Sharing Interview Transcripts with Participants – Does it “Count” as Member Checking?
Hello Qualitative Mind,
Today is May 11th and for those of you who are reading this blog post as it’s released, I want to remind you that tonight I’m hosting an informal chat over Zoom- From an Academic Path to an Entrepreneurial Adventure. I’m getting an increasing number of questions on this topic from graduate students (and entrepreneurial minds) so I’ve decided to answer them in a dynamic and conversational way over Zoom. If you’re interested, please sign up here and join us later today!
Now back to today’s topic: Does sharing interview transcripts with participants “count” as member checking? This is a question I received from one of the Qualitative Research Blueprint course members last month when we were going through module three on verification strategies. Since this isn’t the first time this question has come up, I decided it would be a good one to address on the blog.
“When I say sharing transcript with participants I’m referring to printing out transcripts and sending them back to participants for review. To what extent does that process actually add to the rigor of your research? In my opinion, not much.”
To be clear, I’ve done that. But, I don't see much value in it. First, I think the expectation that a participant will read a document that might be 20 to 40 pages in order to review their own word is, in my opinion, a bit patronizing. It’s really asking participants to go above and beyond their research duty when they’ve already given researchers so much (i.e., time, stories, emotions, experiences).
I see more value in preparing a summary – an infographic or a short PowerPoint presentation – and taking that back to participants with key things you’ve heard from them. You could even include some of the quotes from your participants, and simply ask the question “What do you think about what I'm presenting to you?” I think both this open-ended question and engagement with participants have a lot more value than simply giving them transcripts to review as it opens more opportunities for discussions, as well as data verification.
However, the approach I described above isn’t possible across all studies. Depending on what you're doing, the methodology you're using, you wouldn't be able to go back to your participants. In these instances, I’d recommend using other rigor strategies. You could consider doing the peer debriefing/review, memo writing or preparing an audit trail.
In other words, if you're not able to go back to your participants in a more interactive way {and to talk to them versus “here's your transcript, let me know what you think”}, you can definitely use other strategies that will be more meaningful to the study rigor. You have an array of verification strategies to choose from in qualitative research, so make sure you select and plan those that truly add validity to your data.
Talk soon,
Maira