Data Collection and Analysis

It’s interesting that the reading for this week covered data collection--more specifically audiotape. I went home last week to check on my mom after she got out of the hospital, and she let me know about yet another book idea she had for me to write about. This time she wants me to write about my aunt going from rags to riches by becoming a madam. Mind you she gets a new book idea, or reworks an old one, every few weeks--and we haven't written anything yet. This is due to the fact that she still has ideas in her head, and has not put any notes down on paper for me. The problem is we haven't been able to find an easy way for her to get the words out of her head. She decided to get Dragon Dictate so she could just talk and have the words typed directly into the computer for her, but as my boyfriend was setting everything up I realized that this was getting way too complicated for her. Then he made the suggestion of her using a digital voice recorder to take notes, and found a wireless digital recorder with DNS (Dragon Naturally Speaking) that we can set up to download files directly into Dropbox. That way I can have the audio file be transcribed directly by Dragon without having to type anything. How freakin' awesome is that? I think at that moment the Heavens opened up, and angels started to sing. I think this might actually work (if she actually uses it), so be on the lookout for my first novel. 

As for data analysis, what caught my attention here is the coding. I don't think I've ever done it before, but when I think back I have seen and heard about it without knowing what it was. I remember one conversation with my dad about his study habits, and how he was working on his dissertation. He told me he had used tons of index cards, different colors, labels, etc. to organize his information. I never really thought about this again until I was helping a friend write her index cards. She had the responses from people, and had noticed patterns of certain words. She color coded each response, and used different color index cards/highlighters/pens for the different words. It was pretty interesting how she had this rainbow of data, and how easy it was to see patterns this way. I'm not all that excited about going through all of that work myself, but it seemed to pay off in the end.