From Ethics to Analytics: Aspects of Participants' Orientations to the Presence and Relevance of Recording Devices

Abstract

In discussions of sociological research based on the recording of interactional occasions, participants' awareness of the presence of recording devices is often deemed to have a detrimental effect on the `authenticity' or `naturalness' of the data collected. We propose an alternative approach to this issue by seeking to turn participants' observable orientations to the presence and relevance of recording devices into an analytic topic, and exploring the precise kinds of situated interactional work in which such orientations are involved. Drawing on a substantial data corpus from three distinct research settings, we analyse a range of interactional functions associated with participants' orientations to the fact of their talk being recorded. Instead of assuming that it will act as a constraint on the production of `natural' talk, we show how the relevance of a recording device is negotiated and used in situ as a participants' matter and interactional resource.

Qualitative interviews in psychology: problems and possibilities

“…Although the definition of naturalistic has been a source of some controversy (see, for example, Lynch, 2002;Potter, 2002;Speer, 2002a,b;ten Have, 2002) the criterion used here is that the activity being recorded would have happened as it would have anyway; it is not got up by the researcher, for example by way of an open-ended interview. The records are dubbed naturalistic rather than natural in recognition of a range of potential sources of what would traditionally be called reactivity involved in the recruitment, the recording and so on (for a highly relevant debate on this, see Hammersley, 2003;Speer & Hutchby, 2003). Nevertheless, they are generated with the aim of avoiding active researcher involvement, even if the full realization of this ideal is often impossible.…”

The legacy problem in government agencies

“…Audio-recordings were considered an inappropriate method of obtaining the data after several participants expressed a preference that they not be used. This is not unusual as the use of audio-recording equipment has been deemed intimidating in discussions where organizational politics are being brought up (for a review of the drawbacks of tape-recording interactions with interviewees, see [25]). …”

The paradox from within: research participants doing-being-observed

“…As the larger project was designed to generate data of interactions in their natural ecology, the question arises whether this represents a 'contamination' of the data, as has been suggested elsewhere (see Speer, 2002;Speer & Hutchby, 2003). As large data sets are produced at quite considerable cost and effort, and involve commitments of both the research participants and members of the research team, it seems prescient to consider any resulting by-products of the research, which may point to a corruption of the quality or validity of the generated data.…”

“…An alternative to the aforementioned treatment of 'researcher effects' as problematic is offered by Speer (2002a) and Speer and Hutchby (2003), who describe instances where participants work together to treat the recording activity as an occasion for jocularity, or actively promoting the insignificance of the devices' impact on the interaction as desirable to the outcome of the data collection activity. Such accounts then serve to illustrate "the presence, and possible interactional impact, of the recording device being treated as a participants' issue" (ibid.…”