured with almost no disturbing background noises.
Apart from using the recorders we also took notes during our interviews. This was done to avoid the loss of our data in case of technical problems that might have occurred during our interviews. Due to the digital recordings of the interviews, we were able to re-play the answers if our interviewees. This made the transcription of the conducted interviews much easier.
